The sound of taiko drums fills the air as hundreds of people mill around Odaiba on a cloudy September afternoon. Stalls straight out of a summer matsuri (festival) offer games for kids, and food trucks sit beneath strings of paper lanterns.
Towering above this mini matsuri is the capital’s newest entertainment landmark, Toyota Arena Tokyo.
The arena will host its first B. League professional basketball game in a few hours — a match between defending champions Utsunomiya Brex and Toyota-owned Alvark Tokyo, who call the 10,000-seat venue home. A massive video board hangs above the court, with ribbon-style displays wrapping around the interior. Visitors can catch the action while walking the concourse, which is dotted with concession stands, bars and lounges.
“There were many things you couldn’t do at our old home of Yoyogi National Gymnasium that you can do here,” says Yosuke Hayashi, general manager of the Arena Planning Division. “Instead of just sitting, people can move around, watch from different spots, have a drink — new ways to enjoy the game.”
Toyota Arena Tokyo is the latest addition to an arena-building boom that began a decade ago. Since 2020, nine new venues have opened in the Kanto region, most of them multiuse spaces designed to host sports, concerts and meetings. Even more are planned over the next five years.
“Around 2016, demand for live concerts in Japan was surging, and there weren’t enough venues for them all, especially large ones,” says Tsuyoshi Tamura, president of K-Arena Management, which opened K-Arena Yokohama in 2023.
While COVID-19 briefly halted momentum, the industry has since rebounded. According to a 2024 report by PIA Research Institute, Japan’s live entertainment market surpassed pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2023 and is projected to grow by ¥760 billion by 2030.
Even with rising demand, that’s a lot of arenas. Does Tokyo, with a greater metropolitan population of 41 million, need this many?
“It’s still not enough,” says Kenji Sugizaki, vice president of Live Nation Japan.
Spurred by the B. League’s global ambitions and fueled by a renewed appetite for live music, Greater Tokyo’s entertainment landscape is being transformed — a shift that could reshape not only how people experience events but also how these spaces fit into the urban fabric.
Hayashi’s hopes are high: “We want to provide a new spectator culture and experience.”
Home court advantage
Alvark Tokyo faced a dilemma at the start of the 2020s. The B. League revealed plans to make itself one of the most competitive basketball leagues in the world by the 2026 season. That meant new regulations for venues, from the number of toilets and VIP rooms to minimum capacity requirements of 5,000 people.
“Alvark has long rented arenas, and there simply weren’t venues available that met those requirements,” Toyota Arena Tokyo’s Hayashi says. “So we faced a question: How do we secure an arena that complies with the new rules?”
Within the parent company, the answer became clear: “Let’s build our own.” Using land Toyota owned on Odaiba that once housed the Palette Town shopping center, construction began in 2023.
The B. League’s push served as a catalyst for new arenas nationwide — while exposing how outdated many existing spaces were. In the capital, Alvark Tokyo played in Yoyogi National Gymnasium while Sun Rockers Shibuya used Aoyama Gakuin University Memorial Hall. With awkward sightlines, uncomfortable seats and concessions far from the action, games felt more like high school than professional basketball. (The Sun Rockers will also move to Toyota Arena Tokyo in 2026.)
"With the foundation of the B. League, whose essential goal was to make the sport a major presence in Japan, they thought they needed bigger, better and more professional places to host games,” says Kaz Nagatsuka, a freelance sports journalist who has been covering basketball for two decades.
The new generation of arenas, however, has changed that dynamic. The model often cited — and a partial influence for Toyota Arena Tokyo — is Okinawa Suntory Arena in Naha, which opened in 2021.
“Unlike many others, it was built mainly for basketball. The capacity is not as
big, but it almost looks like an NBA arena,” Nagatsuka says of what he dubs the “pioneer” in this space. This year also saw the arrival of Glion Arena Kobe and IG Arena Nagoya.
Kanto, though, has seen the most activity. Since 2020, the B. League’s standards have led to the openings of Open House Arena Ota in Gunma Prefecture, Yokohama Buntai in Kanagawa Prefecture and LaLa Arena Tokyo Bay in Chiba Prefecture.
“Our arena is sports-forward, however,” Hayashi says. “It has an oval shape for improved sightlines. By contrast, venues like LaLa Arena, IG Arena and Glion prioritize music, with layouts that aren’t ideal for sports.” He compares Toyota Arena Tokyo to the multiuse style common in the United States and Canada.
Nagatsuka agrees, citing Toyota Arena Tokyo's attention to the needs of spectators. "It has suite rooms, terrace seats and nice food."
Like their North American counterparts, flexibility is key. With only about 30 home games a year, Toyota Arena Tokyo must fill the rest of its calendar with concerts, performances and corporate events.
“Sports and music call for different acoustic qualities. We didn’t tune purely for sports,” Hayashi says, noting that the concert stage is permanently housed in the arena, allowing for immediate assembly after games.
