Preceding the 2020 Olympics, a suprapartisan group of Japanese lawmakers plan to submit a bill to parliament against ticket resale, JiJi Press reports.
Currently, Japan does not have any law in place banning the resale of tickets, since the country already has their own ordinances in place against ticket reselling around event venues. However, online is not necessarily considered a “public place” under the ordinance. After some cases of “unfair ticketing” at the 2016 Rio Olympics, the International Olympic Committee demanded that the organizing committee of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics work out a law to address the resale problem.
According to informed sources, the bill will seek to prohibit the reselling of tickets for profit at sport and concert events for higher prices. It will also ban ticket issuers’ resale measures to prevent reselling, such as identity confirmation of buyers.
Late last year, the Tokyo organizing committee expressed their concern about possible ticket scalping and requested a crackdown on ticket resale.
“It will affect the games’ reputation,” an official said. “We want to create a framework through which we can thoroughly crack down on people reselling tickets obviously for a profit.”
The Japanese lawmakers who will make the move include members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, its junior coalition partner, Komeito, and the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.
Around the beginning of Spring 2019, around 10 million entry tickets are expected to be issued for the 2020 games. Ticket prices and venues were announced late last month. The opening ceremony tickets range from 12,000 JPY to 300,000 JPY and closing ceremony tickets are between 12,000 JPY ($108 USD) and 220,000 JPY ($1,982 USD). While sporting event tickets vary, the starting range is around 2,500 JPY ($22 USD) and 5,800 JPY ($52 USD) for all events.
