{"id":57543,"date":"2026-07-13T13:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T13:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/57543\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T13:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T13:32:11","slug":"inside-the-shohei-ohtani-economy-driving-an-auction-for-his-cleats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/57543\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Shohei Ohtani Economy driving an auction for his cleats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How much would you pay for a pair of shoes? Someone else\u2019s shoes, I mean.<\/p>\n

Would you pay $7,000 for a chair on which Taylor Swift<\/a> sat in a basketball arena \u2014 for an NBA playoff game, not for her wedding? Someone did.<\/p>\n

There was one Swift chair up for bid. The Dodgers<\/a> gave away 52,000 trading cards<\/a> as part of a promotion for the Japanese animated series \u201cOne Piece\u201d this month, and the current asking prices for one of those cards on eBay range from $784 to $15,656. Even at the low end … strike that, there is no apparent low end to the collectibles market these days.<\/p>\n

Now add Shohei Ohtani<\/a> to the mix. A pair of his cleats hit the auction block Monday, hyped by the promoter as \u201cone of the most significant baseball artifacts ever\u201d and \u201cthe greatest baseball footwear ever made available\u201d and \u201cthe most culturally significant footwear ever worn on Japanese soil.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this case, the adjectives are more than breathless. Ohtani is the best player in baseball, the favorite to win his fifth most valuable player award in six years, an international tourist attraction, and a global pitchman making an estimated $125 million in sponsorships and endorsements this year.<\/p>\n

So, the footwear: These are the cleats Ohtani wore when the Dodgers opened the 2025 season<\/a> in Japan, decorated with art of his world-famous dog Decoy and signed by Ohtani with Asian kanji characters rather than English letters.<\/p>\n

The cleats were purchased last year by Take to the Universe<\/a> (TTU), a Japanese company that distributes beauty and wellness products in Japan and throughout Asia. State records show the company registered a subsidiary in Los Angeles two months ago.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The cleats Shohei Ohtani wore during the Dodgers\u2019 2025 season opener in Japan are on the auction block.<\/p>\n

(The Realist)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought, hey, we could actually use this to market our company and enter into the U.S. market,\u201d said Ryoji Iguchi, chief executive of the subsidiary. Iguchi declined to say how much TTU paid for the cleats.<\/p>\n

For a Japanese company to leverage Ohtani and the Dodgers to introduce itself to an American audience is nothing new \u2014 not just for tangible consumer goods, but also for animated characters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You wouldn\u2019t actually go into a store and ask for a TTU product, though. You eventually might go into a store and ask for a beauty product made by another company. TTU would just get it there.<\/p>\n

So how does selling a pair of cleats create brand awareness for a brand consumers would not even know?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis interview,\u201d Iguchi said.<\/p>\n

The Ohtani Economy<\/a> strikes again: You don\u2019t know us, but we\u2019re coming to America, we want to help you sell your wares \u2014 and we\u2019re selling Ohtani\u2019s cleats!<\/p>\n

The sale was arranged by Scott Keeney, founder of the Realest<\/a>, a Los Angeles-based enterprise specializing in sports and entertainment memorabilia.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The cleats Shohei Ohtani wore during the Dodgers\u2019 season opener in Japan in 2025 are on the auction block.<\/p>\n

(The Realist)<\/p>\n

Keeney talks about the \u201cmuseum-grade\u201d and \u201cinvestment-grade\u201d quality of the cleats. You might find a trading card marketed as one of one, but someone could make another. In this case, no one can make another pair of cleats worn by Ohtani on that particular day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s no different than art, where you\u2019re seeing paintings selling for tens, hundreds of millions of dollars,\u201d Keeney said. \u201cThe top grails are in a category of their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s what the ultra, the top 0.0001% want, and they appreciate faster than anything else in the category.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how much might the Ohtani cleats command, given the combination of sport and celebrity?<\/p>\n

Kobe Bryant\u2019s sneakers from the game in which he tore his Achilles tendon \u2014 and hit two free throws before he left the court \u2014 fetched $660,000. Michael Jordan\u2019s \u201cFlu Game\u201d shoes sold for $1.4 million. Kanye West wore \u201cAir Yeezys\u201d to the Grammys, and the pair sold for $1.8 million.<\/p>\n

The ball Ohtani hit for his 50th home run in his 50-50 season: $4.4 million. And, speaking of holy grails: Judy Garland\u2019s ruby slippers from \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d fetched $32.5 million.<\/p>\n

I cannot afford that, in this lifetime or any other. Perhaps you can. If you cannot, the Realest is offering<\/a> this free-to-enter contest: Guess the sale price of the Ohtani cleats and, if you come closest to the actual sale price, you win 1% of the price. In the event of a tie, the first submission wins.<\/p>\n

The cash would be nice, because this is just a pair of someone else\u2019s worn shoes. But, since everything else Ohtani does seems to be unprecedented, this auction just might be too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How much would you pay for a pair of shoes? Someone else\u2019s shoes, I mean. Would you pay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[37666,37675,2418,191,189,188,2158,190,37667,5688,37668,37671,37670,37673,37669,2536,37672,37674,222],"class_list":["post-57543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-cleat","tag-cleat-ohtani","tag-dodgers","tag-economy","tag-economy-of-japan","tag-japans-economy","tag-japanese-company","tag-japanese-economy","tag-ohtani","tag-one-piece","tag-pair","tag-ryoji-iguchi","tag-scott-keeney","tag-shoe","tag-shohei-ohtani-economy","tag-sport","tag-trading-card","tag-ttu","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}