The Global Extension of the Boston Red Sox Brand
Hello all,
If you have been following Major League Baseball recently, you must have heard of Japanese pitching phenomenon Daisuke Matsuzaka. The most dominant pitcher in Japanese baseball for the last eight seasons, this 26 year-old is best known for throwing his “gyroball”, which is said to “rotate like a football and move like a slider in slow motion.” The Red Sox, New York Yankees, New York Mets, Los Angeles Angels, Texas Rangers and Chicago Cubs, among others, are believed to have submitted bids.
Although the results of the silent auction for Matsuzaka will not be announced until 8 p.m. Tuesday, it has been reported that our own Boston Red Sox have the highest bid ($42 million just to speak to the guy). The winning club will have an exclusive 30-day window to negotiate a contract with Matsuzaka's agent, Scott Boras. If a team signs Matsuzaka, it will cost them the bid price plus a contract (I’d say somewhere around $60 million for 5 years).
This brings me to the topic of the Red Sox brand. If Boston manages to obtain Matsuzaka, they will effectively be planting Red Sox brand seeds in the Asian market, expanding the brand to a more global stage. Global brand extension provides the Red Sox brand the opportunity to capture share of mind in the growing MLB fanbase of Asia. When I was visiting Singapore this past summer, I was astonished to find that mostly all baseball caps and other MLB paraphernalia obnoxiously displayed the New York Yankees logo. I believe that this is not because the Yankees are a superior team, but rather because the Yankees brand is the most visible from the Far East. Acquiring Matsuzaka will not only make the Red Sox a better team, but it will also make the brand more relevant and ultimately more important to Far Easterners.
So I urge you all as Red Sox fans -- nay, anti-Yankees fans -- to hope with me that the Red Sox will win the Matsuzaka contract.
Thanks,
Ryan J. Chung
posted by Brand007 @ 7:35 PM
2 Comments:
I was in Sydney last semester and also noticed Yankee paraphernalia everywhere. I asked a few people about the hats and shirts they were wearing, and most of them had absolutely no clue what the Yankee logo represented. As a big Yankee fan, I'll have to disagree with your point about it being "obnoxious," but I agree that the global brand extension can be attributed to the Yankees signing Asian players. However, the Yankees are not the only team that has signed Asian players.
As discussed in an article (http://www.athomeplate.com/asian.shtml), Chan Ho Park was the first Asian player to be signed in over 30 years in 1994. Since then, lots of Asian players have been signed by Major League Baseball teams with many of the more popular and successful players playing for teams other than the Yankees. So, why are people in the Far East wearing Yankee caps? The reason could be that the Yankees won a bunch of world championships during the heat of this Asian player signing phenemenon. While the Yankees have not won a world championship in the past 6 years, if the team continues to put together competitive teams with the Asian players currently on their roster, I think it would be difficult for another team to overtake the Yankees as the top global brand in Major League Baseball. In other words, you would probably see Red Sox hats in the Far East if they sign Matsuzaka, but I think the Yankee brand will continue to dominate, at least for now, regardless of which team signs him.
-Robert Cusumano
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