daisuke matsuzaka's impact

In reference to this post about the state-owned TV channels, somebody asked me "why do you need to tune in to NHK to know about the latest on Daisuke? Why don't you simply watch ESPN?". Well, take a look at the pictures below.
They're from the Red Sox spring training in Florida, where 120 credentialed reporters, mostly Japanese, squeezed themselves in for a special press conference organized only for Matsuzaka (they actually don't seem to care too much about the rest of the team). And that's for spring training! They follow his every footsteps (the third picture is the NHK correspondent reporting live from Florida), so if you want to know what Dice-K had for breakfast, for example, you have to rely on the Japanese media.
Boston Red Sox's COO Mike Dee, on a Sports Business Radio interview, mentioned:
"When we announced we signed Daisuke, there weren't direct flights, believe it or not, from Tokyo to Boston. Now I know two or three airlines are in the process of adding direct flights during the baseball season. That's a clear and measurable impact of what we'll see."
I guess those extra routes must be just for the Japanese reporters then.