Over the years, The Pokémon Company has collaborated in sports-related activities with a variety of partners, including professional baseball teams and the Japan Sumo Association. lWe believe an affinity exists between Pokémon and sports, and this led us to launch the “Pokémon Kids Sports Project”: a program aimed at making children’s enjoyment of sports greater through connections with Pokémon, and their enjoyment of Pokémon greater through connections with sports.  

2021 : Examples of initiatives with the Japan Sumo Association

At Pokémon, we are well aware that young children spend lots of time indoors playing our games and watching our anime. As they grow older, though, they begin to spend more time away from home, whether attending tutorial lessons after school or playing extracurricular sports like soccer and baseball. This set us to pondering how we might enhance their enjoyment of their sports activities through connections with Pokémon, and simultaneously enhance their enjoyment of Pokémon through their involvement in sports.

That’s how we hit upon the idea of the Pokémon Kids Sports Project. By creating fun connections between children’s sports activities and Pokémon, we hoped to contribute to the proliferation of sports and to young people’s enjoyment of Pokémon. In this way, we sought to bring benefits to children, to sports, and to Pokémon.

To begin, we chose to forge collaborative ties between Pokémon and soccer. Even before launching the Pokémon Kids Sports Project, we had worked closely with the Japan Football Association (JFA) to hold various events in association with our “My First Pokémon Project.”*  For example, at locations nationwide we hosted soccer classes for preschool children, with Cinderace, the Striker Pokémon, always on hand to add to the pleasure and excitement. Under the Pokémon Kids Sports Project, we now expand such activities to elementary and older students, and we plan to establish soccer programs for middle- to high-ranking young players. We are also planning to distribute merchandise, bibs and the like featuring Pokémon designs.

*My First Pokémon Project…Creating contact between children and Pokémon by The Pokémon Company

In collaborations relating to tennis, we appointed Sprigatito, the Grass Cat Pokémon, to serve as a special “kids ambassador.” This choice was made because Sprigatito’s distinctive green coloring perfectly matches with the “green dot” tennis balls used by young beginners. Sprigatito was of course on hand for the main event of “Tennis Day” held at Ariake Tennis Park in Tokyo, along with the wildly popular former tennis pro Shuzo Matsuoka. The event was a thrilling experience for attendees of all ages, from young children to young-at-heart adults.

In choosing which Pokémon would fit best as a given sport’s ambassador, we always seek the Pokémon with the greatest affinity based on specific traits and abilities, the roles played by the various Pokémon in our games and anime, and so on. We then engage in lengthy discussions with the people in charge from the sporting side, before arriving at a mutually agreeable choice.

In every case, our prime consideration is how to take best advantage of the chosen Pokémon’s unique traits. With Sprigatito, for example, besides its color affinity with green dot balls, we also factored in how Sprigatito evolves: starting from a leaf, then to a flower bud, and finally to a full-blown flower – a process closely suggestive of the way in which young tennis players evolve from novices to skilled young players. In the case of soccer, our selection of Cinderace as this sport’s ambassador was almost a natural outcome, given Cinderace’s powerful ability to kick a ball of fire at its opponents. What child wouldn’t seek to emulate Cinderace in overpowering the opponent team with a strong kick between the goal posts!

With Pokémon ambassadors an integral part of the fun and excitement of learning and practicing new sports, our aspiration at Pokémon is for budding young players to grow up with memories of the enjoyment they always got from having played their sports together with Pokémon cheering them on.

Of course, at Pokémon we’re not stopping with just soccer and tennis. In the years ahead we plan to expand our support activities to include baseball, swimming and winter sports, too. In the process, we hope to introduce young children to many different Pokémon and what makes each one so special. As a direct link between the nation’s youth and Pokémon, the Pokémon Kids Sports Project will create indelible memories of childhood in the adults of tomorrow.