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The story
Regarding plans for a new stadium for J2 club Blaublitz Akita, Akita Governor Kenta Suzuki stated on the 15th that “we are not considering public financial support” even if the club’s management runs into difficulty. Public funding for the new stadium is conditional on the club first raising roughly 500 million yen in private funds — effectively putting the club on notice about its finances going forward as well. The remark came in response to a question during a prefectural assembly session about what would happen if the fundraising plan didn’t go as scheduled. On 5channel, discussion ranged widely — from opinions for and against using tax money to build a stadium at all, to concerns about the financial plan citing real examples of arenas elsewhere running deficits.
9/16 (Wed) 10:00 — Asahi Shimbun
A new stadium is planned as the home base for J2 soccer club Blaublitz Akita. Akita Governor Kenta Suzuki said on the 15th that if the club running it were to find it difficult to continue operating, “we are not considering public financial support.” Public funding for the new stadium’s construction is conditional on the club raising about 500 million yen in private funds — effectively a warning shot regarding its management going forward.
During general questions in the prefectural assembly, assembly member Yuko Sakurada pressed Governor Suzuki for his views on scenarios such as the club failing to raise its target amount of private funding.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Keep at it hard, Governor and Mayor both.
Local governments are basically obligated to spend tax money on soccer, right? 😩
It's like people who want to open restaurants demanding that the prefecture or city hand them a shop paid for with taxes!
If you need a venue to make your own money, build it yourself! If you can't, rent one that already exists! Don't use tax money to pay the usage fee!
Pay stadium usage fees and everything else out of your own pocket properly — and if there's still profit left after that, take your salary then.
Why do we have to feed you soccer players with our taxes?
【Soccer players are the enemy of the Japanese people】
Now I totally get why people say that.
I'm starting to hate soccer more and more.
They said it's the kind of ratio that would bankrupt a normal company within a year.
Instead of paying stadium usage fees with citizens' taxes, pay them yourselves properly, and keep player salaries within what you actually earn.
Why do we have to support soccer players with tax money?
But it'll spread from Akita to the whole country.
Did he flip because the tide turned against him?
He's desperate not to lose the next election.
Well, once it blew up this big, switching stance was the only option.
He probably never expected the Akita mayor's videos to rack up millions of views one after another and turn the stadium issue into this big a topic.
Well, Hiroshima's was a failure, so…
Maybe something like Okayama Muscat Stadium?
He's saying they'll build the stadium as long as the club brings 500 million yen, so that makes him pro-stadium, doesn't it?
No, that's not it.
Once the 500 million is raised, that's only enough to start the design phase.
The club promised to raise the design costs itself.
So design only begins once the 500 million is collected within this year.
In other words, nothing moves forward until that 500 million is in hand.
And in the end, they need to raise 5 billion yen total before the stadium can actually be built.
Maintenance and operating costs run about 500 million yen a year.
Expected revenue is roughly 150 million yen, meaning around 350 million yen a year will have to come out of taxes.
The current prefectural gymnasium's maintenance and operating costs are only about 48 million yen a year. The prefecture's outlay is projected to be more than 8 times that.
https://news.ntv.co.jp/n/abs/category/economy/ab82885f462f3b47f9a6474a5399a75919
That gymnasium is a facility that merges a "gym and sports training center," though.
It's the only venue in Akita City where arena concerts can be held,
so the arena can operate around 250 days a year.
That's a lie — arenas all over Japan are hugely profitable thanks to B.League games and all sorts of events.
A B.League fan told me so.
Hitachi's one of the elite 'Big Three of Marunouchi' companies, so it's exempt.
Even if the utilization rate is high from citizen use, it doesn't mean much —
it doesn't translate into decent usage-fee revenue.
Kagawa's arena is running a deficit even at 90% utilization,
and Saga's arena is in the red too.
• Kagawa Arena
The wall between public construction and private operation blocks a 'profitable arena' — deficit even with 90% utilization, one year after opening in Kagawa
https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOCC19AZL0Z10C26A2000000/
It has a structural deficit where usage-fee revenue can't cover the costs of facility maintenance and management.
• Saga Arena
https://www.pref.saga.lg.jp/kiji003117526/3_117526_377679_up_qvusqmrr.pdf
Don't you get that what's being questioned here is public value?
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Akita City’s new stadium plan follows a staged structure: Blaublitz Akita must first raise about 500 million yen in private funds as a precondition for public funding, and only once the design costs are secured does full-scale fundraising (reportedly totaling around 5 billion yen) get underway. The thread also brought up real examples of publicly built arenas in Kagawa and Saga, where even high utilization rates haven’t been enough to cover maintenance costs through usage fees alone, leaving local governments to keep shouldering the difference. The debate extends beyond simply “should tax money be used to build a stadium” to the longer-term question of who keeps paying the operating costs after it’s built. The governor’s remarks can be read as a preemptive move to avoid setting a precedent where local government bails out the club if it fails to raise enough funds. Comments mocking the region itself based on demographics, along with baseless personal attacks on the governor or players, have been excluded from this piece.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5channel (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[J.League] New Soccer Stadium — “Not Considering Public Financial Support” If Club Can’t Continue, Says Akita Governor.”
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