[ad_1]
Kyoko became the first woman to win the highest prize in a traditionally male sport. But the youngsters will meet their match when competing against finishing school coquettes and stoic cat lovers.
Welcome to Season 2 of i am a boat racer: A long-running advertising campaign in soap opera style for Japanese powerboat racing. Its first season was a huge success during the pandemic, cultivating a new generation of boat-obsessed gamblers.
But could the 2023 campaign work the same magic for a country finally looking to remove its masks? i am a boat racerAlthough fictional, it focuses on a very real area of a strictly limited handful of sports where gambling is legal in Japan. Others include horse racing, auto racing, and bicycle racing.
All four sports have seen impressive growth in terms of betting revenue and punter numbers over the past three years, primarily through online portals. Some analysts attribute this growth to the pervasive (but perhaps ephemeral) entertainment-hungry “nesting” dynamic that Japanese households took hold of during the pandemic. Others suspect that the boat racing campaign (the less glamorous equivalent of horse racing or cycling) has put a more permanent switch on the country’s attitude towards gambling.
According to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s Tertiary Industry Activity Index, gambling on motorcycles, boats and horses has been steadily but slowly increasing since 2013, before a decisive surge when the pandemic began. rice field. The index covering all four sports is up over 60% since March 2020. Boat racing alone is up 134% over the same period. This expansion is jumping off the page among data in sectors where contraction is rampant.
Last May, Tokyo Shoko Research released a report tracking the performance of seven boat racing companies across the country, and found that their total sales for the period from September to October 2018/19 were 50% higher than in 2020/2021. We found an increase of more than
But for all types of Japanese sports betting, a key factor is the evolution of easy-to-use, low-stakes gambling apps and software that allow you to watch races in high definition on your mobile phone throughout the day. The horse racing industry was something of a pioneer. Even before Covid, one of the most popular apps collated footage from multiple tracks across the country to allow Japanese employees to place bets of as little as ¥100 on impending races at any point during the working day. We’ve created a situation where it can be done covertly. The boat racing industry has replicated this, but with much more attractive advertising.
Both industries show a broader shift in how we consume entertainment as competition for eyeballs increases and our attention spans shorten. For decades, Japan’s informal gambling giant has been vertical pinball his game pachinko. Players will have to invest a lot of time to achieve substantial payouts. There are fewer and fewer Japanese who are ready to make investments.
Over the years, live audiences for horse and boat races have similarly dwindled. Working from home and “nesting” have made that coffee break a permanent state.
But what happens next? Japan has not recovered from the pandemic as some predicted. Bars, restaurants, and more or less all services covered by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s Tier 3 Service Index are conceptually back to normal, although many are at subdued levels. People seem to be choosing to nest, even though the restrictions are gone. One theory, however, is that the government continues to recommend that people wear masks indoors.
On Friday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida paved the way for lifting recommendations for masks from this spring. Many Japanese will continue to wear them, but a subconscious change may come soon. The big bet for the boat racing industry and its star-studded advertising campaign is whether the stakes will last.
leo.lewis@ft.com
[ad_2]
Source link
