Interleague play (NPB)
Central League teams were reluctant to implement regular-season interleague play as it would reduce the money generated from games played against the Yomiuri Giants, the hugely popular CL team that generates the most money in Japanese baseball.
However, during the 2004 NPB realignment, the merger of two PL teams that were struggling financially, the rumor of a second PL team merger, and talks of contracting and restructuring the two-league system into one ten-team league prompted the suggestion of interleague play as a possible solution.
Unlike Major League Baseball (MLB), Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) does not require teams to participate in revenue sharing strategies that would help correct the revenue imbalances between teams because of game attendance and television broadcasting contracts.
[1] Because of this imbalance, Pacific League (PL) team owners had lobbied the commissioner's office and the CL owners for years to introduce interleague play into the regular season, however CL teams rejected the idea.
In February, Keio University professor Masaru Ikei wrote an op-ed in the Sankei Shimbun detailing proposals that would help revive Japanese baseball; interleague play was his first idea.
[3] During the 2004 Nippon Professional Baseball realignment, the planned merger of two PL teams, the Kintetsu Buffaloes and the Orix BlueWave, along with the rumor of a second PL team merger in the near future prompted talk of possibly contracting and restructuring the two-league system into one ten-team league.
[6] Instead of this restructuring, Hanshin Tigers' president Katsuyoshi Nozaki proposed interleague play as a possible alternative solution.
[7] Eventually, team representatives approved the merger between the Buffaloes and BlueWave but also agreed to maintain the two-league system while still looking into introducing interleague games for the next season.
[8] During an owners meeting on September 29, 2004, a plan was approved to hold interleague regular-season games during the 2005 season.
Thirty-six interleague games were played by all twelve teams during a single six-week block between May 6 and June 16 and the event was sponsored by Nippon Life.
They cited the frequent travel required for the shorter two-game series of the 24-game format as the reason for the change.
CL officials used the increased frequency of games being played by the Japan national baseball team as leverage in the negotiations, and argued that the international competitions required a more efficient NPB schedule.
[14] Interleague play is treated as its own event with definitive start and end dates within the regular season.
The event's sponsor, Nippon Life, also announces several awards, all of which are accompanied by a monetary prize.
