Road to Korakuen Hall. "Getting bigger" and "getting stronger" are two different things.

Thank you to everyone who came to the PPPTOKYO Shinkiba 1st RING event yesterday.

To be honest, I expected a struggle with attendance until the day before the event. But when the day came, 250 guests filled the Shinkiba 1st RING for the first time in a while. I think it was an event that managed to take shape thanks to the hard work of the wrestlers and staff who kept promoting it until the very end, and to everyone who considered coming right up until the last minute.

It had a different vibe from Shinjuku FACE or Kawasaki.

The Shinkiba 1st RING venue is a place where many customers come to truly savor the "match" itself. It feels like the quality of the pro-wrestling, the progression of the matches, and the meaning behind the cards directly translate to the heat in the venue, rather than just pushing through with energy, momentum, or vibes alone.

Each venue has its own personality in how the excitement builds. Some venues explode with energy from the start, while others gradually heat up as the matches progress. This time, we had many wrestlers from other promotions participating, and since it was held on a Sunday, I felt an influx of a different demographic than usual.

Will these people who experienced us for the first time choose PPPTOKYO again?

In the end, I think this is what matters.

Getting someone to come once is different from getting them to like you. Creating a sold-out show once is different from becoming a promotion that can keep selling out.

I've been thinking a lot about this difference lately.

We have a Korakuen Hall event on November 26th.

Naturally, we are aiming for a full house. There is a vision I have for what lies beyond that.

But does renting a larger venue mean the promotion has grown? Is it growth if we invite famous wrestlers and put together a star-studded card? If sales double, can we say the company has become twice as strong?

It's not that simple.

As the scale grows, the necessary expenses also increase. Guarantees for wrestlers, production, video, advertising, labor costs, and venue fees. If you want to improve the look of the show and enrich the content, you can spend as much money as you want.

PPPTOKYO's budget for wrestlers and production has certainly increased compared to before. As we move toward the final Shinjuku FACE performance and then to Korakuen Hall, the required funds will grow even more.

What is important here is that "increasing sales" and "the company becoming stronger" are not synonymous.

There is a difference in the view you see between spending 1 million yen to generate 1.2 million yen in sales, and spending 300,000 yen to generate 800,000 yen. In terms of sales alone, the former is larger. However, when you consider profit, reproducibility, and risk, a simple comparison cannot be made.

The same applies to event promotion.

Gathering 1,200 people at Korakuen Hall once is a different story from becoming an organization that can consistently gather 1,200 people.

The 250 people from yesterday and the 1,200 people in November are not separate figures. The view of Korakuen Hall only exists as an extension of the accumulation of the one person who came to Shinkiba, the one person who came to Kawasaki, and the one person who learned about PPPTOKYO for the first time on social media.

The number 1,200 is just 1,200 individual customers.

It sounds obvious, but when you are running a business, this obvious fact feels the heaviest.

That is why recently, I have started to think about "getting bigger" and "getting stronger" separately.

I want to make PPPTOKYO bigger. That is certain.

However, before that, I want to make PPPTOKYO stronger.

To that end, I want to build our own "miniature garden" little by little.

There are pro-wrestling events and there are wrestlers. There is LittleParty, Prime Wrestle Academy, and small challenges like PARADISE CLINCH. There are also sponsors, merchandise, events, streaming, and social media.

At first glance, they look like separate businesses, but they should all be connected at their core.

People who watch pro-wrestling grow to like the wrestlers and go to events where they can meet them. People who learn about the organization through an event then come to the shows. Companies that resonate with a wrestler's story become sponsors, and fans learn about those companies' products.

That is how a small cycle is born.

In business terms, it might be close to an "ecosystem," but the expression "miniature garden" feels more fitting to me.

Instead of building one big pillar, I want to carefully arrange small things so that they support each other to create a single world.

The business of event promotion is unstable.

There are wrestler injuries, weather issues, and card changes. Social media trends and the economy also change.

That is precisely why I want to build an organization that does not depend on just one tournament, one star, or one source of revenue.

That is what a "strong organization" means to me.

In my previous note, I wrote about the "Sendai Girls' Spirit."

While writing that article, I felt once again that people are not just looking at a single piece of content like a match.

When people fall in love with the atmosphere of an organization, the relationships between the wrestlers, the process of chasing a dream, and the time spent including both successes and failures, they begin to have a relationship with the organization that goes beyond the outcome of a single match.

I believe that PPPTOKYO also needs to make that aspect much stronger.

That is why the "Road to Korakuen Hall" is not just a campaign to gather 1,200 people on November 26th.

It is the very process of growing into an organization capable of filling Korakuen Hall.

Yesterday's Shinkiba, the final performance at Shinjuku FACE on August 6th, the small event in Kawasaki, the new challenge in Gyotoku, and guiding someone to buy a single ticket—they are all on the same path.

Management requires looking at the far distance and the immediate vicinity at the same time.

While painting a picture of a grand future, I sell one ticket right in front of me. While thinking about the future of the brand, I look at this month's cash flow. While showing dreams to the wrestlers, I leave enough profit to sustain those dreams.

As we are a completely self-funded, small-scale business, I think about both of those things every day.

It is not rare for the promoter in me, who wants to put together match-ups with a story, to fight in my head with the manager in me, who thinks about how to recover the budget for them.

I want to give more back to the wrestlers. I want to give back to the staff, too. I want to make the videos and advertisements even better. At the same time, I must leave enough strength in the company to take on the next challenge.

Perhaps those of you who run small companies can understand this feeling.

If you thought things would get easier as the company grew, you'll find that the next stage brings the next set of challenges. I don't think there is such a thing as completion in management.

The Korakuen Hall event on November 26th will surely be the same.

Even if we manage to fill the venue, the very next day I will likely be thinking about "how to connect this view to the next step."

That is why, rather than just talking about how "those were tough times" after we succeed, I want to document the present, while we are still becoming something.

The 250 people who came yesterday are not the goal.

However, it was a definite step forward.

I believe that big dreams do not come true because you did something big once, but appear after you have accumulated small things an incredible number of times.

On November 26th, it is not as if PPPTOKYO will suddenly become bigger on that day.

It is simply that what we have built up until today will appear as a single scene.

That is why we build up the present for the sake of the future.

We cherish each individual customer, carefully create each event, nurture small projects, and increase the value of each individual athlete.

Before "getting bigger," we must "get stronger."

Yesterday's Shinkiba 1stRING was also an important day for that purpose.

Road to Korakuen Hall.

We are still just getting started.

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Thank you for always reading.

In this note, I write in my own words about the essence of work and life as seen through the filter of "pro-wrestling," including my daily life as the representative of PPPTOKYO, observations on the pro-wrestling industry, as well as organizational management, branding, human resource development, and marketing.

I hope to deliver articles that provide even a little bit of insight and learning, not only for pro-wrestling fans but also for business owners, business professionals, and those who are challenging themselves with something.

PPPTOKYO will continue to create a "ring where the story of life can be projected."

This note is also a part of that story.

If you like it, it would be encouraging if you could "like" and follow.

Thank you for your continued support of PPPTOKYO and Masato Mitomi.