Hello, this is Yoshiki Ando from TIMEWELL.
PassMarket, Yahoo! JAPAN's digital ticketing service, closed on June 30, 2026. The ticket management tool that let organizers download their data stayed open until August 31 (the notice called that date "planned"), and since September 1, buyers have not been able to search tickets or view their purchase history either1. When I checked on October 4, both the PassMarket home page and its official blog redirected to a generic Yahoo! JAPAN "service has ended" page.
I first wrote this article in March and updated it in July with one message: rescue your data before August 31. That deadline has passed too. So this version is for people who missed it, people who still have not picked a new platform, and people who moved somewhere in a hurry and are not settled yet. It focuses on what you can still do now.
The short version:
- PassMarket closed on June 30, 2026. The management tool ran until August 31, and buyers lost access to their history on September 1. No successor service was announced
- You can no longer export anything from the management tool. Rebuild revenue records from your bank deposits, and rebuild attendee relationships through channels you own
- Any PassMarket link left on your website, social profiles, or printed QR codes now lands on Yahoo! JAPAN's closure page. Replace those first
- Compare replacements on total cost: percentage, per-ticket fee, monthly fee, and payout fee together. For 100 tickets at 5,000 yen, TIMEWELL BASE came to an effective 4.84% among services with event management features (PassMarket was 3.564%)
What PassMarket Was
PassMarket was a digital ticketing service that Yahoo Japan (now LY Corporation) launched in April 20132. Anyone with a Yahoo! JAPAN ID, individual or company, could create an event, sell tickets to smartphones without printing anything, and check people in with a QR code on the day. It turned up everywhere: seminars, study groups, local festivals, admission tickets for leisure facilities. After Yahoo! Ticket closed in March 2022, the company's ticketing business was consolidated into PassMarket2.
For organizers, the big draw was price. PassMarket's organizer page listed a 3.564% sales fee on its Basic plan, with no setup fee, no fixed fee, no system fee, and no sales fee at all on free tickets3. The feature set was complete for most events: first-come, lottery, and instant-draw sales; purchase limits; prepayment options including PayPay; QR check-in and phone-based ticket tearing; list-based check-in; messages to attendees; discount codes; surveys; and sales reports3. A higher Professional plan (5.5%) added reserved seating and overseas card payments, but it stopped taking new applications on October 3, 20223.
Honestly, I never found another service that offered this much at that price. That is why so many organizers struggle with the choice of a replacement, and why people are still searching for "PassMarket" by name three months after it closed. If that is how you landed here, you are probably in one of three groups. You clicked a PassMarket link and got an unfamiliar closure page. You want to check a ticket you bought. Or you run events on PassMarket and have not decided where they go next. I will take them in that order. And if the move has you rethinking how you run your attendee community in the first place, our free community health check is a quick way to take stock before you plan it.
The Shutdown Timeline and Where Things Stand in October 2026
LY Corporation announced the closure on PassMarket's official blog on December 17, 20251. The notice was split into sections for organizers and for buyers, and it closed features in stages. Looking back, this is how it played out.
| Date | What happened | Who it affected |
|---|---|---|
| December 17, 2025 | Closure announced | Everyone |
| December 18, 2025 (planned) | Day-count validity setting for permanent tickets disabled; end dates could still be set up to June 30 | Organizers |
| Late January 2026 (planned) | Single-event tickets limited to event dates on or before June 30 | Organizers |
| June 30, 2026, 11:59 p.m. | Last event date. Creating, selling, and running events and tickets ends | Organizers and buyers |
| August 31, 2026 (planned) | Last day to view data and download survey responses in the ticket management tool | Organizers |
| September 1, 2026 onward | Ticket search and purchase history no longer accessible | Buyers |
| As of October 4, 2026 | Home page and official blog redirect to Yahoo! JAPAN's "service has ended" page (checked by the author) | Everyone |
The notice did not name a successor or recommend anywhere to move, and it gave no reason for the closure12. It listed PassMarket's inquiry form as the contact point, but did not say how long that form would stay open.
