International Japanese baseball fans saddened by the closure of JapanBallTickets.com

For eight years, JapanBallTickets.com have been helping fans all over the world obtain tickets to Japanese baseball games and get the seats they wanted prior to their vacation to Japan.

While a business, the markup wasn’t huge and if anything, the company did it for the love of the game and wanting to promote Japanese baseball to those who are interested in attending a Japanese baseball game.

But the service has been shut down by the NPB due to a law in Japan forbidding resale of tickets.

JapanBallTickets.com wrote on their website:

Representatives from NPB and several teams met with me today (July 2nd) and informed me that this business is in violation of the “Provisions of the Game Watching Contract” Article 4 (Prohibision on resale, etc.) This article states:

No person shall have a third party obtain an admission ticket through a resale (including resale through an Internet auction) or by other means without obtaining permission from the Host Organization. This, however, shall not apply to cases where the resale is not conducted for profit or for business and based on a specific relationship, including a family member, friend, customer or any other similar person.

Because our business is all about obtaining tickets on your behalf as a service that we charge for, it runs afoul of this provision and NPB and the teams have asked that I cease providing such a service.

One international Japanese baseball fan who used the service said, “I have been using this service because they made it easy for international fans to go to these games.  A lot of Japanese baseball games don’t cater to international fans and getting tickets at certain stadiums is not the easiest experience.  JapanBallTickets.com made it easy and friendly for people overseas.  Without this service, it will make things more difficult for fans to get their tickets or better seats before traveling to Japan”.

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