Rakuten was one of two Japanese Internet companies applying to enter Japanese professional baseball next season after the merger of the Orix BlueWave and the Kintetsu Buffaloes led to a reduction in the number of teams in the Pacific League from six to five.
Rakuten president Hiroshi Mikitani (left) and new team manager Yasushi Tao attend a news conference at a Tokyo hotel on Tuesday after the Internet shopping mall won the right to form a new Pacific League team.
It will be the first entry of a new team, excluding cases of mergers or acquisitions, since the creation of the now-defunct Takahashi Unions in the Pacific League in 1954.
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