bBasketball has long been known as America's pastime, but during the 2024 MLB playoffs, the United States isn't even home to the sport's largest audience.

Friday's pivotal NLDS Game 5 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres drew the largest U.S. television audience for a Division Series game since 2017, averaging 7.24 million viewers on Fox. But in baseball-crazy Japan — where Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani is a national hero — the same game averaged 12.9 million viewers.

This viewership represents 19.2% of households in Japan, a higher share than any non-NFL program in the United States and on par with prime time Monday Night Football game, even though it started at 9 a.m. Tokyo time on Saturday.

Japan has been an important international market for MLB for decades. Detsu, the Tokyo-based advertising giant that has controlled linear distribution rights in the country since 1990, is the league's oldest international media partner. Digital rights are controlled by South Korea-based Eclat Media Group, and the two companies sublicense games to nine different distribution channels, including public broadcaster NHK General TV, which aired the Dodgers-Padres series.

Together, they pay MLB an estimated $64 million a year, according to research firm Omdia, about a third of all international rights collected by MLB. Meanwhile, MLB's domestic media rights deals with ESPN, Fox and TNT pay more than $1.7 billion a year, and Apple has a separate package worth $85 million a year.

International revenue is split evenly across the 30 MLB teams, totaling just over $2 million each, although interest in the country is focused on one team and one player in particular: Ohtani.

The 30-year-old slugger, who signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers in December, has already lived up to his record-breaking contract. The two-time American League MVP is on the verge of winning his first National League MVP after becoming baseball's first 50/50 player in his record-setting season with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases. He is also a global marketing superstar, endorsing everything from pharmaceutical company Kowa to watch brand Seiko to fashion brand Boss (formerly Hugo Boss). Forbes It was estimated that Ohtani earned $60 million off the field this year and another $2 million on his heavily deferred contract.

That makes Ohtani the highest-paid baseball player this season, and right behind him is his Dodgers teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a Japanese pitcher, with total earnings of $59 million. The 26-year-old right-hander moved to the MLB from Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball League before this season, joining the Dodgers on a 12-year, $325 million contract.

Last week's fifth game was something of a perfect storm for Japanese baseball fans, as Yamamoto pitched for the Dodgers against another Japanese baseball legend, 38-year-old Yu Darvish of the Padres.

But it wasn't a one-time phenomenon. Game 1 of the Dodgers-Padres series, which aired the previous Sunday at 9 a.m. local time, reached nearly nine million viewers on NHK G, or 13.6% of households. That was already double the viewership of the most-watched game of the 2024 regular season in Japan and comparable to Ichiro Suzuki's farewell game in 2019, which was broadcast in prime time. MLB also reported a 336% increase in web traffic from Japan surrounding the game.

But as impressive as the MLB numbers were, they pale in comparison to the viewership of last year's World Baseball Classic. Six of the Japanese national team's seven games drew more than 30 million viewers in the country, and the outlier drew just 29 million viewers early on a weekday morning. All of Japan's games attracted more than 40% of households, comparable to NFL playoff games in the United States, not counting the Super Bowl.

“So far, the playoffs have not had as much of an impact as the recent Japanese WBC Games,” said Toshi Ogura, a sports business professor at Chuogakuin University in Chiba, Japan. “We’ll see how future playoff games pan out if the Dodgers continue to win and Ohtani performs.”

There is no reason to believe that interest will not continue to grow. In Game 1 of the current National League Championship Series, the Dodgers faced New York Mets pitcher Kodai Senga, also of Japan, who is expected to pitch again in the series, as is Yamamoto. The World Series could feature the New York Yankees and Aaron Judge, a matchup that would make TV executives on both sides of the Pacific salivate.

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