The Tokyo Series marked the official opening of the 2025 Major League Baseball season, and it was a rousing success (well, not for the Chicago Cubs).
The reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, who are stacked with a Japanese big-three of Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki swept the two-game series against the Cubs, who put Shota Imanaga on the mound in the first game and Seiya Suzuki in their lineup both days.
In Japan, 25 million people watched the first game, and coinciding with the series, Fanatics dropped fan gear, which became the company’s biggest special event ever.
Fanatics announced on Thursday afternoon that MLB’s Tokyo Series generated $40 million of fan gear and trading cards sales.
The biggest hit was the Takashi Murakami Collection, where the Japanese artist designed merchandise, including clothes and cards, that sold out in under an hour.
Numerous trading cards also sold out during the series, both at the Tokyo Dome and MLB pop-up stores. A trading card even included the signatures of both Murakami and Ohtani, generating wild prices.
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More than 200,000 fans shopped across the Fanatics-operated MLB Official Stores in Tokyo throughout the week, requiring nearly 140 operational registers, according to Fanatics.
Ohtani went 3-for-8 in the series with a home run and a double, and after a successful first season coming off the richest contract ever given to a pitcher, Yamamoto struck out four and allowed just one run in five innings of work.
Sasaki, the 23-year-old phenom who signed with L.A. this offseason, struggled in his MLB debut, but the Dodgers were able to manage through his troubles for the win.
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