San Francisco Frontiers - Sumo walks 'tightrope' with first overseas events in 20 years

The sport will hold exhibition tournaments in London this October and in Paris in June next year, the first time the Japan Sumo Association has been abroad since Las Vegas in 2005.

Sports such as football, baseball and American football play domestic games overseas in a bid to gain new fans in emerging markets.

John Gunning, a former amateur sumo wrestler who commentates on the sport in English on Japanese television, says its centuries-old history and traditions make it unique.

"It's always a tightrope," he told AFP.

"If you start turning sumo into just a pure sport, you start losing a lot of the things that make it attractive or the whole reason that it exists in the first place.

"There's always the push and pull that sumo wants to continue the traditions but also try and keep adjusting and fitting into a 21st century sporting and business landscape."

Japan Sumo Association chairman Hakkaku, who goes by one name, has said it is "important to show our sport to the world", telling reporters that "our traditional culture has been recognised".

European promoters appear keen to make overseas events a regular fixture.

David Rothschild, promoter and executive producer for Paris event organisers AEG, said "the idea would be to have sumo going to one country or another in the world once per year".

- 'Gold dust' -

Gunning says there has been a surge in interest in sumo outside Japan in the last 6-7 years, especially people who got hooked on the sport from afar during Covid lockdowns around the world.

Sumo chiefs have made an effort to reach out to foreign sumo fans in recent years, in 2022 launching the Sumo Prime Time YouTube channel, which has 71,000 subscribers.

There is also more language assistance in stadiums in Japan for visitors.

Tickets for regular tournaments in Japan are "like gold dust", according to Gunning, who said many are snapped up by tourists who are visiting the country in record numbers.

The sumo-themed drama series "Sanctuary" was released on Netflix in 2023.

Gunning believes the trips to London and Paris are "pretty much automatically guaranteed" to be a success.

The events are a result of public demand from overseas audiences and "not a cash grab", he said.

The JSA organised their first overseas sumo exhibition in the Soviet Union in 1965 and have visited a diverse range of countries since.

The five-day tournament at London's Royal Albert Hall will be the second time they have staged an event there.

The two-day Paris tournament will be the city's third -- the first since 1995 -- and will take place at the venue that hosted gymnastics and basketball at last year's Olympics.

- 'Completely different' -

Sumo holds six regular 15-day "honbasho" tournaments in Japan each year, three in Tokyo and one each in Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka.

When they are not competing, training, resting or performing in ceremonies, wrestlers take part in exhibition tours around Japan.

These domestic tours can last for almost a month at a time, and sumo journalist Shoko Sato thinks some will be scrapped to make way for future overseas trips.

"Overseas exhibitions would only happen about twice a year, if that, so I don't think anyone in Japan would be dissatisfied if that meant not having a domestic exhibition," she said.

Sato has covered sumo events in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Mongolia, and said the atmosphere at overseas exhibitions is "completely different".

"It's a bit more like entertainment," she said.

"It's not a serious competition but more like introducing sumo to people in an entertaining way."

A.Smith--SFF