It was a regular Thursday around the world. It may have been the evening in Japan, but people were waking up to their alarms in the Americas, on their lunch break in Europe and finishing up dinner in Australia. But when 7:00PM in Japan hit, everyone got their phones out or turned on their computers and went to Abema TV in anticipation for M-League. But as 1900 JST turned into 1901 JST the screen was still dark. No “Glorious Day!”, no nothing. Only the AbemaTV mascot and the message「お住まいの地域ではご視聴できません」 (“Not available in your region”) was on screen.
We checked with each other on Discord. No, it’s not just you. We checked on Twitter. No news from AbemaTV, CyberAgent or M-League, but multiple people were reporting the same thing.
So, how did we get here?
M-League Philosophy
In M-League’s mission statement, there are four things listed under the league’s philosophy
- Creating awareness of mahjong as an advanced mind sport
- Dispelling the negative image of mahjong
- Promoting inter-generational exchange and contribution of social development through mahjong
- Contributing to international exchange and goodwill through mahjong
To overseas fans, the fourth one is the most important. With M-League’s international outreach, riichi mahjong can become more and more popular around the world.
M-League and the International Community
On April 18, 2019, CyberAgent announced that AbemaTV would now support worldwide viewing for certain channels, including M-League on their AbemaTV Mahjong channel.
This was a major breakthrough for all overseas viewers, whether Japanese or not. This meant that starting in the M-League 2019-20 season, western viewers could watch and follow their favourite teams, as well as watch mahjong with some of the best players in Japan.
At the start of the 2019-20 season, Ozball and SBT created The Pond. It was the first site in English that followed M-League, though only a few games were covered.
In March 2020, COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic. Countries had stay-at-home orders and lockdowns in place, leading to people staying at home more. With more time in the house, more people started to learn how to play mahjong and caused more people to watch M-League.
In late May 2020, Jellicode created M-League Watch with Ozball and SBT to provide a larger site with weekly M-League updates and player pages, as well as various other M-League related articles. Since then, interest for M-League has grown.
In August 2022, the 3rd World Riichi Championship took place in Vienna. It was the first opportunity for many overseas M-League fans to meet M-Leaguers, with Nikaido Rumi (二階堂瑠美), Nikaido Aki (二階堂亜樹), Honda Tomohiro (本田朋広), former player and commentator Fujisaki Satoshi (藤崎智) and commentator Hiyoshi Tatsuya attending the event.
Even after the event, Aki reminisced how many overseas players told her that they watched M-League.
The Overseas Struggle
Watching M-League as a foreigner, one of the biggest struggles is the fact that the broadcast is Japanese. Some key points, such as the number of tiles left for a player’s wait and strategy choices, are only found in the commentary. Especially for those who are just learning mahjong, the broadcast can be quite confusing. With it being a program with a primarily Japanese audience, the fact that the broadcast is in Japanese is understandable and unavoidable. And even though we understand very little of the commentary, we can still feel the excitement from the tone of the commentators’ voices (especially Hiyoshi).
For people who want to up their support, they were out of luck. Those who want to be official supporters of their favourite team are unable to because you need a Japanese address to become one.
Likewise, those who wanted to buy goods and merchandise couldn’t because items could only be shipped to Japan. When the Pop-Up Shop opened in April, overseas fans tried to get their Japanese friends (if they had any) to go and buy things for them so they can have it shipped.
Which brings us to today. On October 13, 2022, the M-League live broadcast was no longer available to viewers overseas. Some overseas fans resorted to using a VPN, while others resorted to illegal streams of the games.
The Future
Right now, the future of M-League for overseas fans remains unknown. If viewers can’t watch it, fans will have a hard time following it. If M-League would like to follow their own philosophy, then they should have all live M-League broadcasts be viewable to everyone around the world. The same applies to the YouTube videos on their official channel.
The next thing that M-League may be able to do is let overseas fans get in on the excitement. Maybe they can allow international shipping so fans can buy merchandise and uniforms. Even if they can’t get international shipping, overseas players should be able to become official supporters, have their membership card mailed to them and have access to member-exclusive content.
Conclusion
I really like M-League. I’ve been covering the league since the 2019-20 Finals when my favourite team, the U-Next Pirates, won the championship. Since then, I have seen the league improve with each new season. Even at the start of this season, they improved the beginner-friendliness of the broadcast by adding the waits and the yaku (in Japanese).
If the geoblocking that started on Thursday becomes permanent, I think M-League will have gone a step backwards. Even if we are a minority, we are still a community that can help spread mahjong to the world. I hope M-League and Abema TV/CyberAgent can fix this situation quickly and continue to improve the league for local and overseas viewers alike.
Come on, let’s bring in a new era of mahjong!
Update 1: On October 14, 2022 at around 2000 JST, Gemma, a pro with the JPML and president of the World Riichi Championship, was made aware of the situation got in contact with Abema. Abema is now “looking into it”.
Update 2: On October 18, 2022, Abema acknowledged that the issue is related to copyright issues and that they are working on getting it fixed. For now, viewers may watch the game at 19:00 JST the next day on Abema’s M-League 2022-23 page. The VOD will only be available for 24 hours.
Update 3: On December 9, 2022, ABEMA announced that starting on Monday, December 12, 2022, overseas viewers will again be able to watch M-League broadcasts live.
M-League Watch 
I was so surprised when I opened Abema that day and was hit with that message too! I’ve been resorting to watching game replay and analysis videos by M-Leaguers like Uotani Yuumi and Sonoda Ken on YouTube (knowing some Japanese sure helps!). I don’t know about getting a VPN subscription just to watch mahjong so I hope Abema actually does something about it 😦