The 2023 Major League Baseball season was played out under a cloud of mystery surrounding its biggest superstar and where he would sign as an upcoming free agent. Shohei Ohtani had the whole baseball world holding its breath concluding with a convoluted and jaw-dropping exhale on the 9th of December 2023 when it was announced that he was signing a 10-year $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. This eye-watering figure is the most lucrative contract in American sports history and makes previous record holder NFL Quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ 10-year $450 million agreement seem financially pedestrian. It appears that even the influx of support from Swifties was not enough to get Mahomes into the same stratosphere as Ohtani. This tries to give you a feel for just how extraordinary this figure is even in today's inflated sports economy; it is even more ludicrous when you consider the fact that this is a baseball contract.

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America’s ex-favourite pastime has fallen far behind its competitors, the NBA and NFL, in terms of both viewership and revenue. The NFL has outwrestled the church for ownership of Sundays in America and the NBA has globalised the game of basketball, especially in large markets like China. Baseball however has been shrinking in popularity, at least on home soil. Many have called it boring and lethargic in comparison to the high-octane, balls-to-the-walls action of Basketball and American Football. So how is it that this sputtering sport has teams chomping at the bit to throw the best part of a billion dollars at a single player? Well, this isn’t just any player, Shohei “Shotime” Ohtani is the most exciting thing to be injected into the game of baseball since anabolic steroids in the 1990s. For those unfamiliar with baseball, a team consists of pitchers (essentially over-arm bowlers) and batters (hopefully self-explanatory). Shohei Ohtani is the first player since George “Babe” Ruth (who retired in 1935) to play both positions simultaneously and he does so very, very well. He is a consensus top 5 hitter and pitcher in the world wrapped neatly into a 6’4 package.

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Okay, so if he provides two players' worth of value on the field it makes sense as to why he would get paid two players’ worth off it, right? Well, the average MLB salary is $4.9 million per year so even by my slightly ad-hoc logic there are still a couple hundred million dollars to account for. The truth is that no matter how you attempt to crunch the numbers no player is worth that money, no impressive stats or accolades make this a feasible deal, that is if we only consider on-field play.

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One detail I have yet to mention about Shohei Ohtani is his Japanese nationality, which is key when considering his value to potential suitors because Japan is baseball-mad. A heat map of the sports’ popularity worldwide would centre around North America and the Caribbean but there would be a very bright spot in East Asia. The game was introduced to Japan in 1872 by a visiting American professor in Tokyo. Growing popularity spurred the formation of the Nippon Professional League in 1936; it was this alongside the success of Japanese star Ichiro Suzuki in MLB that made baseball Japan’s favourite sport. However, Ichiro’s retirement in 2019 left a country of 125 million people searching for its next prodigal son. Ohtani not only stepped up to the plate, he launched a ball somewhere beyond Jupiter. When Shohei Ohtani went out to pitch the last inning of the World Baseball Classic final (the baseball equivalent of the World Cup) 42.4% of Japanese households were glued to their TVs to watch Ohtani launch a 102 mph fastball getting the better of Mike Trout and crowning Japan as kings of the baseball world. Ohtani’s popularity in his home country cannot be understated, it can only be loosely compared to Lionel Messi’s in Argentina or Cristiano Ronaldo’s in Portugal. His play generates billions through the sale of jerseys, merchandise and tickets in Japan, as well as in America. This is where his true value comes from: he is not just the greatest baseball player of all time, but he also has a sporting monopoly over the  third-largest economy in the world. 

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For the average baseball fan, watching Ohtani swing the bat is priceless. But to MLB team owners he has a cost - and an unprecedented one at that. This winter he triggered an historic bidding war for access to his services and marketability that had everyone second-guessing just how high the number could go. He also pulled off a somewhat cruel bluff that left my precious Toronto Blue Jays empty-handed in what may forever be known in Canada as ‘planegate’; but I digress. It seems that when we really look into Shohei Ohtani’s importance to both the game he plays and the business that revolves around it, even commanding this fee, he may just prove to be the sporting world’s first $700 million bargain.