With Japanese stars Ichiro and Kazuhiro Sasaki leading the Mariners to the best record in the major leagues, the club has been adopted as Japan's national team.
The participating Japanese radio network is JOLF (Nippon Broadcasting System, Inc.).
All Mariners games are already televised live on Japanese national public broadcaster NHK's satellite channel.
The Japanese language Internet service is available by paid subscription and is a companion product to MLB.com's Game Day audio package of every game played.
The facility is a partnership of MLB Advanced Media, LP (MLBAM), the interactive media and Internet company of Major League Baseball, and Dentsu, Inc., the world's largest advertising company in terms of billings, and the Nippon Broadcasting Corporation's radio network.
The transmission will be streamed live on MLB.com, the official MLB Web site, beginning with the Mariners-Toronto Blue Jays game on August 7.
Dentsu, the exclusive broadcast rightsholder of Major League Baseball in Japan since 1989, sublicenses the radio broadcast rights to JOLF.
JOLF currently provides some live radio coverage in Japan of the Mariners, as well as game updates and roundtable discussions between announcers at SAFECO Field in Seattle and sports analysts in Tokyo.
MLB.com, which currently manages a Seattle Mariners website in Japanese, will provide log-in pages, FAQ's (frequently asked questions) and customer support in Japanese.
With this service, MLB.com now offers games in four languages; English, Spanish, French and Japanese.
The Japanese language audio subscription can be accessed at http://www.mlb.com/japan for 1800 yen ($14.95) for the rest of the season.
Subscribers will also have access to MLB.com's Game Day audio webcasts of every game played in English, as well as those sent in Spanish and French.
Reuters
