The professional sports world is having a difficult time as they are forced to suspend or cancel their seasons as the coronavirus continues to spread. In an attempt to stay connected with their fans, professional sports teams in Tokyo have been reaching out by posting videos on how to properly wash their hands and introduce games that can be played at home.
"Rub your hands together, open them, and rub them again." The soccer team, FC Tokyo in the J1 League, uploaded a video on its official YouTube channel on April 8 in which the team's main players including Masato Morishige, 32, and Hirotaka Mita, 29, show them thoroughly washing their hands from their fingertips to their wrist while dancing to music.
A team official found a hand-washing video posted online by an idol group, and asked team members if they wanted to "do the same thing?" Each team member recorded videos at home and the team's PR division pieced together the videos. FC Tokyo captain Keigo Higashi said, "It would be great if as many soccer [fans] as possible see the video and think, 'I should wash my hands and gargle.'"
Another football team FC Machida Zelvia in the J2 League worked together with the Machida municipal government and created a video about games that could be played at home. In the video, the soccer club's mascot and a member of the team's staff each hold one end of a towel in their hands and pull as hard as they can. In the game, the player whose legs move first is the loser. The video was created to alleviate the stress of parents and children who are cooped up at home for long hours, according to the team. The team has said they will post more videos like that on YouTube.
Alvark Tokyo, a professional basketball team in the B1 League, streams videos on Instagram and members of the team will answer questions from fans. Every two or three days, a team member will take over the Instagram account and answer fan questions such as, "What do you do at home?"
In addition, Alvark created original math problems for sixth graders at elementary schools and distributed some 15,000 copies to public elementary schools in nine wards and cities including Shibuya Ward, where the team is based, and Tachikawa.
"We hope that children who aren't familiar with basketball can still enjoy studying and working through math problems. We hope they won't give up, even when the problems get difficult," Alvark member Daiki Tanaka, 28, said.
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