Rakuten, a professional baseball team, launched a personal fan club for pitcher Masahiro Tanaka, who returned from the major leagues for the first time in eight years, and started applying for membership on the 25th. 1000 including the VIP course with an annual membership fee of 1.8 million yen The membership limit for more than 4 people was sold out in about 4 hours.
This fan club was named "Mah-kun Club" and started accepting membership on the official website of the team after 10 am on the 25th.
There are two types of fan clubs, a VIP course with an annual membership fee of 18,000 yen limited to 1000 people and a VIP course with an annual membership fee of 1.8 million yen limited to 10 people, but the VIP course is sold out in 14 minutes from the start of reception. The 18,000 yen course was full before 2:30 pm.
In each course, you can get various goods related to Pitcher Tanaka, and even if the tickets for the game that Pitcher Tanaka pitches are sold out, you can buy up to 2 seats that are not normally sold on the day of the game. The VIP course also comes with a ticket worth 500,000 yen that allows up to 5 people to watch the game in special seats.
The team manager commented, "Honestly, the price of 1.8 million yen was courageous, but I was surprised at the speed sold out. We will provide services that make you think it was cheap."
Through the team, pitcher Tanaka commented, "While it is difficult to interact directly with the fans, I am looking forward to interacting with them through the fan club."
Rakuten has established an individual fan club for the first time as a player since the late Senichi Hoshino, who led the team to the number one position in Japan.