Shohei Ohtani Is My Favorite Athlete, But Paying Him $700 Million Is Bonkers

I love Shohei Ohtani as a player, but $700 million is way too much money.

That’s twice as much as Jamie Dimon makes! Not only is it the biggest deal in baseball history—over $270 million in addition to the extension Mike Trout signed for the Angels in 2019, and that deal was broken out over 12 years instead of 10. It’s also the biggest deal in sports history, beating out Lionel Messi’s deal with FC Barcelona.

The most money a North American player has ever made in a single season was $60.9 million, which the Bucks’ Damian Lillard will make during the 2025–26 season. Ohtani is going to surpass that by nine million dollars every year for the next nine years.

There has been no other baseball deal like this one. Reports say that the contract puts off payments for a long time, which could make the deal less valuable in real dollars in the future, but the price tag is still $700 million.

Still, on Saturday, we found that there was more to discover. Ohtani shocked everyone by signing a deal in the Los Angeles Dodgers that guaranteed him $700 million over 10 years, with a big chunk of that money being paid after the deal is over.

Many people thought the choice was already made: the best player would go to the best team. The way it happened—with an estimated value of 700 million, which was much higher than anyone expected—gave it the kind of power that goes with Ohtani’s biggest home runs as well as angriest fastballs.

From L.A. to Tokyo, the most famous athlete living, the one who pushed the limits of what was possible like no one else, got a contract that fit his size.

The deal is the biggest in the history of competitive team sports. It’s almost twice as big as the next biggest free agent deal.

It shocked not only baseball fans and sports fans, but everyone in the universe. At a time when something seems possible, Ohtani is the only player who can truly amaze.

It is very rare for a music sensation to have such wide reach across generations and to people in other countries, and Ohtani shares this trait.

The Dodgers definitely want to make even more money with the coming of the Japanese star. They already have one of the most popular teams in Major League Baseball.

People thought Ohtani would sign the biggest deal in MLB history to be a free agent this winter, and he did.

He’s the best two-way player in baseball history—not even Babe Ruth was better at hitting and pitching at the same time. He won’t be ready to pitch in 2024 because he needs surgery on his Tommy John, but he should be very useful at the plate until he returns on the mound in 2025.

Max Scherzer or Justin Verlander both signed deals with the New York Mets that were about $43.3 million, which is 62% more than his average pay of $70 million.

Ohtani’s current pay is almost twice as much as the $42.3 million he made with the Angels over six seasons. It’s also more than what Baltimore and Oakland paid their entire staffs this year.

The Dodgers gave that kind of promise because they think it will be worth it. He’s valuable even if he fails to win the World Series, and not just because he could.

He is a professor of marketing at Emory University in Atlanta who focuses in sports business. “If Ohtani gets promoted right, he’s a globally iconic player,” Lewis said.

The likes of Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, as well as Clayton Kershaw have been given a lot of money by them.

“It might be like something to Formula One, where everyone is watching.” It can be hard for baseball to get national attention, yet he’s the kind of person who draws millions of eyes, and not just from the U.S.”

Over the past few years, the Dodgers have had no problem getting people’s attention. They’ve won the NL West 10 times in the last 11 years as well as the World Series in 2020.

In 2017, they had the best attendance in baseball history, with more than 47,000 people per game.