Fanatics announced the Tokyo Series generated $40 million of fan gear and trading cards sales to make it the best-selling special event in company history.
Sales included Tokyo Series merchandise and trading cards across e-commerce and wholesale, MLB official retail shop locations across Tokyo that were operated by Fanatics, MLB flagship store in New York, Topps activations, and Complex pop-up locations in Los Angeles and Tokyo that featured the Takashi Murakami collection.
Murakami’s ballyhooed connection launched on March 7 with an initial release on the Fanatics App and Complex LA pop-up, which DodgerBlue.com received a special preview of.
“It’s been really exciting to see,” Complex head of integrated marketing Timothy Nickloff told DodgerBlue.com. “I’ve seen iterations of this come to life over the last year now that we’ve been working on this project. So the development of products, how we’re going to make this thing come to life, it’s incredible to see it finally come together.
“I got here at about 6:30 this morning, and the line was at least six blocks. It was so cool to see all of that. It was a culmination of hard work and all the hard work that Takashi put into this collection, which really celebrates these incredible Japanese athletes and the growth of the game.”
More than 200,000 fans shopped across the Fanatics-operated MLB stores in Tokyo throughout the past week. More than 12,000 Topps Series 1 Japan Exclusive Mega Boxes sold out within hours on Topps’ online store in Japan, and cards quickly sold out at the Tokyo Dome, MLB pop-up stores and the league’s official online store in Japan.
Each of the two Topps Tokyo Series sets available to collectors included a dual-signed 1/1 autograph of Murakami and Shohei Ohtani, the most sought-after cards of the entire event.
Dodgers take spotlight in Japan
Although the Cubs roster includes Japanese natives Shota Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki, they were drastically overshadowed by the Dodgers.
That was largely tied to Shohei Ohtani, but Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki being popular in Japan as well.
“I think that’s a product of we’re playing the world champions, so you expect that from that perspective. We’re playing against the most famous player in the world, so you expect it from that perspective as well,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said.
“It’s still a competition. We’re trying to beat them the same, and it’s OK. I don’t think it bothers any of us or changing anything about our experience here or our anticipation of enjoying the experience. When you’re the world champs, you get to enjoy the spoils of that. That’s fair to me.”
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