Chunichi Sets Attendance Record at Home Finale for 2nd Straight Year — 5ch: ‘Jeering the Top Brass?? lol’

Background and Key Points

In recent years, NPB has shifted from reporting visually-estimated attendance figures to verified actual counts for each team, and Chunichi’s 2,533,782 is the highest figure recorded since that switch. The fact that attendance keeps climbing even as the team struggles in the standings illustrates how results and attendance don’t necessarily move together — the thread was split between an optimistic view (“fans aren’t leaving even when the team’s weak”) and concern that “if newspaper and broadcast numbers don’t rise too, it’s bad for the club overall.” At the final whistle, the Hanshin-DeNA game had ended in a 2-2 draw, drawing attention to the timing of Hanshin’s pennant-clinching magic number. It’s also worth noting that the exchange about Seishiro Sakamoto’s (Chunichi) home run could easily be confused with Hayato Sakamoto (Giants) — who shares the same surname and has been in the news for a slump — since the wording makes it easy to mix the two up if you’re not following the context closely.