Shohei Ohtani, a unique, two-way superstar, signed a $700 million, heavily deferred contract with the Dodgers last winter.
What followed on the field was a dream for the Dodgers and their fans: Major League Baseball’s first 50-50 season, a National League MVP Award and a World Series championship.
What followed off the field was a Dodgers owner’s dream: According to SponsorUnited, a company that tracks marketing partnerships, the club added over $70 million solely in new sponsorship revenue — not over the length of the contracts, but just in ’24.
Ads behind the plate during Dodgers games were sold to Asia-based companies, taking advantage of a new and enormous market (Japan alone has a population of 124.5 million, for starters).
Even Dodgers opponents fielded calls from Japanese companies seeking ad space behind the plate for Dodgers road games.
The Dodgers, who already had robust attendance, drew more than 100,000 fans than the year prior. Ohtani led the majors in jersey sales for a second straight season.
The consensus from the industry is Ohtani, despite the eye-popping contract, will pay for himself simply by showing up with the world’s eyes on him.
His play is merely a bonus.
“Shohei is bringing an entire country with him,” said Bob Lynch, CEO of SponsorUnited.
Juan Soto, a unique, slugging superstar, is expected to sign a contract in the same financial ballpark as Ohtani in the coming days.
The consensus from the industry, according to several inside and outside the game, is he also can pay for it — but only through performance.
If the Dodgers are maximizing Ohtani’s revenue streams all year round, Soto would have to maximize revenues in October, which is when real money gets made.
“If they’re winning consistently, [the Soto contract] can pay for itself,” said Dennis Mannion, a former president and CEO of the Dodgers.
For Soto, who has been a pillar of consistency on the field, presenting a risk is out of character. Since his debut in 2018, Soto ranks sixth in baseball in games played.
He rarely misses time, and he rarely misses pitches: In his worst statistical season in 2022, he posted an .853 OPS that was 47 percent better than the average hitter. He is a free agent who is unusually young and does not have much of an injury history.
He is as close to a home run as a free agent can be — in the non-Ohtani division.
No one can match Ohtani’s money-making power.
“The Ohtani thing is so much of an outlier, it’s crazy,” said one business executive for a National League club.
On the open market, Soto is worth as much as the Yankees or Mets (or Red Sox, Blue Jays or Dodgers) will pay him.
But how much will he return on that investment? The Post canvassed the league, asking executives inside and outside the game, to explore that puzzle — it’s an inexact equation that involves prodding into brand growth and business partnerships and teams’ hopes for plenty of deep October runs.
But how much is Juan Soto worth? is a fun question to ponder.
Soto would present different opportunities to each team he could wind up with, but some more than others.
The Yankees enjoyed a year of Soto, but only saw marginal attendance gains. In terms of sponsorships, SponsorUnited says, the Yankees logged the ninth-highest new revenue increase in MLB from 2023 to 2024.
For one season, the presence of Soto did not radically change the way the Yankees do business.
“They sort of [already] maximize everything they do with their players, in general, through ticketing, hospitality, sponsorships, etcetera,” Lynch said of the Yankees. “By retaining him, that’s not necessarily going to lead to a 10, 20 percent, 50 percent increase in whatever they’re doing from a business-operation standpoint.”
Where Soto made the largest difference in 2024 — to the fans, the club and the business — is how he played on the field.
With maybe the game’s most disciplined hitter in front of maybe the game’s most powerful slugger in Aaron Judge, the Yankees won the AL East and AL pennant before falling to the Dodgers in the World Series.
A deep playoff run, according to many around the league, is where real money is made.
Qualifying for the World Series and racking up additional, nationally televised games with sold-out ballparks in October can fetch upwards of $50 million for a team (specifics depend upon the club and the number of games).
The team that lands Soto will be counting on trips to the Fall Classic.
“The way you can increase your revenue is by winning and having there be more demand than supply,” said David Samson, the former president of the Marlins and now the host of the “Nothing Personal with David Samson” podcast. “And there just are very few teams in that position. Even the Yankees don’t sell out every game. And their TV deal is what their TV deal is. It is not reliant on Soto returning or not returning.”
