When Major League Baseball opens the 2019 season in Japan next month, MGM Resorts International will be on the field.
The Las Vegas-based casino giant, which is maneuvering for a license to build a gaming megaresort in Japan, has signed on as the title sponsor for the March 20-21 series pitting the Oakland Athletics against the Seattle Mariners at the Tokyo Dome. As part of the deal𑁋a follow-up to the marketing partnership MGM concluded with Major League Baseball last November𑁋the Athletics will wear uniform patches featuring the MGM logo.
MGM’s name also will be part of the official logo of the series, which includes four exhibition games between Major League teams and teams from Japan’s top pro league. MGM also will have a prominent presence in fan activities surrounding the games.
Times have indeed changed.
Major League Baseball was among the big-name sports organizations that fought New Jersey for years in federal court to prevent the spread of legal sports betting outside Nevada. That battle ended last May when the state won its case in the U.S. Supreme Court and a longstanding federal ban on sports betting was struck down as unconstitutional. Now those same organizations, along with several pro sports teams, have been lining up for a piece of the action through marketing and data-sharing partnerships with the country’s largest casino operators.
The names of betting companies are a familiar sight on uniforms in sports contests in countries outside the United States. So far, though, they’re permitted nowhere within the United States. Baseball allows them only in international games. The last time the league opened its season in Japan, in 2012, players wore patches from Boeing and online-games platform Gloops.
