Money Tigers was the Japanese business-investment programme that inspired the BBC's Dragon's Den.
Money Tigers was created by Nippon Television and established the basic format in which entrepreneurs present business proposals to wealthy investors. The investors question the proposal, assess its commercial potential and decide whether to offer money for an ownership stake. The format was later adapted in many countries.
The British production retained the central pitch-and-negotiation structure but changed the programme title and developed its own panel of Dragons. The word “Dragon” gives the UK version a distinctive identity, while other international adaptations use different names for their investors.
A frequent mistake is to say that the British series originated independently. It did not: Dragon's Den is part of a wider international format lineage. The BBC programme first aired in 2005, while the Japanese source format supplied the core idea of televised entrepreneur pitches, investor questioning and equity negotiations.