SPORTS TECH TOKYO Team/Association
A special interview project to visit the mentor of "INNOVATION LEAGUE Acceleration", which leads the sports world, to approach the past, present and future, and to unravel the possibilities and challenges of the cutting edge of the sports business. For the third installment, we invited Mr. Shigeo Araki, CEO of Sports Marketing Laboratory Co., Ltd., who knows everything about business and sports, such as his career and encounters with sports business, awareness of issues in the sports world and open innovation. I asked for an opinion. Sports Marketing Laboratory Co., Ltd. Representative Director Shigeo Araki [Sports Marketing Laboratory Co., Ltd.]
PROFILEShigeo Araki Completed master's course at Aoyama Gakuin University. After working in important positions at a foreign-affiliated company, he joined the Chiba Lotte baseball team in January 2005 in the wake of the professional baseball restructuring turmoil in 2004. In addition to making a leap to a popular baseball team with Valentine's manager at the time, he contributed to the establishment of a business company for six Pacific League teams. In 2009, he became independent and established Sports Marketing Laboratory Co., Ltd. In 2013, he became a Special Advisor of the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) (later Executive Officer of NPB Enterprise), and was in charge of the business strategy and digital strategy of the Japan National Baseball Team and All-Generation Samurai Japan. We are promoting a wide range of sports businesses by providing a comprehensive service from strategy, sales, marketing, system and media construction to operation. First of all, please tell us about your career so far. "After graduating from university, I started as an engineer at IBM Japan, worked in important positions at computer and telecommunications companies in the UK and the US, and finally went to Deutsche Telekom (German headquarters), the largest telecommunications company in Europe. Before jumping into the world of sports, I had been working in Internet-related business since around 1995, mainly in international communications, so it was before the Internet became common in Japan. You've been working on the Internet all your life." Mr. Araki, you started your career as an engineer. "Honestly, I didn't think anything of it. I always thought I would work as an engineer. , I worked while studying marketing, management, etc. I didn't intentionally go to the sales or management department, but I liked new things and excitement, so when I think about it now, engineers were my nature. Maybe it wasn't the right fit for me (laughs).Being an engineer at the time gave me an advantage when working in the sports industry. Even if a service or new technology comes out, you can understand it from the structure.” Did you have a desire to participate in the sports business at that time? "There was nothing at all. In the first place, the only option to work in the sports industry at that time was to enter a sports manufacturer, and I could not imagine working for a baseball team or sports organization.However, in 2004, the reorganization of the baseball world There were various events such as the disappearance of the Kintetsu team and Horiemon's attempt to create a team. I began to be interested in how business was established in the first place.Unlike today, there were almost no books or information about the sports business back then, and I was looking for a way to study it. At that time, I found out that the University of Tokyo had a sports management school (SMS), and started attending while serving as the representative of Deutsche Telekom's Japanese subsidiary.The class of the sports management school was about 60 people, and among them One person in his 70s was asking questions with great enthusiasm, and I was wondering, "What is that old man?" It was Mr. Eisuke.He came to study in order to decide whether Lotte will be merged with the Hawks or whether he will make a big reform while staying at Chiba.Hearing that, a fire was lit in me and I imitated what I saw. At the next lecture, I took the reform plan to Mr. Hamamoto and talked to him about it, and he said, ``You should do this. Immediately after joining the company, I was put in charge of the planning department, but I had no subordinates, no desks, telephones, computers, or business cards, and for about two weeks I worked in the meeting room by the window. (laughs) I joined the company on January 1st, and my mission was to sell out the season opener at the end of March, so after I joined the company, I started a media strategy and worked hard to attract customers. When I look back, I feel that it was a very good experience.”Former manager Bobby Valentine and Mr. Araki [Shigeo Araki], who worked together to bring about major reforms at Chiba Lotte.
