Comic Market staff said on Wednesday that Ticketpay is blocking access from outside Japan, which cuts overseas fans out of the ticket lottery for Comiket 109. The event runs December 29 to 31 at Tokyo Big Sight.
The ticketing service is restricting foreign access “for the foreseeable future to guard against cyberattacks,” according to the event staff. The block applies to the Comiket 109 lottery and to any other event that sells through Ticketpay.
Comiket staff added that they are looking for ways to let people outside Japan buy tickets, but they were blunt about the difficulty: there are just under seven weeks between the announcement and opening day. That is not much room to build a parallel ticketing system for an event that draws a quarter of a million people.
Why this is harder to work around than it sounds
Comiket has not been a free-for-all for years. General attendance was free for most of the event’s history, then the organisers started charging in August 2019 when a temporary venue change forced their hand during preparations for the Tokyo Olympics. In December 2021, the first in-person edition of the pandemic era, they began selling dated tickets to cap attendance. Attendance limits came off in August 2023. The tickets stayed.
So entry is already a purchase, and for Comiket 109 that purchase runs through a lottery on a platform that no longer accepts overseas users. There is no walk-up option to fall back on.
The scale of what is affected: Comiket 108 in August drew 260,000 attendees across two days. The overwhelming majority of those are domestic. The overseas share is smaller, but it includes the buyers who fly in for the event itself, and the dealers and circles who travel from abroad to exhibit.
The event’s own history makes this awkward
The first Comiket was held in December 1975 with an estimated 700 attendees and 32 exhibiting circles. It has grown through venues in Harumi and Makuhari Messe before settling at Tokyo Big Sight for Comiket 50 in 1996, and international attendance grew along with it. Comiket has long been one of the standard stops on the international fan calendar.
That is why a ticketing change is a bigger deal than it looks. The event’s reputation for openness is part of how it became what it is.
What is still unknown
The staff have not said what the alternative will be, or whether there will be one in time for Comiket 109. They said only that they are investigating. The word “investigating” in an official notice this close to an event usually means nothing is confirmed and they do not want to promise anything.
It is also not clear whether the block is a decision made by Ticketpay alone or one coordinated with the organisers. The notice reads as though the organisers found out and are now dealing with it. Cyberattack defences at a Japanese ticketing company are not something an event’s staff can negotiate around.
Anyone planning to attend from outside Japan should treat the lottery as closed until the organisers say otherwise, and watch the Comiket X account, which is where the notice was posted.
The broader pattern
Japanese ticketing for major events has been tightening access for years, and not only for foreigners. Lottery systems, phone-number requirements and app-only distribution have all become standard. The direction is toward verified domestic users and away from open international sales, because that is easier to secure and easier to police.
Comiket has been slower to move that way than most, partly because it is run by a volunteer committee rather than a commercial promoter. This week’s change was forced on them by a vendor, not chosen. That distinction matters for how the story will develop: if Ticketpay’s restriction is permanent, the organisers have to either find another vendor, build something of their own, or accept that overseas fans cannot buy tickets directly anymore.
For a smaller event, the answer would probably be to accept it. Comiket is not a smaller event.
Source: Anime News Network, citing the Comiket X account
Featured image: Attendees queueing outside Tokyo Big Sight for Comic Market, via Anime News Network.
