J.LEAGUE Grant for Facility Development in Heavy-Snowfall Areas

Background

To promote the establishment of environments where everyone can enjoy sports throughout the year in all regions across Japan, J.LEAGUE, leveraging the J.LEAGUE season transition, has designed a grant programme to support sports facility development, initially aimed at J.Clubs whose hometowns are in heavy-snowfall areas. In the future, J.LEAGUE intends to actively expand facility development support to cover not only heavy-snowfall areas but also heat mitigation measures.

Programme Overview

The grant is available to 12 clubs in heavy-snowfall areas, as designated by J.LEAGUE: Sapporo, Hachinohe, Sendai, Akita, Yamagata, Fukushima, Matsumoto, Nagano, Niigata, Toyama, Kanazawa, and Tottori. J.LEAGUE provides grants for development costs of up to 380 million yen per club for snow countermeasures (such as air domes, membrane structures, heating systems, and pitch covers). Under this programme, proposals are reviewed by an expert committee with specialised knowledge in areas such as academia, architecture, and heavy-snowfall regions, and then considered for approval at the Board of Directors meeting.

Approved Projects

The first project approved under this programme was a grant to Gainare Tottori. The scope includes the All Gainare YAJIN Stadium and the Gainare Seido Academy grounds. For both structures, development work will include the construction of new natural grass pitches using turf varieties with superior resistance to compression and wear and higher-than-normal water gradients, installation of sheets that cover all of the grounds’ playing surfaces as snow countermeasures, and installation of watering hoses and other equipment.

※The information published is current as of December 22, 2025.