After that, what kind of decision did you make to start your own business and enter the sports business? Huh? "Simply, I felt that I had completed the Lotte team.At that point, I couldn't imagine changing jobs to other teams or other sports.The four and a half years I spent at Lotte were very intense. In 2009, I established a company specializing in sports marketing in order to find a position with a little more freedom. Is the establishment of the Sports Business Academy in 2015 and the movement to create a subsidiary Spocare Co., Ltd. in 2018 to increase the number of human resources involved in the sports business? "Yes, that's right. Rather than discovering and cultivating human resources to be hired by our company, we aim to increase the number of colleagues and chairs who push sports forward. Six years have passed since the establishment of the Sports Business Academy. However, the total number of students has reached about 3,600.”Sports Business Academy (SBA) [Sports Business Academy】
"It is not limited to the sports business, but in business, someone has to take risks, commit, and sublimate it to the level of service. However, in the world of business, no matter how passionate companies and human resources work, only a handful of people can succeed, and the basics are failures.Sports organizations are fans. Since we have a base, if we do something, we will get a reaction from the fans.Therefore, we have the illusion that we are getting some results, but if that is all, we will not go to the stage where it can be established as a business. I think that there are many cases where there is no such thing.I think that the problem is that it is not clear who the business entity is.For example, a sports organization presents a problem and asks an external company for help, Suppose a technology company comes forward, conducts a proof-of-concept, and succeeds, but after it goes well, who is in charge of the service and who actually drives it? There are many cases where the whereabouts are unclear. When thinking about how to bring about innovation and change the sports world, I believe that the ideal is for the operating company to take responsibility and risk as a specialist in the service industry. However, the current situation is that we are only in the position of proposing (selling) whether to use the service as a provider, so there is little reason to use the service as a sports organization. For this reason, coupled with the corona crisis, it is difficult to move.I think that when it comes to deciding who will be the business owner, the operating company side will have to brace itself.But the operating company side was not able to do that, because when trying to develop a service in partnership with a sports organization, despite the fact that the world and technology have changed so much, the reorganization of rights and properties, etc. In other words, the scope and types of rights that operating companies can handle have not changed, making it difficult to create new services that utilize them. Sometimes we need raw materials, but even if we want to participate in the sports business as a business entity, it is a problem that the raw materials to be purchased are not on the market. Even though I have a business that I really want to do, I run into a wall of vested interests and rights. Of course, it is important to protect your rights, but it should be more important to use your rights correctly to get a return. If there is a business that seriously wants to partner with the sports world, the ideal flow is for the sports organization to review the rights-related part and consider providing raw materials to it in order to establish it. . Historically, broadcasting, magazines, newspapers, tickets, and other services were basically all provided by companies outside the sports world, but in the last 10 years there has been a trend toward some of these being made in-house by sports organizations. . As the times change, new services that match the times should emerge, but I can't deny the feeling that we haven't come up with anything that has an impact compared to other industries. I believe that the reorganization of rights will be the key to breaking away from the current situation where open innovation is all about proof of concept (POC). Mr. Araki speaking at the online salon "THE BASE" presided over by the board members of the Sports Business Academy (SBA) with over 3,500 members [THE BASE]
Click here for an overview of "THE BASE"https://thebase.spobiz.ac/In order to change the regulations, the old system will not change Is it difficult? "I don't think so. Sports business rights are not laws. Of course, there are underlying laws, but the problem is how to convert the underlying laws into business rights. I think there are still many things we can do if we take stock of the rights, such as thinking about what kind of raw materials are needed for what we want to do, and reviewing the materials we want. When I tried to run Pro Yakyu 24, the predecessor of TV (a service that delivers live broadcasts of professional baseball Pacific League games on mobile phones), I was told by all stakeholders that it would be impossible because TV had the broadcasting rights. Normally, people would give up at that point, but instead of giving up, we think about why we can't do it, and win the IP rights through a scheme that clears the legal part. I think there are still a lot of things we can do if we can create a business design that says, "This right is necessary" and "This kind of scheme and formation is necessary to do this right."Therefore, I have been in the sports industry for many years, People like us, who understand business practices, would like to contribute as a mentor by directing traffic for the apse who are taking on new challenges. Instead of looking for excuses such as ``There is no literacy on the part of the sports organization,'' innovation will not occur easily unless you have the passion and wisdom to recognize your own inadequacies and think about how to achieve them. There is no way.” Is there any case or business that you have driven through the mentoring provided by Mr. Araki? "Due to confidentiality obligations, I can't talk about it in detail, but there are many things, big and small. We at Sporabo define our business as 'IN', 'FOR' and 'WITH'. The FOR domain is a service that supports companies and people who want to enter the sports industry and provide something to the sports industry, such as creating marketing strategies and negotiating. We provide support in various forms, including large domestic and foreign companies, in the form of conducting offers ideas for utilizing sports in corporate marketing.In particular, we believe that the area of FOR sports is our number one feature, and there are many companies that offer IN and WITH. I get the impression that there aren't many companies that do FOR.[Sports Marketing Laboratory Co., Ltd.]
Finally, what would you like to do in the Innovation League as a mentor? "I would like to give messages and keywords to everyone who participates, and I hope that even one person will be able to connect to new discoveries and opportunities. I would like to make the Innovation League a platform that connects people inside and outside of sports.Cooperation : Kenichi Gokatsuide Representative director of the NPO izm, whose mission is to "spun athletes and society."With the aim of improving the value of sports and athletes, he develops content and marketing support as well as education and career support. Published "How to Use Social Media for Athletes" at the end of 2019.Co-authored by Kenichiro Ogane As a freelance photographer, he mainly shoots sports. While following the scene, he also writes and works to convey the charm and beauty of sports.Page 1/1
