Before Shohei Ohtani’s first game and season with his new team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on March 27, 2024, a massive mural of the baseball player is erected on the side of a hotel in Little Tokyo, a neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles. (REUTERS) On Tuesday, ANA Holdings announced that it has signed a multi-year contract to serve as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ official Japanese airline. The Dodgers are the new team that baseball player Shohei Ohtani plays for.
Since national idol Shohei Ohtani signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers in December after spending six years with the Los Angeles Angels, the team has been the focus of a lot of advertising and products in Japan.
However, Ohtani has a personal sponsorship agreement with Japan Airlines (JAL), a rival airline to ANA.
On Monday, he delivered a video speech to the newly hired JAL staff.
The largest airline in Japan, ANA, started offering non-stop service to Los Angeles in 1986 and currently makes three daily round-trips from Tokyo airports to the Californian city, according to the business.
According to a release, the carrier will work with the Dodgers to celebrate Japanese culture at heritage nights events.
After leading the American League in home runs scored (44), and recording 10 victories as a pitcher, Ohtani took home his second Most Valuable Player title in the previous season.
Last Monday, a fifteen-story painting featuring the new Dodgers star was revealed in downtown Los Angeles.
Ohtani declared at his news conference that he was eager to join the Dodgers. When the two-time MVP visited with Dodgers ownership, he learned that they saw the previous ten years as a failure despite the team making the playoffs every year and winning just one World Series. Ohtani remarked, “I knew they were all about winning when I heard that, and that is exactly how I feel.”
Tax implications stem from this historic contract affect Ohtani’s and the Dodgers’ respective yearly values, which change based on whether the contract is broken down over ten years ($70 million), for luxury tax purposes ($46 million), for players union calculations ($43.8 million), over the 20-year payment period ($35 million), or as a 2024 payout ($2 million).
Ohtani was certain to surpass Mike Trout, his former Los Angeles Angles teammate, who signed a 12-year, $426.5 million contract in 2019 to hold the record for the highest baseball contract.
The agreement surpasses the largest contract in North American sports, which was signed by NFL player Patrick Mahomes for $450 million over ten years. Ohtani’s contract is worth more than Lionel Messi’s four-year, $674 million deal with Barcelona FC if the deferral clause is disregarded. However, Messi’s deal includes bonuses that he did not get.
