Facial recognition seems to be coming into play in the sale of concert tickets for a popular Japanese boy band. Tickets for the Arashi Live Tour 2015 Japonism have evidently been hard to come by given Arashi’s appeal in the country, and there are now reports surfacing that fans are being asked to submit photos of their faces when they buy new tickets.
It’s a new measure that applies to fans purchasing tickets for event space that is usually reserved for equipment—in other words, areas that aren’t usually considered concert seating. An explanation of the facial requirement has not been given, so there is some room for speculation as to why it was implemented. Japan Today guesses that fans entering the venue (the Tokyo Dome) will have their faces scanned to ensure that they match those submitted at the time of the ticket purchase; it’s a measure that has been implemented in other popular Japanese concerts and it could help to prevent ticket re-sale at exorbitant prices.
It could also be a security measure, perhaps determined by the host venue itself, to ensure that tickets are not being sold to known criminals who might abuse the opportunity to access usually restricted event space. That, of course, is speculation and would require some cooperation with police authorities, in which case the organizers would probably be more forthright about the rationale behind asking for fans’ mugshots.
Of course, for many of the band’s fans, the rationale doesn’t matter—they’re just happy to have the tickets.
Source: Japan Today
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December 21, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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