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The story
Oita Prefecture has revised its long-standing practice of fully waiving usage fees for the dome that serves as the home stadium of J-League club Oita Trinita, and it has emerged that under a new standard the waived amount will drop from roughly ¥102.5 million to about ¥88.7 million. The dome is a multi-purpose facility built for the 2002 Japan-Korea World Cup, and for years its usage fee has effectively been zero. On 5ch, the review sparked debate over how far public funding for sports facilities is justified amid tight local finances, with some comparing it to stadium construction costs for other sports.
OBS News
September 16
2026
Source: newsdig.tbs.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
so I guess eventually nobody's gonna use this place at all
What kind of math has them turning a profit?
play on a riverbank instead
Hope they give it their all with the new stadium
It's stuck out in the mountains, who's even supposed to go there?
That's beside the point
if they don't like it, they can build their own stadium with their own money
it's taxpayer money after all, and if this keeps up, national subsidies for renovation costs will get cut too, and the bill will naturally land on the club as well
Over ¥2 billion waived in total, all tax money
and upkeep runs about ¥600 million a year on top of that, so that's ¥15 billion in taxes over 25 years
Well, it's not like soccer asked for this to be built — it's a track-and-field stadium
Kimitsu City's whole budget is ¥35.1 billion, and they're pouring ¥31.9 billion into a farm team? Makes no sense lol
and interest payments alone are something like ¥6.9 billion lol
Then they shouldn't have bid for it in the first place
Even the Hanshin Tigers' farm-team ballpark only cost about ¥12 billion, so why is Lotte covering 60% AND Kimitsu City footing ¥32 billion on top of that?
Even factoring in inflation, the numbers make no sense at all
Are they switching to artificial turf? What events would they even use it for?
If you're gonna run the 'Tax League' (derisive nickname for the J-League, mocking its reliance on public subsidies), leaving the roof open is the only option — natural grass has issues otherwise
A consumption tax cut would only make that worse
Even when they build these huge white-elephant facilities relying on national subsidies, just the upkeep alone puts a massive strain on local finances
and that's not just soccer stadiums either
a negative legacy of the 2002 Japan-Korea World Cup
The prefecture went after the World Cup first and set up Trinita afterward
well, Trinita's fairly popular within the prefecture, and since the Heat Devils (a now-defunct local basketball team) folded, there's some motivation to keep the buzz going
Wait, is Chiba Lotte building their stadium with tax money too?
That's dumb
the Carp's stadium is tax money too
but baseball isn't the 'Tax League'
Baseball gets around 72 home games a season
but soccer can manage maybe 20 home games at most
for J2 league play it's 19 home games, plus a handful more for cup matches
Where could they possibly have built it to actually break even?
Whoever raised this with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism really kicked off this whole 'Tax League' backlash
Fair point. The national government probably had this 'Tax League' issue on its radar internally all along too
since they're officially saying it's wrong, that it's an inappropriate use of tax money
New stadium = soccer-only stadium
basically the goal is to shut out other sports and monopolize the tax money
that's the 'Tax League' playbook right there
Neither the national government nor local governments have any money left anymore
the J-League's business model belongs to the era when Japan's economy was growing nonstop — it's outdated
A 'counterattack' against a club the prefecture itself set up? What's that even supposed to mean?
So you're saying it's fine for them to use it for free?
That was the prefecture's own call
go complain about Chiba Lotte too then, making a farm team cost ¥32 billion Re: #15
Background and Key Points of the Discussion
The dome that serves as Oita Trinita’s home ground is a multi-purpose track-and-field facility that Oita Prefecture built ahead of hosting the 2002 Japan-Korea World Cup — from the start it was constructed as a general-purpose facility rather than a soccer-only venue. This latest review compresses the waived amount from roughly ¥102.5 million to about ¥88.7 million, replacing a blanket full waiver with partial cost-sharing under new standards. Opinions in the thread diverged over whether waiving public-facility usage fees counts as reasonable “tax-funded club support,” with some commenters comparing it to Kimitsu City’s contribution toward the Chiba Lotte Marines’ new stadium and the cost of the Hanshin Tigers’ farm-team facility. However, those figures for other clubs came from posts within the thread rather than the source article, and have not been independently verified. The term “Tax League” is a recurring piece of slang mocking J-League clubs’ reliance on public funding, and it’s worth noting this isn’t an issue unique to this case.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Oita Prefecture] J-League’s Oita Trinita Dome Usage Fee ‘Full Waiver’ Reviewed — New Standard Cuts Waived Amount from Approx. ¥102.5 Million to Approx. ¥88.7 Million.”
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