Los Angeles, Nov 1 (EFE).- Ohtani led the Dodgers to win the World Series. And he revitalized ‘Little Tokyo‘. Los Angeles’ Japantown collapsed with the pandemic. The arrival of the Japanese player to the city put him back on the map. A mural at the Miyako Hotel that attracts thousands of tourists. The ‘Shotime’ cocktail (a fusion of the English word ‘showtime’ and its name, Shohei), made with Japanese vodka. The ‘Ohtimanía’ is unstoppable.
The Ohtani revolution runs through the streets of the small historic district ‘Little Tokyo’, the heart of the largest Japanese-American population in the United States, collapsed with the pandemic and revitalized with the arrival of the player to the Dodgers last year.
With his signing “suddenly there was instant representation for everyone in Los Angeles, but specifically for Americans of Japanese origin,” Don Tahara, owner of Far Bar, an Asian bite-sized restaurant, and a loyal Dodgers fan since 1990, told EFE. childhood.
On the other side of the street where this restaurant is located there is a huge mural of Ohtani holding a bat firmly and dressed in the club’s kit that has become the main attraction for the thousands of tourists who visit this neighborhood daily. nestled in the center of the city.
“People come to Little Tokyo to take a photo of the mural or to experience the neighborhood,” adds Tahara.
Designed by renowned local artist Robert Vargas on one of the walls of the Miyako Hotel, the neighborhood’s businesses have experienced an economic and social ‘boom’ attributed to ‘Otimanía’.
The hotel “is very busy because whenever there is a Dodgers game in town, many travel companies in Japan invite people to stay there,” he says.
With his presence and his spectacular season, Ohtani “has made many people who were not fans of baseball or the Dodgers before watching the games,” says Tahara.
The bar, with more and more people wearing Dodger jerseys or number 17, celebrates each of Ohtani’s successes with its signature drink: the ‘Shotime’ cocktail (a fusion of the English word ‘showtime’ and its name, Shohei), made with Japanese vodka, with which he invites all his fans to a round every time the Japanese hitter hits a home run in MLB games.
In his first year with the Dodgers, his impact skyrocketed the Major League audience with a record of 14.5 billion minutes watched live and the Japantown of Los Angeles has been transformed into a temple that pays tribute to ‘Ohtanmania’.
The Japanese Shohei Ohtani came to the Dodgers a year ago to change everything: with an average of 48,000 spectators per game, the Californian team’s stadium, located in the heart of Los Angeles, hosted the largest attendance in the MLB last season with more than 3 million people.
The increase in followers on the field coincides with the increase in interest in the Major Leagues on television, which last season recorded the largest audience in seven years, 71 million, 1% more than last year.
International numbers have also skyrocketed, especially in Asia, with an audience of 32%, while in Latin America it stood at 16%, according to MLB data.
Ohtani’s great milestone also shook social networks: his entry into the exclusive 50/50 club last August generated 98.4 million impressions on X”, adds the organization.
With the hitter and other Japanese players such as Shota Imanaga and Yoshinobu Yamamoto all the rage, Japan’s public broadcasting company “is on track to record its fourth consecutive audience increase (since 2021) with an average audience of almost 2.2 million spectators,” indicates the MLB.
And, in fact, in Japan it is estimated that Ohtani could generate profits of 770 million dollars this year, according to sports economics specialist Miyamoto Katsuhiro.
