Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
December 30, 2006
Pitching for the Red Sox

Daisuke Matsuzaka is already using his Red Sox fame to pitch products:

The Japanese baseball star, also known as "Dice-K," who the Sox paid $103 million to acquire has recorded a Japanese commercial hawking Asahi Super Dry beer, fully dressed in Red Sox regalia, showing that his star power in the Far East has already lent marketing clout to his new team. The endorsement happened without the involvement of the Red Sox, under rules that give Major League Baseball control over the team's trademarks outside New England .

Those rules aside, Sox executives believe there is a big market in Japan and locally for endorsements involving the team and Matsuzaka, and that their new pitcher will boost the team's popularity in Japan past that of a certain pinstripe-wearing rival with a Japanese player of its own.

"We want to be the team of Japan. The Yankees are very popular over there because of [Hideki] Matsui, but now we think we can get in over there as well," said Sam Kennedy , the Red Sox' senior vice president of sales and marketing. Matsui , the left fielder the New York Yankees snagged in 2003 from Japan, remains popular there and has several endorsement deals.

This will make the Matsui-Matsuzaka matchups even more exciting! The winner gets the best Japanese endorsement deals! :-)


Posted by David Pinto at 08:05 AM | Advertising | TrackBack (0)
Comments

The Sox better hold on to their horses. Of the multitude of Japanese players who have come to the major leagues, there are only two real superstars so far - Hideki Matsui and Ichiro.

Posted by: Scott at December 30, 2006 09:15 AM

I'd say Nomo had a pretty good run too......

Posted by: Jacques at December 30, 2006 10:39 AM

Matsuzaka's first pitch at Fenway Park this season will be to none other than Ichrio....every media member in Japan may be stateside to cover it.

Both the local papers have already made announcements to place their flag in the Japanese market. The Herald has a Japanese flag you can click on to translate the entire page. The Globe just announced a deal with a local Japanese Baseball Blog focused on the Red Sox in Japanese and that Gordon Edes would write two columns a month for a Japanese paper.

Posted by: Tim Daloisio at December 30, 2006 10:41 AM
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