Selling Shohei Ohtani: Can Baseball’s Biggest Talent Transform the Sport?

Ohtani is already the most famous athlete in Japan, the pride of a baseball-crazed nation. His games are broadcast live there, and his name is a headline fixture in the daily sports press. Yet for the first six years of his career in the US, Ohtani toiled in relative obscurity in his adopted country. It didn’t help that he’s a quiet guy who grants few interviews, posts infrequently on social media and was on a team with eight straight losing seasons (that technically plays in Anaheim, not LA). Yet his legend grew in December when he signed a 10-year, $700 million deal with the Dodgers. That contract, the biggest in the history of team sports, has turned Ohtani’s every move into a spectacle. Tens of millions of people worldwide watched the press conference at which the Dodgers welcomed No. 17 to the team. The league says his new jersey sold faster at online sports retailer Fanatics than any other ever had, doubling the sales of Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami kit.