JAPAN Law and Practice Contributed by: Atsushi Igarashi, Yoichiro Kuriyama, Misa Takahashi and Kosuke Ojio, TMI Associates
The unauthorised resale of tickets, or acquisi - tion of tickets for the purpose of unauthorised resale, is subject to criminal penalties under the Act on Securing Proper Distribution of Entertain - ment Admission Tickets through Prohibition of Unauthorised Resale of Specified Entertainment Admission Tickets (the “Anti-Scalping Law” ), which came into effect on 14 June 2019. 2.2 Sponsorship A sponsorship contract is a contract in which a company or individual becomes a spon - sor of sports rights-holder(s) and/or sports competition(s) and receives a certain sponsor - ship benefit in return for paying a sponsorship fee and/or providing its products and services as value-in-kind. The motivation for concluding sponsorship agreements is that sponsors can increase their brand value by associating their products and services with sports competition(s) and athletes while also leveraging the data of sports rights-holder(s) and relevant stakeholders to develop their businesses. Sports rights-holder(s), on the other hand, use sponsorship fees to stabilise and enhance their events/competitions and improve the perfor - mance and competitiveness of their athletes. In sponsorship programmes, particularly in major sporting events and international scale sport - ing events, it is common to differentiate tiers of sponsors while granting exclusive rights to cer - tain products or services categories. Please see 4.4 Recent Deals/Trends for details of a differ - ent type of sponsorship programme that was in place for the Tokyo 2020 Games. 2.3 Broadcasting Sports rights-holder(s) grant broadcasters and media organisations broadcasting and media rights, which include:
• the right to bring recording and broadcasting equipment into venues; and • the right to record the sports competitions and events by themselves or through a third party and then to transmit and screen the same using live or delayed broadcasts, wire broadcasts, internet distribution or other means. Broadcasters often attempt to increase viewer revenues by broadcasting high-value-added sporting content, while also increasing adver - tising revenues by increasing the value of their own media. In order to obtain greater broadcasting rights fees, several sports rights-holder(s), such as the leagues, collectively manage the broadcasting rights of their competitions and sell them on an exclusive basis to broadcasters or media organisations. While the granting of broadcast - ing rights and the ownership of copyrights to the audio and video of broadcast games and others are separate issues, ownership of copy - rights is also agreed upon in broadcast rights agreements. For example, in July 2016, the J.League conclud - ed an agreement with the Perform Group, which provides the DAZN live streaming service, for the sale of the broadcasting rights of approximately JPY210 billion for a ten-year period beginning in the 2017-18 season. In 2023, the contract was extended until the 2033-34 season with broad - casting right fees of approximately JPY239.5 bil - lion set for the contractual period starting from 2023. In this agreement, it was agreed that the copyrights in, and to, the footage of the matches belong to the J.League. Because broadcasting rights fees for large-scale international sporting events are increasing for
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