This article's advice has changed over time as well, so here is what was true then and what is true now.
| When | What this article told you | Where it stands now |
|---|---|---|
| March 2026 (first version) | Choose a new platform before the June 30 closure and tell your attendees | Closed |
| July 2026 (last update) | Rescue attendee records, survey responses, and revenue records by August 31 | Deadline passed. Nothing can be retrieved from the tool |
| October 2026 (this update) | Rebuild your own records, replace old links, compare platforms, and move | What you can do now |
The Migration & Data-Rescue Checklist (fill-in, 8 pages) was built for the August 31 data deadline. That section is now out of date, but the rest still works as is: an inventory of the channels you can use to reach attendees again, a formula and worksheet for working out the real cost of a new platform, and the steps for launching your first event on it. Download the Event Organiser's Migration & Data-Rescue Checklist (Free. Your company name and work email are required.)
If you bought tickets on PassMarket
Since September 1, PassMarket purchase history has not been viewable1. If you need a receipt or proof of attendance for an expense claim, there is no way left to pull it from PassMarket, so contact the event organizer directly. Organizers lost their management tool too, so unless they kept their own records, they may not be able to help right away. If you paid by card, your card statement is a record of the payment.
If you open a PassMarket link on an event page or poster and end up on the closure page, the event has most likely moved its sign-ups somewhere else. Check the organizer's website or social accounts for the current link.
Looking to optimize community management?
We have prepared materials on BASE best practices and success stories.
What Organizers Can Still Do After the Deadline
With the management tool closed, there is no route left for getting data out of PassMarket. Accepting that makes it easier to move on. Even so, you can rebuild more from what you already hold than you might expect. I recommend doing these three things, in this order.
First, find and replace every PassMarket link. This is the one people leave longest, and the one that does the most damage. Check the event pages on your website, your social profiles and pinned posts, your Google Business Profile, your email signature, and any printed flyers or posters with QR codes. Every PassMarket link in those places now lands on Yahoo! JAPAN's closure page, and someone trying to sign up will reasonably conclude your event no longer exists and leave. Open each link, then point it at your new sign-up page or at a page on your own site explaining that registration has moved. Printed material stays out there until you reprint it. If your QR codes point to your own domain, you can change where they go next time without reprinting anything.
Second, rebuild your revenue and attendance records. Even if you never saved the sales reports from the management tool, the money left a trail in your bank account. Pick out the PassMarket deposits in your passbook or online banking, match each one to an event using your calendar or your announcement history, and you can rebuild a per-event sales sheet with reasonable accuracy. For Japanese corporations, books and records generally have to be kept for seven years from the day after the filing deadline of the final tax return4, so this is not something to leave for later. For attendee numbers, the lists you used at check-in and the emails still in your inbox are your best leads.
Third, reconnect with attendees through channels you own. PassMarket's messaging feature is gone. What you can rely on now is the contact information you collected through surveys and saved, your own mailing lists, your social followers, and announcements on your website. PassMarket itself told organizers that the survey feature let them "freely collect customer data"3, so anyone who saved their survey responses is in a much better position now. Whatever channel you use, you can only use contact details within the purpose you disclosed when you collected them.
The message itself can be simple. "PassMarket has closed, so our events now take registrations on [platform]. Sign up for the next one here: [URL]." That is enough. What matters is sending it once before you announce the next event. A sign-up page from an unfamiliar service arriving out of nowhere just confuses people.
Take Stock of the PassMarket Features You Used
Before comparing platforms, write down which PassMarket features you actually used. It cuts down on bad choices. Fees get all the attention, but the features people discover they are missing after a switch are usually the ones they never thought about: PayPay, lottery sales, tearing tickets on a phone. If you used them, you cannot do without them.
