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Japanese MPs to table anti-online ticket touting bill

The Parliamentary Group on Live Entertainment aims to outlaw for-profit online resale ahead of the 2020 Olympics, bringing the law into line with the street selling ban

By Jon Chapple on 13 Dec 2017

The 7 December meeting of the LDP Parliamentary Group on Live Entertainment

The 7 December meeting of the LDP Parliamentary Group on Live Entertainment


image © Shigeru Ishiba

A coalition of Japanese parliamentarians are to submit a bill to the House of Representatives to regulate Japan’s increasingly controversial online secondary ticketing market.

Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) members of the Parliamentary Group on Live Entertainment met on 7 December to author the bill, which would mandate all tickets resold on the internet include information about the event’s date, time, location and seat number; a notice that resale of the ticket is prohibited; and that the promoter has taken measures to prevent the ticket’s resale, including by checking the identity of the ticket seller.

The proposed legislation would also classify resale of tickets above face value as fraud, similar to the ban on street ticket touts. There is currently no regulation of online ticket resale, which according to the International Ticketing Yearbook 2017 is a ¥50bn ($44m) market, with Ticket Camp – currently being investigated by the police for alleged breaches of competition law – the largest player.

“I would like to … present this bill as soon as possible”

The parliamentary group plans to table the bill in the House of Representatives, the lower house of Japan’s national parliament, the Diet, in January.

The ruling LDP hopes to have the ban in place, with cross-party support, before the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games. “I would like to consult with the [LDP’s coalition partner] Komeito and opposition parties and present the bill as soon as possible,” says former LDP secretary-general Shigeru Ishiba.

The new bill follows the launch of #ResaleNO, an industry backed FanFair Alliance-style campaign aimed at ending ticket touting, last August, and that of Tiketore, Japan’s first face-value ticket exchange, in May.

 


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