What the newspapers in Japan are saying about Celtic

My report on coverage in the Japanese major newspapers in this morning’s news related to Celtic’s winning league title on Sunday afternoon…

As mentioned in my previous article, many Japanese media outlets reported the news that Celtic won the league title on the Internet immediately after the game. However, as you know, the readers of Internet news and the ones of conventional newspapers published on printed paper are completely different, so it was necessary to check the printed newspapers in order to fully appreciate the coverage status of this Celtic news in Japan.

This time, I bought eight major newspapers in Japan (four general newspapers and four sports newspapers) this morning to investigated their coverage of Celtic winning the Scottish Premiership. I can report the result as follows.

The Celtic coverage is as follows…

4 newspapers (5 pages in total) cover Celtic, so let’s look at the coverage!

The first newspaper is one of the three most majoring most important newspapers in Japan “The Mainichi Shimbun”. The Celtic news is featured somewhere on this page, so look for it below…

Did you find it? This is it closer up…

The topics written here are as follows.

・Celtic won the league title.

・Kyogo Furuhashi scored his 30th goal this season.

The second newspaper is the “Nihon Keizai Shimbun” which has the most subscribers in Japan. The news is featured somewhere on this page, so look for it.

Did you find it? This is it…

The topics written here are as follows.

・Celtic won the league title.

・Kyogo Furuhashi scored his 30th goal this season.

・Appreciation for encouragement from his teammates that Kyogo Furuhashi talked about in interviews in the past, etc.

The third newspaper is the local one “Kobe Shimbun” which Kyogo Furuhashi and Yuki Kobayashi come from. This newspaper has the most subscribers in Hyogo Prefecture, where Kobe is located. The news is featured somewhere on this page, so look for it.

Did you find it? That’s it…

The topics written here are as follows.

・Celtic won the league title.

・Kyogo Furuhashi scored his 30th goal this season.

・The improvement of his own mental and skills has led to his current success, etc.

The fourth is a sports newspaper ‘NIKKAN SPORTS’. The news is featured somewhere on this page, so look for it…

Did you spot it? That’s it right here…

The topics written here are as follows.

・Celtic won the league title.

・Reo Hatate is the ‘winning contractor’ not only in Japan but also at Celtic.

・Kyogo Furuhashi becoming the top scorer in the league at Celtic and as a Japanese player his frustration at not being called up to Japanese national team.

In this newspaper, news about Celtic is actually featured on another page too. That’s this. Of course you found it right away, didn’t you?

A closer look…

The newspaper that are basically composed of white and black are coloured with green and white. It’s rare for football news to be covered so much. The topics written here are as follows.

・Celtic won the league title.

・Daizen Maeda created advantage situation for the team, and Kyogo Furuhashi scored with Reo Hatate’s assist.

・Yuki Kobayashi played from start and contributed to winning.

・Tomoki Iwata played from the middle of the second half.

・Kyogo Furuhashi scored a total of 50 goals in two seasons.

・Ange Postecoglou added Japanese players to Celtic and made it function as an important part of the team.

・The history of Celtic

・History between Celtic and Japanese players (Koki Mizuno and Shunsuke Nakamura)

・Elements that allow Japanese players to play a lot at Celtic (relaxation of visa issuance standards)

・Celtic’s current team squad and formation

・Expectations for Celtic’s success at next UCL

That’s my report on the coverage status for Celtic in the above for articles in some of the leading newspapers in Japan. The following is my qualitative analysis of the effect these have on Celtic in Japan market based on these results, so if you are interested, please read the following….

Currently, the circulation of paper-based newspapers in Japan is decreasing year by year as it is in Scotland. It means that more and more people acquire information on the internet, and in recent years, companies that publish newspapers have also shifted from paper-based one to online service in response to changes in demand. If I strictly analyse local newspapers and sports newspapers, there are also exceptions to this. However, there is no doubt that the overall market size of the newspaper industry is shrinking.

But if I analyse these in detail for each target such as age, I can see the effect that may bring to Celtic. According to a Government survey in 2022, more than 50% of people over the age of 60 get information from paper-based newspapers. The younger the age, the less the demand for paper-based newspapers, such as about 30% for those in their 50s and less than 10% for those in their 40s or younger. In fact, about 90% of people under the age of 40 get information from the internet.

Therefore, the effect of information published in these newspapers is limited only for reading in their 50s and older. However, I guess this will be a good opportunity for Japanese people to get to know Celtic. The most popular sports in Japan is still baseball, and most of the news featured in paper-based newspapers is baseball.

So, for people over the age of 50 who prefer paper-based newspapers, there are very few opportunities to be interested in football on a daily basis. I don’t know the age group of Celtic fans in Japan strictly, but I think it’s probably relatively young people who is interested in football. I hope that people over the age of 50 will know this Celtic news, which will lead to Celtic gaining new fans.

For example, if they have grandchildren, they may talk about Celtic to their grandchildren at their house. Since they may use Celtic news as a communication tool with children and grandchildren, I think the effect on long-term fan acquisition can be expected. With this news, I expect Celtic to have more fans in Japan in 10 years.

Anyway, there is no doubt that Japanese are proud of the success of Japanese players at Celtic. And I’m sure that players family and friends are also proud of them after hearing the news. I also hope that by players seeing the news, they will re-recognise how wonderful their own achievements at Celtic are, which will lead to improvement of their joy and motivation as players.

Yatao

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Matthew Marr is Author, The Bould Bhoys – Glory To Their Name which is out now on hardback and also on Amazon Kindle, links for both below.

130 years ago today, Celtic won the Scottish League for the first time…@hailhailhistory in his debut @CelticFC book, The Bould Bhoys – Glory To Their Name, tells the story of that season. Order your copy at https://t.co/ThWbDtOrEA pic.twitter.com/1NGbNht57p

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