The table below takes the features listed on PassMarket's organizer page3, adds what to check in a replacement, and shows where TIMEWELL BASE stands. The BASE column reflects what we offer as of October 2026.
| PassMarket feature | What to check in a replacement | TIMEWELL BASE |
|---|---|---|
| 3.564% sales fee; free tickets cost nothing | Total cost: percentage plus per-ticket, monthly, and payout fees | 4.8% on card payments, no per-ticket or monthly fee. No fee on free events |
| Prepayment including PayPay | Support for the payment methods your attendees actually use | Cards and convenience-store payment (plus 120 yen per convenience-store transaction). No PayPay |
| First-come, lottery, instant draw | Whether lotteries are available and how duplicate entries are handled | Lottery sales with rules for removing duplicate entries. No instant draw |
| QR check-in, phone-based ticket tearing | Check-in on the day and live attendance numbers | QR check-in with live attendance. Attendance tracking by session and booth |
| Messages to attendees | Whether you can re-contact past attendees, and at what cost | Email campaigns (Free uses purchased credits; Lite includes 2,000 emails a month) |
| Discount codes | Types of discount | Coupons (fixed amount or percentage) |
| Surveys | Whether you can keep the data yourself | CSV export of attendee data on all plans |
| Reserved seating (Professional plan) | Whether you need reserved seats | Not available |
| (Not listed on the organizer page) | Whether tickets can go into a phone wallet | Apple Wallet supported |
Laid out like this, you can see where BASE falls short. If most of your attendees paid with PayPay, or your shows need reserved seating, BASE should not be your first choice. If you run open-seating seminars, meetups, or workshops and want to keep the relationship going after the event, it should fit well. Circle the features you cannot do without, and only carry forward the services that cover them.
Comparing Replacements on Official Pricing
Among the event services whose official pricing I could check, none matches PassMarket's 3.564%. It is better to assume your fees will go up wherever you move. That keeps unrealistic hopes out of the comparison.
The table below uses the terms on each service's official pricing page as of October 4, 2026, and works out what an organizer pays for 100 tickets at 5,000 yen (500,000 yen in sales)5. It assumes everyone pays by card, the proceeds arrive in a single payout, and one month of any monthly fee is included. Services that do not publish their pricing, or whose official terms I could not confirm that day, are left out.
| Service | Terms (as published) | Cost for 100 × 5,000 yen | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| PassMarket (reference, closed) | 3.564% | 17,800 yen | 3.56% |
| Square (payment links) | 3.6%, no payout fee | 18,000 yen | 3.60% |
| TIMEWELL BASE (Free) | 4.8%; payout fee paid by the organizer (about 200 yen per payout) | 24,200 yen | 4.84% |
| Kokuchpro (Kokuchi payments) | 4.8% + 99 yen; 210 yen payout fee | 34,110 yen | 6.82% |
| EventRegist | 8%; 250 yen payout fee (payouts of 30,000 yen or more) | 40,250 yen | 8.05% |
| Doorkeeper (Starter) | 2.5% + 99 yen, plus Stripe's 3.6%; 1,650 yen a month | 42,050 yen | 8.41% |
On the numbers alone, Square's payment links sit at almost the same level as PassMarket. But a payment link is a way to collect money. It does not handle check-in or attendee management for you. Among services with event management features, BASE came out lowest at 4.84%. That is 6,400 yen more per event than PassMarket, or roughly 77,000 yen a year if you run one event a month.
The ranking is not fixed, though. Per-ticket fees hurt more as ticket prices fall, and flat per-payout charges weigh more as sales shrink. For a small event selling 30 tickets at 1,000 yen, BASE's effective rate rises to 5.47%, and the gap to Square's 3.60% widens. Under the same conditions, Kokuchpro comes to 15.40%, and Doorkeeper to 21.50% once the monthly fee is counted. If you want to run your own price and volume, our fee calculator for event organizers (in Japanese) compares these services on their official terms in one go.
