New Japanese ticketing legislation will come into force on 8th June 2019, banning the re-sale of tickets for profit and the possession of tickets for the purpose of scalping. 

This is clearly intended to tackle ticket touting (online and elsewhere) in advance of this Autumn's Rugby World Cup in Japan, and the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. However the new law is not limited to these events and will apply more generally to virtually all ticketed events held in Japan. Once in force, anyone in violation of the new law will face up to one year in jail and/or fines of up to one million yen (approximately £7000). 

This offence mirrors similar laws enacted across many other countries globally ahead of major international sporting events. One point of interest is that the new Japanese offence does not appear to apply to those giving away tickets for promotional purposes. Such use of tickets without the event organiser's authorisation undermines the ability to commercialise such opportunities and is routinely prevented by ticket terms and conditions. Other ticket touting legislation around the world has provided that promotional use of tickets is an offence but in Japan it seems that giving away tickets in a promotional capacity will remain solely a breach of contract.

Finally, the new legislation places a potentially onerous burden on event organisers in that it requires that they must take necessary measures to prevent ticket touting, including verifying that the ticket holder is the person entitled to entry. It will be interesting to see how this works in practice and what the impact is on queuing times for impatient spectators as they're required to produce ID at ticket gates.