Hedwig
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Japan Open is cancelled
- Thread starter Hedwig
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Hedwig
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weird that they gave no reason
Karen-W
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Probably expecting that attendance numbers will continue to fall now that Uno has retired.
jlai
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Kagi and Kaori aren’t a good enough draw?
I would wait for some official reason to be given.
But no, from what I know, Kagiyama and Sakamoto are not all that popular in Japan, despite their accolades.
Wait a minute, am I missing something? Sakamoto is the reigning Olympic Bronze Medalist and the three time and reigning World Champion and she is not popular in Japan? How can that be?
Kagiyama is a three time World Silver Medalist and the reigning Olympic Silver Medalist. Just how many more accolades does he need to earn in order to be popular in Japan?
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Are accolades the only thing needed to be popular...?
Karen-W
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Honestly, I'm not sure why everyone is all that surprised about this. The ISU Events page for this season did not include Japan Open when it was updated last month.
skateboy
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Worked for Hanyu.
Still... It was there in 2021/2020, and 2016, and 2012.
Interest in FS as a sport keeps decreasing, sadly. Last year they only managed to get 1 sponsor, a local radio (IIRC).
Perhaps Kinoshita cannot cover all the costs for Japan Open since they also have another show (Bloom on Ice).
Well, and perhaps understandably.
There might be confusion on here about why Kagiyama and Sakamoto aren't quite so popular. But, for me, put next to Hanyu, Asada, Takahashi, and Uno (which seems to be the order of popularity of Japanese skaters in Japan) it's not so shocking as to why.
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Kagiyama and Sakamoto aren't quite so popular because figure skating is not a popular sport in Japan to begin with.
I’d say Hanyu and Asada are the only ones who have managed to break through the figure skating bubble and achieve mainstream popularity.
This statement is way off the mark. Figure skating has been one of the top sports in Japan for 16-17 years. The boom started after Arakawa’s gold in 2006, then really took off when Miki and Mao went 1-2 at the worlds in 2007, and Daisuke came in second. Television viewing figures and sports popularity surveys reflect this as do the large number of shows in the off-season. Baseball and soccer are tops, but skating and volleyball rank behind them. Japan has hosted the worlds four times since 2007, that is twice as much as any other country in that time period.
You took the star's popularity as the sport's popularity when those are two different things.
Japan was lucky enough to have Asada and Hanyu back-to-back to carry the sport. They have none now.
YukiNieve
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I wouldn't say "figure skating is not a popular sport in Japan to begin with" based on both my personal experience and more importantly, the data published by Japan Sports Agency (a national government entity that belongs to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Education).
https://www.mext.go.jp/sports/content/20240327-kensport01-000034690_5-5.pdf (on page 78, in Japanese)
Approximately 20,000 Japanese people who were randomly selected in 2023 responded to the survey. Figure skating turned out to be the 14th choice when they were asked if they watched it in the venue, and 9th when asked if they watched it on internet or television out of 20 choices. Of course it is not as high as baseball (Shohei!) or soccer, but it is still pretty higher, for example, than tennis.
Now, it was 12th and 5th respectively in 2022, so it is probable that relative popularity has been declining.
If I ask my neighbors living on the same block, chances are none of them knows Nathan.
If I ask people living on the same block as my parents in Japan, I am certain most of them know Midori Ito, Shizuka Arakawa, and Daisuke Takahashi. It is not just Yuzuru Hanyu and Mao Asada although it is true that they are big stars there.
That is mainly because the level of exposure is different there. There are TV programs (not only the sports programs but also variety shows on TV), magazines, newspapers, advertisements - you can easily see the faces of figure skaters even if you are not paying attention.
I try to translate some of the interviews/news that I found interesting here, but there are almost 10-20 times more information about skaters circulating there. I sometimes wish that they just publish everything in English to entertain you guys, lol.
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What do you believe is the reason for Japan Open to be canceled?
I don't know about figure skating lacking popularity in Japan, although I definitely never thought it was a national sport, as it is in Russia. It's more popular in Japan than in the States, as an example. I just don't think Kagiyama/Sakamoto and the others are all that moving, not in the way the other four (especially Hanyu/Asada) were. I mean, Ando had accolades, but nobody really cared.
Although, not addressing you, but the other poster, I also don't believe hosting worlds or having many ice shows are indicators of mainstream popularity, either. Otherwise, by the same logic, it's very popular in China right now, which it isn't.
The data doesn't contradict my initial statement, though.
Figure Skating is the 14th choice, proportion-wise it is at 0.8% (compared to 13.4% for baseball).
Actually, thank you very much for the data!
First, I would say that "not very popular" is ultimately relative. It's popular enough to be 14th most popular, as you say, but it's not popular enough to be top 3 or 5.
Second, if I'm MTing correctly, this seems to say that 0.8% people watch three sports (FS, Speed Skating, Ice Hockey) on site, whereas 15.7% watch them on TV/the internet?
Third, if it's dropped in popularity since 2022 as you're saying, one explainer behind it might indeed be that Hanyu left the sport. Which isn't surprising, and it's certainly okay.
I know Ito was, being the first ever to win an Olympic medal for Japan, but I don't think we need to conflate popularity of a skater who skated more than 30 years ago (and the reason behind her popularity) with popularity of skating as a sport now.
It's true that Japan makes a lot of fluff material for their own skaters and skating, which is a good way to promote a sport. But for whichever reason, they don't seem to be taking to the current skaters all that much.
I expect it to be higher in 2026 because of the Olympics, because the every-four-year audience loves it. But I'm not seeing how that's any different from other countries, even if there's a more consistent presence of FS among the Japanese audience.
YukiNieve
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OK now I kind of see your point... I was thinking more of the popularity of figure skating in Japan in relative to other countries, such as the US. Yes, there are more popular sports in Japan - are there any countries where figure skating is more popular than baseball?
BTW Japan Open never had Yuzuru and Mao left after 2015.
I don't know the reasons for the cancellation, but it could partly be a lack of sponsorship as most companies will be spending a lot of money for summer Olympic Games this year.
Also there are lots of ice shows and local competitions taking place (almost every week!) and there are just so much money you can spend even if you are die-hard skating fans, and filling that huge arena with 19,000 capacity might be considered challenging (but it was filled up to the rafters during the 2023 World Championships - I was there in person).
But those are just my guess.
BTW Japan Open never had Yuzuru and Mao left after 2015.
I don't know the reasons for the cancellation, but it could partly be a lack of sponsorship as most companies will be spending a lot of money for summer Olympic Games this year.
Also there are lots of ice shows and local competitions taking place (almost every week!) and there are just so much money you can spend even if you are die-hard skating fans, and filling that huge arena with 19,000 capacity might be considered challenging (but it was filled up to the rafters during the 2023 World Championships - I was there in person).
But those are just my guess.
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Google trends suggest the following countries (past year): Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
Japan is oversaturated with ice shows nowadays and I don't think it is sustainable in the long run.
Organizing a show will have its own unique concerns beyond just the audience, so I don't think we can guess right now. The organizers might have changed and were poor managers, the TV channel might have decided it has other priorities, the show the stopped doing well for ratings... so on. Some of these concerns aren't going to exist for WCs - WCs in Japan won't get cancelled just because a major TV channel decided baseball was worth more. But JO is dispensable.
Frau Muller
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$$$$$$
Isn’t this the totally-commercial event of each fall, for which it’s nearly impossible for non-Japanese fans to find films? Japanese fans already have tons of shows off-season…and the have a JGP (NHK). Good riddance!
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