TBS’s giant sports variety show “SASUKE” has become explosively popular worldwide! The production of Season 4 of the US version “Ninja Warrior” is confirmed. This time there are plans to hold preliminaries at 3 cities and the finals at Las Vegas. The preliminaries and finals will be broadcast in primetime on both, US cable network G4 and terrestrial network NBC this summer!

This time, the preliminaries will be split into divisions of north and south each for the west, mid-west, and east, for a total of 6 regions – with the western division preliminaries held in Los Angeles, the mid-west division in Dallas, and the eastern division in Miami. The preliminaries will move from city to city and be held for a period of a month. The 100 winners who survive the preliminaries will compete at the championships in Las Vegas where a full scale replica of the Midoriyama “SASUKE” course will be set up.

Last summer, the prior series American Ninja Warrior 3 (9 episodes) recorded a ratings gain of 409% for Males age 12-17 over the same month of the previous year and the highest ratings for a G4 production in the station’s history. Also, for Males age 18-49, it obtained the highest ratings amongst all programs and increased its ratings among both genders and all ages. The final 2-hour episode which was broadcast on NBC, also topped rival broadcasters ABC and CBS in the Men and Women age 18-49 category which sponsors and broadcasters put much importance on at the 10pm slot. It was the greatest success for NBC in this slot since last summer’s July 4th Independence Day fireworks broadcast.

Following this success, G4 and NBC, both of which are part of one of the biggest media corporations in the world, Comcast, have expanded their collaboration this year to take this worldwide phenomenon to the next level with G4 airing the preliminary rounds of 6 blocks while NBC will air the preliminary finals, as well as the grand finale.

SASUKE (including US version Ninja Warrior), has been sold to 153 countries and territories. Sales stretch not only to countries in Asia, Europe, and North America, but also to former eastern-bloc communist countries, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin American countries. Facebook’s “Ninja Warrior” fanpage has over 550,000 members showing that the popularity of Ninja Warrior is rapidly spreading.

This summer, this unprecedented new series ANW4 (Sasuke US version), is sure to further expand the popularity of the franchise and create another ratings hit for G4 and NBC!