Features
Fan Club Trouble
Members of Arashi’s official fan club have first dibs on the tickets, which isn’t unusual for an act managed by Johnny’s Jimusho, the agency with a virtual lock on Japanese boy bands. It also isn’t unusual for fan club members to submit applications for tickets that will then be selected by lot.
The main complaint is that Arashi fan club members must pay in advance for the ticket when they submit their applications, according to an article in a leading woman’s magazine. Those members who do not receive tickets will get their money back, they’ve been told, but are not informed as to whether they can receive tickets until several months after the applications are sent in.
Some 850,000 seats are expected to be available for all the concerts. With more than 700,000 Arashi fan club members as of last spring, there probably won’t be many tickets left for non-members.
But while members get a 500-yen ($6) discount on a ticket, they also have to pay a 4,000-yen ($48) annual membership fee. Consequently, when the concerts were announced last summer, many people rushed to join the fan club just for a better chance of getting tickets.
According to the Japanese media, Johnny’s Jimusho makes about 2.4 billion yen ($29 million) per year on Arashi fan club membership fees.