Of course we don't know for sure Makabe's motivation in inviting such or such skater, but I think that we have very good clues of tangible motivations, without recurring to political conspiracies and speculations out of very thin likelihood. Money is a very powerful argument, and here, how is money? Fantasy on Ice is a rather expensive show, and he can't count on the heavy push of JSF on sponsors which Hyoen seems to have benefited of; he was doing very well as long as Yuzuru Hanyu was skating in Fantasy on Ice, because he could sell out large venues at nominal price (without discount). Last year, a good number of Tour B tickets were already sold when it was known for sure that Yuzuru Hanyu wouldn't be there? And there was the money from Tour A, in which Yuzuru Hanyu participated, and that was sold out.
There is/was no
heavy push. There was one sponsor with JSF-ties out of three sponsors overall in 2019 and one sponsor out of four in 2021, neither of which were the respective production’s main funder. Since 2019 most of the financial burden is shouldered by Dai’s personal sponsors (above all SkyCourt – a sponsor he acquired through his personal connections with Miwa Nishida), who reinvest some of the revenue he generates for them. And I wouldn’t be surprised, if (part of) the revenue from
Ice Explosion and now
Kassouya was/is also reinvested in
Hyoen (even though this is only speculation on my part).
Meanwhile, Makabe’s shows
Dreams on Ice and
Medalists on Ice (the official JNationals gala) are basically co-produced by the JSF and share their sponsors with JSF-organized competitions. And while I do not know, if the federation has ever had a hand in the recruitment of sponsors for
FaoI as well, I wouldn’t be surprised, given Makabe’s close connections with them. Regardless of if he could count on the federation’s support or not, he shouldn’t have had any problem to attract sponsors, while Yuzuru was
FaoI’s main draw (presumably P&G alone did a lot/most of the heavy lifting). However, I agree, without Yuzuru
and without a convincing concept how to keep attracting a big enough audience to cover the production costs, this might become more challenging, which is why he currently seems to be scrambling for ideas how to generate more interest.
To return to the FAOI topic, there are more changes other than the Russian girls on this year's show. It is more heavily focused on the singer compared to the previous years.
I have always said that the conventional ensemble ice show is losing relevancy nowadays, even in Japan. FAOI managed to survive until now because they had Yuzu, but they have to explore to see if this new model works.
I don’t expect the “new” direction as currently advertised to be a particularly big hit, tbh. Not only because inviting Russian skaters is pretty controversial and not as welcomed by many as Makabe might have hoped (based on my sns timelines, I can confirm that more than just a handful of Japanese fans seem to be upset with the decision for the reasons KiraraChin mentioned), but also because he doesn’t seem to have a clear vision where he wants to take
FaoI. What is planned seems to be neither here nor there and just sounds like a slight variation on what the show has always been, peppered with a touch of what
Prince Ice World has been doing with the musical theme for some time now. As for an even bigger focus on music acts… I’d hazard a guess that most figure skating fans don’t want more focus on singers in a classic ensemble ice show (even though it’s nice to see they hired Eliana, who was fantastic in
Hyoen last year!) – they want more skating – while fans of the top invited artists prefer to attend the respective artists’ concerts where they get 1 ½ + hours of their music instead of just a handful of songs. Imo, if there is to be a focus on music artists they need to be integrated into an overarching theme, like what
PIW does with the Broadway theme and what
BIS-F did with the anime theme this year or what
Hyoen does by either commissioning new music specifically composed by a well-known musician to tell a story or by creating an original musical out of a popular music artist’s existing back-catalogue. (Although
Hyoen is of course not a conventional ensemble ice show and therefore maybe not a suitable comparison nor a model for
FaoI to follow.)
I agree with KiraraChin that Makabe relied on Yuzuru for way too long – but also – I’m not sure if at this point any change of direction or even complete overhaul, that does not entirely rely on skating stars (Russian or otherwise), will be able to save
FaoI in the long run, should Yuzuru turn his back on the show for good. Given the oversupply of ice shows in Japan, it’s inevitable that some of them will be weeded out sooner or later and the conventional ensemble shows are likely to be the first ones to go. I’m also not convinced that
The Ice and
Bloom on Ice will be back next year (the former probably depends on Shoma’s plans, though).
But yeah, let’s wait and see – maybe I’ll have to eat my words…
natalie.mu
