Rakuten Monkeys Get $40 Million in Funding
On December 27, Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs approved a 40 million USD capital increase to the Rakuten Monkeys by its Japanese parent company Rakuten Inc. To put it simply, this is cash injection to be used to operate the Rakuten Monkeys in the CPBL.
The funding would come from Rakuten Asia in Singapore, then to Rakuten Taiwan to increase its capital. After that, Rakuten Taiwan will “re-invest” that money into Rakuten Monkeys in the CPBL.
Update: Additional $17.3 Million Injection
On May 27, 2020, the Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs approved another 17.3 million USD capital increase to the Rakuten Monkeys in the CPBL.
Annual Budget for CPBL Teams
In recent years, the CPBL teams tend to have an annual budget of 8 to 12 million USD. Given the Monkeys just received a 40 million capital injection, one can assume it should be sufficient for the next three to four seasons.
Rakuten vs Other Teams’ Parent Company
Ever wonder financially speaking, how does Rakuten stack up against other teams in the CPBL? Here are some 2018 data from Forbes.
The figures below are in US dollar and using billion as the unit. It is also worth noting, we only used one single company per team and did not include all their subsidiaries. For example, the Uni-President Enterprises also own Starbucks (Taiwan) and 7-Eleven (Taiwan), but for ease of calculation, we will not include those.
| CPBL Team | Parent Company | Revenue | Profits | Assets | Market Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fubon Guardians | Fubon Financial | $21.9 B | $1.6 B | $250.6 B | $14.9 B |
| Chinatrust Brothers | CTBC Financial | $16.7 B | $1.2 B | $187.2 B | $12.8 B |
| Uni-Lions | Uni-President | $14.3 B | $0.57 B | $13.2 B | $13.1 B |
| Rakuten Monkeys | Rakuten | $10 B | $1.3 B | $66.9 B | $14.5 B |
