Mark Few, Monkey D. Luffy and a marquee matchup to grace McCarthey Center Saturday as part of national ‘One Piece’ college basketball campaign

Saturday’s hardwood matchup between the Gonzaga Bulldogs and the Saint Mary’s Gaels will feature a few characters vying for the top title.

As Mark Few and company take on Randy Bennett’s squad for a decisive two-game lead in conference standings, Monkey D. Luffy will make an appearance amidst his quest to become King of the Pirates.

The “One Piece” series, which includes a nearly 30-year running manga, more than 1,100 episodes of an animated TV show, a live-adaptation on Netflix and a related card game, will make a splash at Saturday’s big game as part of a nationwide campaign promoting the Japanese franchise dubbed the One Piece College Basketball: US Voyage.

Gonzaga is the sole West Coast school included in the promotion partnership between the Japanese company Bandai Namco Entertainment and five American universities.

Each school is hosting a halftime show featuring clips from the show, branded T-shirt tosses and performances of the series theme song by college pep bands and cheer squads. Across the 15 games, three for each school, attendees will receive limited edition posters and playing cards associated with the “One Piece” game.

The series follows a young man with rubber-like super powers named Monkey D. Luffy as he embarks on adventures in an ocean-covered world to become the next King of the Pirates. Joined by the Straw Hat Pirates aboard the Blue Roger, Luffy’s journey is rife with action, mystery and humor, said longtime fan Vinny Paganelli, general manager of the Comic Book Shop’s Spokane Valley location.

“It’s got a little bit of everything in there,” Paganelli said. “I mean, it’s almost like if ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ met ‘Dragon Ball Z,’ with super powers and a guy that’s part rubber band. It’s got so much heart in it, will make you laugh your tailbone off, and then it’ll tear your heart out in the next scene. And it’s got so many very complex and just fun to watch characters.”

Gonzaga’s partnership with the Japanese juggernaut began with last Saturday’s matchup with the University of San Francisco Dons, and will end Feb. 10 as the Bulldogs host Washington State University. This Saturday’s game will be the only to feature the halftime show. The campaign also includes St. John’s University, Rutgers University, the University of Illinois and the University of Houston.

Learfield, the contracting company for the marketing and media rights, selected Gonzaga for the campaign from its more than 280 partner college athletics programs, said Mark Livingston, general manager for Learfield’s Gonzaga Sports Properties. It’s a natural fit between two well-recognized entities, he said.

In August 2022, “One Piece” became the best selling manga of all time, with more than 516 million copies of its more than 110 volumes sold worldwide. That figure, which likely has grown significantly over the last few years, also leads the larger genre of all comic book series, including more than doubling the American series “Peanuts” by Charles Schulz.

As “One Piece” enjoyed a meteoric rise, so did Gonzaga basketball. The 1999 Cinderella team that captured the university’s first Elite Eight appearance did so as the animated series based on the manga started airing in Japan, five years before it made its debut on North American televisions.

That also just so happened to be Livingston’s final year of grad school at the Jesuit university. He said Gonzaga’s national recognition likely played a large part in Learfield selecting the university as the only West Coast representative in the campaign.

“Our national television footprint and our national brand definitely helps,” Livingston said. “It’s definitely one of the best in the West Coast. I’m biased; I think it is the best basketball brand in the West Coast.”

Paganelli said the widespread popularity of “One Piece” is a bit hard to comprehend for American audiences. He suspects the campaign is another advance into the U.S. market by Bandai Namco, as the second season of the Netflix show is about to debut.

“I think they’re just trying to take over America the way that they’ve taken over Japan,” Paganelli said. “Because if you go to Japan, everything is ‘One Piece.’ It’s the biggest thing ever over there.”

“I don’t even know what would be comparable over here,” Paganelli added. “Maybe Taylor Swift.”

Kerfuffle over limited-edition cards

Manga and anime have built a following in America over the last few decades, but interest in the card game really took off a few months ago, Paganelli said. Collectors of the fellow Japanese franchise and card game, Pokémon, have seen demand surge, leading them to look elsewhere for money-making opportunities.

“At first I thought it was just because of the holidays, and then I kind of saw where the market was trending for a lot of the cards,” Paganelli said. “Daily, we’re getting people calling and asking. First they ask about Pokémon, and if they don’t find what they’re looking for, they ask about ‘One Piece.’ ”

The cards given out at the college basketball games are fetching a high price on the resale market and leading to kerfuffles at stadiums across the country. A video shared to social media taken at a giveaway at Rutgers University showed scalpers with fistfuls of cash being escorted out of the building by security after causing too much of a ruckus in their quest to get as many cards as possible.

On eBay, those scalpers are reselling the cards with asking prices between $400 and $800, with some asking for figures in the thousands.

“Once Pokémon becomes more available, I think that some of the prices will slow down a bit,” Paganelli said. “But prices on cards like this Gonzaga card, I think that’s always going to maintain its value, because the only way you’ll ever get it is by going to one of these games. That’s a really crazy and unique promotion, and we’re lucky that it’s in our area, so it’s at least almost accessible.”

Gonzaga games already are hard to get tickets to, but the promotional giveaway has extended that familiar experience to fans across the country.

The high-value cards have caused ticket prices for the 15 games included in the giveaway to skyrocket; the cheapest same-day ticket available for Rutgers’ matchup with No. 7 Michigan State on Tuesday hung around $250. By comparison, it would cost just $16 for the cheapest seats when Rutgers hosts the University of Washington on Feb. 24, according to Ticket Data.

“When they announced the collaboration, I didn’t even know about the card, I just wanted to see the halftime show they’re doing,” Paganelli said. “And then I realized, ‘Oh, it’s already impossible to get Gonzaga tickets.’ What am I thinking?”

Paganelli said the Comic Book Shop hosts tournaments for the “One Piece” card game twice weekly at the NorthTown Mall and Spokane Valley locations. At the most recent, he asked his 20 to 30 regulars if they managed to snag a card at the giveaway before Gonzaga’s home game with San Francisco last Saturday.

Those who attended shared with him that news of the card value had reached Spokane. Some attendees were seen grabbing as many cards as they could hold, and at least one was escorted out of the building, Paganelli said.

Livingston and Gonzaga are expecting high demand this go-round. To avoid adding to the fray already tied into the rivalry matchup with Saint Mary’s, the cards will be given out one at a time as attendees leave the arena. Too many spectators of the San Francisco game were trying to sell the cards in the middle of it, and Livingston and company want to avoid “potential chaos” during a high-stakes game, he said.

“From a marketing standpoint, we’ve got a wonderful bunch of corporate partners that we already want to highlight, we’ve got the best fan base in the country and a really big basketball game,” Livingston said. “So it’s great that the ‘One Piece’ activation is brand new, brought some additional national spotlight to it, and we’re excited about that, but we also don’t want that to overshadow everything else that’s going on with the No. 6 ranked team in the country.”

Activation is industry-speak for a unique marketing campaign, but it aptly describes just what the collaboration has done to the college campuses involved. Livingston said there was a bit of a learning curve to understand exactly what “One Piece” was, and just how popular it is globally.

“I think that’s a lot of us around here,” Livingston said. “That’s the fun part about being in sports marketing, is you learn really quickly about different people’s brands and different people’s marketing objectives and what they’re trying to do. This one, definitely, I maybe initially underestimated how popular the TV show is, and especially these cards.”