Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) announced that it will hold the remaining 72 preseason games behind closed doors. The NPB regular season was to kick off on March 20th.
NPB’s Commissioner Atsushi Saito said, “This was a difficult decision to make. Because we can’t determine the situation, I won’t say anything right now about Opening Day. If possible, we all want to go ahead on March 20″.
This is the first time the NPB has prevented fans from attending preseason or regular season games.
In addition, officials have prohibited fans from attending minor league games. NPB”s two minor leagues, the Western and Eastern League are set to kick off the new season on March 13/14.
The Japan Racing Assocaition decided that all central government sanctioned horse races will go ahead as planned but will be run at empty race tracks.
The NPB follows the announcement that the Japanese Rugby Football Union will postpone 16 games across two rounds of the 2020 Top League season.
The J-League halted all games until March 15th.
The Japanese Boxing Commission and the Japanese Pro Boxing Association said they will cancel or postpone all bouts scheduled to take place in Japan next month.
