Tout who made ¥10m from Arashi tickets arrested

A 25-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of illegally touting tickets to concerts by Japanese boyband Arashi.

According to police in the city of Sapporo, quoted by Fuji TV, Izumi Nakayama is alleged to have resold online 300 tickets over a period of 18 months to the tune of approximately ¥10 million (US$98,450).

Popular ‘idol’ group Arashi (pictured) only sell tickets to members of their fan club, and announced in April that facial-recognition technology would be used to prevent those who had purchased secondary-market tickets attending their Japonism Show arena tour.

“There’s no problem if you buy a ticket to use yourself, end up unable to do so due to circumstances and then resell it”

The group have also lent their support to the #ResaleNO anti-ticket touting campaign, which is backed by leading industry groups and last month took out full-page ads in a number of Japanese newspapers.

According to RocketNews24, Nakayama is accused of violating the Secondhand Articles Dealer Act, as she lacked the permit needed to resell the tickets. Authorities also apparently took exception to her buying up the tickets with the sole intent of resale: reports the website: “According to the website of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police,” reports RocketNews24, “there’s no problem if you buy a ticket to use yourself, end up unable to do so due to circumstances and then resell it. However, that clearly wasn’t the case with Nakayama, who has admitted to the authorities that she intended from the very beginning to resell the tickets.”

According to the International Ticketing Yearbook 2016, there are a number of well-known secondary ticketing sites in Japan, with the most established including TicketStreet, Ticket Camp and Ticket Ryutsu Center. Unlike Nakayama, large-scale resellers on those sites presumably have the proper permits.

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