“Trusses for lighting and sound are permanently installed,” he adds. “We lower them, touring crews attach gear, then we raise them — no half day or full day of rigging from scratch. That efficiency matters.”
Toyota Arena Tokyo’s musical potential will be tested this weekend, when pop-rock act Official Hige Dandism performs the venue’s first-ever concerts. Hayashi says that demand for live shows is already strong, with all 2025 dates booked and 2026 filling fast.
“We’re learning that arena demand is higher than we thought,” he says.
Sonic boom
When Kenji Sugizaki joined concert production company Live Nation Japan a decade ago, he found booking arenas difficult. The extremes weren’t the problem. Big names such as Coldplay and Lady Gaga could easily fill a dome, while fledgling performers were perfect for the club circuit. Now vice president of the company, he says the challenge is the middle tier: artists popular enough to draw thousands but not sell out a stadium.
To help, Live Nation Japan joined the association for Ariake Arena, a venue built for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and operated by a Dentsu-led consortium. Sugizaki says the company’s first concert there was Billie Eilish in 2022, followed by Harry Styles, Backstreet Boys and Post Malone.
While sports may have sparked the arena boom, live music helps sustain it.
“One key reason is the spread of social media — especially Instagram — which ties consumer behavior to ‘going out’ and ‘experiencing things,’” says music journalist Tomonori Shiba. The rise of streaming and YouTube, he adds, has made listening inexpensive, increasing the value of physically being there.
In the decade prior, concert organizers — like the basketball clubs — often struggled to find venues.
“Most public gymnasiums weren’t designed for concerts,” he says. “They lacked loading access for trucks, backstage routes and sufficient rigging capacity for lighting.”
In 2019, Japan Top League and All Japan Concert & Live Entertainment Promoter’s Conference created the Entertainment Committee for Stadium Arena to encourage collaboration between live entertainment and sports. The group’s influence can be seen in today’s developments.
Government agencies have also played a role, from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry issuing venue guidebooks to cities taking on entertainment hub projects themselves.
A neighborly boost
In 2017, Yokohama put a large plot of land alongside the Katabira River in Minato Mirai up for sale — with one condition: It had to become an entertainment hub.
Real estate firm Ken Corporation landed the bid and decided to make music the centerpiece, drawing on its history of running smaller Shibuya venues such as Spotify O-East.
“Since we were coming from the live house business, we wanted to focus on sound quality,” says K-Arena’s Tamura, who oversaw the project’s crown jewel K-Arena Yokohama. “If we were going to build something, it had to be a venue dedicated purely to music.”
The nine-story, 20,033-seat arena bills itself as “the world’s first arena built for live music performances.” Every seat faces the stage, and its acoustics have been widely praised. The venue also has its own in-house sound system and stage‚ a feature that has proved popular with artists and crews, though Sugizaki says it may be “a little too big.”
In less than two years, K-Arena has become a success story. According to Pollstar, it sold the most tickets of any arena in the world in 2025’s third quarter, moving over 1.42 million — ahead of Movistar Arena Madrid (17,435 capacity) and The Sphere in Las Vegas (20,000 capacity).
Its achievements reflect a broader trend: using entertainment spaces for urban redevelopment. Over the past five years, Yokohama has emerged as the regional leader in live venues. Alongside K-Arena, it hosts Pia Arena MM (12,141 capacity) and Yokohama Buntai (approx. 5,000 capacity), as well as smaller sites such as KT Zepp Yokohama and Billboard Live Yokohama.
“Historically, Yokohama has always been a cultural gateway,” Tamura says. “Since the port opened, it was home to foreign residents, jazz culture and imported Western trends like hotels, ice cream and pasta.”
Now, using arenas, it is becoming a 21st-century cultural hub. Tamura says data show that 85% of visitors to K-Arena come from outside surrounding Kanagawa Prefecture. He also points to rising hotel occupancy and spending at nearby restaurants, part of the Music Terrace development.
“Many are staying overnight and spending money locally,” he says. “The economic benefit for Yokohama is substantial.”
This strategy of building larger entertainment districts is becoming the norm. LaLa Arena in Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, is connected to a massive shopping mall, while Hayashi expects the anticipated 1.5 million annual visitors to Toyota Arena Tokyo to explore Odaiba’s offerings.
Future arenas are expected to follow suit, including the Kawasaki New! Arena City Project (15,000 capacity) and a new development in Chiba’s Makuhari neighborhood.
Journalist Shiba acknowledges that Japan could eventually face an oversupply of arenas — a concern that feels especially relevant in a country with an aging population. “If that happens,” he says, “competition will depend on venue quality — sound, convenience, accessibility.”
Live Nation’s Sugizaki still sees opportunity, despite the shrinking youth market.
“Streaming services have made older songs accessible again. People in their 40s, 50s and 60s are revisiting classic tracks, creating an environment where older artists can make comebacks, he says. “There’s a real possibility to grow the market here. In the next five to 10 years, many more arenas will be built. There’s an opportunity to make the industry better.”
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.