Revealing the Fighters’ philosophy-based management through interviews

In 2004, the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters (hereinafter, “the Fighters”) became the first Hokkaido-based professional baseball team in Japanese professional baseball history. Over the past 20 years, they have taken root in the region to become Hokkaido’s beloved home team, widely supported by the prefecture’s residents.

What is particularly noteworthy is that the team has achieved success with a style of team management unprecedented in the Japanese sports business. Taneda has long recognized the team’s innovative approach. Through case study-focused qualitative research based on meticulous interviews, he has produced significant findings. One of these is a study he conducted focusing on the philosophy-based management practiced by the Fighters.

According to Taneda, the Fighters relocated their original franchise from Tokyo to Hokkaido and established Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters Co., Ltd. in August 2003. At the same time, they formulated their corporate philosophy of “Sports Community,” management philosophy of “Challenge with Dream,” and action guidelines of “Fan Service 1st,” and they embarked on management reforms based on these principles. “The team went beyond just hosting games to implement initiatives that revitalized the entire prefecture, thereby achieving improved recognition and greater affinity with the team among the residents. They presented a business model of succeeding in their core operations by developing activities rooted in their franchise. In that sense, they can be said to have brought innovation to the Japanese professional baseball world,” says Taneda. What led to this was their “philosophy-based management.”

To explore this, Taneda conducted semi-structured interviews with members of the team’s business headquarters and team-related personnel, revealing the background of how the team’s philosophy and guidelines were formulated. In this process, he presents the words of Eiichi Someya, who led the formulation of philosophy and guidelines under Hiroji Ohkoso, the president at the time when the philosophy and guidelines were established: “...Where should the raison d’être of a company be? In other words, rather than creating the positioning of a single professional baseball team, I have been constantly thinking about what kind of role professional baseball, which has the biggest influence among Japanese professional sports, should play in society... When I thought about it that way, regarding baseball operations... I thought it would be better to properly organize the existence of fans and engagement with the region as stakeholders... Sports organizations must become entities that can properly face social issues through the existence of sports... We organized everything up to how we can transform the region and what kind of contribution we can make.”

“These words vividly reflect the essence of Peter Drucker’s theory,” says Taneda. Drucker states that “there is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer,” and “We must consider ‘Who are our customers? Where are they? What is the value for them?’ What determines business is contribution to society.” “According to Drucker, all organizations conducting business can gain customers by knowing society, understanding people’s needs, and providing products and services that meet those needs. What should companies do to solve society’s problems? In other words, clarifying ‘What is our business?’ can be said to be the company’s philosophy,” explains Taneda. He adds that the Fighters achieved business success by establishing this philosophy at the time of their restart and putting it into practice in their management.

“Customer creation” initiatives
Analyzing live television broadcasts of games

Taneda is also conducting research on televised games as part of the Fighters’ customer creation efforts.

“Professional sports business is a ‘time-consumption business’ where spectators pay by watching games, and the core product is the ‘game.’ To enhance the value of this product, the appeal of televised games becomes extremely important,” explains Taneda. With the purpose of fanbase development, the Fighters purchased a high-end broadcast vehicle in 2016. They also doubled the number of cameras used during game broadcasts and took on video production themselves, working to improve the quality of broadcast video.

Taneda meticulously compared and analyzed the Fighters’ 2016 season televised games with television coverage from the same season of Major League Baseball in the United States, the Korea Baseball Organization, and the National High School Baseball Championship (Summer Koshien). After clarifying the characteristics of each, he has identified three important factors for creating attractive baseball television coverage: “a high number of cuts,” “non-play footage,” and “close-up footage.” “By incorporating these elements, the Fighters were able to strongly appeal to audiences beyond core fans, enabling new customer creation,” says Taneda.

The Fighters’ innovation in ballpark development

The Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters built Es Con Field Hokkaido, Japan’s first privately built and operated professional baseball stadium, in 2023. Furthermore, they are advancing the construction of the sports complex called Hokkaido Ballpark F Village centered around this stadium. This will include not only shops but also field athletics, glamping facilities, agricultural learning facilities, and condominiums for sale. They are trying to further expand their business domain to urban development. Taneda is now interested in the company’s business method of creating a “co-creation space.” He is conducting interviews with various stakeholders, trying to clarify its significance.

“Professional baseball has a significant presence as Japan’s national sport, and its changes will spread to all professional sports. By studying this, I want to contribute to the development of sports business and, ultimately, to the realization of a prosperous society,” says Taneda, who pursues this research with a strong sense of mission.