A long-term deal for Soto would take a 26-year-old into at least his late 30s, when the possibilities for milestones, and the attention they command, would crop up.
After seven seasons, Soto has 201 career home runs.
If he signs for 15 years and averages 30 homers per season, he would reach 651 home runs during the contract, surging into seventh all-time and approaching Willie Mays (660).
Those are the kinds of records Soto could approach, which would incentivize fans to watch. So would the celebrations around inductions into the Hall of Fame and/or Monument Park.
“That would be part of the [business] equation,” a business executive from an American League team said.
For one season of Soto in pinstripes, winning led to higher ratings, a longer season and larger stakes. Winning leads to the expectation of winning, which the Yankees already possess to a degree.
Further expectations can justify price hikes.
“It’s about the sustainability of the base that you have and your ability then to leverage that,” said Mannion, who is now the CEO and President of House of 7, a sports advisory company. “If you do increases, let’s say in your premium areas, suites go up. Club seats go up. Anything else you’ve created premium can go up.”
“There is a halo effect,” said a former business executive with a New York ballclub. “Your season-ticket renewals will be extraordinarily high. Your new sales will be high. … You sell more tickets because people want to have access to the postseason tickets, and season-ticket holders get first crack at that.”
With a long-term deal for Soto, it is possible that a team could see a bump in revenue from its Spanish-language broadcasts that would star a native of the Dominican Republic.
But in terms of in-stadium attendance, the Yankees in Year 1 of Soto did not see a spike that, say, the Cardinals or Royals might by infusing a star on a Hall of Fame trajectory into the everyday lineup.
According to several around the game, a team such as the Mets could benefit a bit more than the Yankees in attendance, ratings, attention and sponsorship opportunities.
“The Mets probably have more room to grow,” the AL executive said.
“I believe that the Mets in this marketplace can continue to establish themselves, and there’s an upside there,” said Joe Favorito, a longtime marketing and business development consultant and lecturer at Columbia University. “I think if you look at it from a global perspective, you put the Yankees with the Dallas Cowboys in terms of: If you walk into any city in the world, people know what the New York Yankees are. I don’t think that is the case for the New York Mets, but it’s going that way.”
The Mets are coming off a surprising and heartwarming run to the NLCS — and a season in which the club sometimes struggled to bring fans to Queens. They drew nearly 250,000 fewer fans in ’24 than in ’23, when they not only didn’t make the playoffs but executed a trade-deadline fire sale.
Under Steve Cohen, the Mets’ ticket-sales and business operations staffs have been encouraged to be as creative as possible. Grimace became part of the 2024 marketing strategy. They surely would enjoy advertising Soto, who would be stolen from their crosstown rivals.
“The Mets have historically been the challenger brand in the New York market,” Lynch said. “And that does lead to more creativity, more [brainstorms of]: How can we be more aggressive? How are we doing different things within the partnership space?
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“… How are we going to make this person the epicenter of everything that we do?”
It helps that Soto has been willing to step up to bat off the field. Marketing experts pointed to the recent Celsius energy drink ad that has generated more engagement than all of Soto’s branded social posts combined over the past year.
With approximately 1.75 million followers on Instagram, X and TikTok combined, the bilingual Soto ranks 14th among MLB athletes, but he is the sixth fastest-growing in terms of a year-to-year increase, according to SponsorUnited.
Soto is an all-time talent with an all-time skill set and brings all-time entertainment to his at-bats, in which even pitches taken for balls become theater.
Star power helps of course, but he lacks the global reach that would ensure the money from a mega-contract would be returned to an owner’s pocket.
It might be — but only one baseball player could walk into his new team with that kind of guarantee.
Which is OK.
“No teams are looking at it that way — you don’t go into a free-agent signing saying, ‘I will only sign this player if he pays for himself,’ ” Samson said, “because you would never sign any players.”