I would give one thing as much weight as fees: whether you can take your attendee data with you. In my view, the most painful part of PassMarket's closure was not the higher fees. It was that the relationship with attendees lived only inside the operator's dashboard. Every service changes its pricing or shuts down eventually. Check whether you can export the attendee list as CSV, which plans include that, and whether you can still contact past attendees after an event ends. Get those answers now and the next closure will not catch you off guard. For how stacked ticketing fees work, see why major ticketing platforms charge multiple layered fees, and for what is inside a payment fee, see the breakdown of a 5,000-yen ticket.
Moving to TIMEWELL BASE, Step by Step
Here is the switch using BASE as the example. The flow is much the same whichever service you choose.
Step 1. Create an account (a few minutes). Sign up for TIMEWELL BASE with your email address and set your organization name and logo. The Free plan has no setup or monthly fee, and you can sell paid tickets on it. Start with a test event and get a feel for how it works.
Step 2. Build your event page. Enter the event name, description, ticket types, capacity, and registration deadline you used on PassMarket. If the management tool closed before you saved the original copy, the announcements on your website or social accounts make a good starting draft. BASE has an AI assistant that suggests descriptions and thumbnail images from your basic event details, which takes a lot of the work out of rewriting pages from scratch. The detailed steps are in our guide to building an event page.
Step 3. Announce the move and replace the old links. Your first announcement will go out from your own list, by your own email or social channels, because your PassMarket attendees are not in BASE yet. Include the new event URL, and as covered above, replace any PassMarket links left on your site, social accounts, and QR codes at the same time. Once you have run an event on BASE, you can reach those attendees through BASE's email campaigns from then on.
Step 4. Run the event, then keep your own copy of the records. On the day, check people in by QR code and watch attendance as it happens. Tickets can also go into Apple Wallet, so attendees are not digging through their email at the door. Afterwards, export the attendee list as CSV and save it. If there is one lesson to take from PassMarket, it is to make this a habit after every event. It is the cheapest insurance you will find. BASE also has community features, and attendees stay on as members, so your next announcement reaches them without starting your promotion from zero. The full feature set is on the BASE service page.
Ticket revenue is paid out within five business days after the event. The payout fee is paid by the organizer and depends on the bank (about 200 yen per payout as a guide). The payout flow differs from PassMarket's, so confirm the payment date after your first event and plan your bookkeeping around it.
Be Ready for the Next Shutdown
PassMarket's closure hurt organizers. A 3.564% fee is probably not coming back. But after more than six months of following this story and updating this article, what stays with me is less the price than the question of where your relationship with attendees lives. If your attendees exist only inside an operator's dashboard, everything you have built goes out of reach the moment the service ends.
So once you have chosen your next platform, make three things a habit. Export and save the attendee list after every event. Send sign-ups through a page on your own site so you control where the link goes. And collect contact details in a way that you are allowed to use for future announcements. Those three apply whether you pick BASE or anything else.
TIMEWELL BASE has a Free plan with no setup or monthly fee. Create one test event and see how it feels.
If you would like to talk through your migration timeline or how to handle the lists you already have, book a consultation.
References
Footnotes
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PassMarket Blog, "Important: About the Termination of the PassMarket Service" (in Japanese), LY Corporation, posted December 17, 2025. The closure date (June 30, 2026), the last event date (11:59 p.m. that day), the planned disabling of the day-count setting for permanent tickets (December 18, 2025), the planned change to single-event date settings (late January 2026), the planned end of the ticket management tool (August 31, 2026), the loss of buyer access to ticket search and purchase history (from September 1, 2026), and the inquiry form are all from this notice. It does not mention a successor service or a reason for the closure. The original URL (blog-passmarket.yahoo.co.jp/archives/post_15.html) redirects to Yahoo! JAPAN's "service has ended" page as of October 4, 2026, so the content was checked against the Internet Archive copy captured June 30, 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
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ITmedia NEWS, "PassMarket digital ticketing service to shut down, LY Corporation announces" (in Japanese, December 17, 2025). The April 2013 launch, the consolidation after Yahoo! Ticket closed in March 2022, and the absence of a stated reason or successor are from this article. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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PassMarket, "For Organizers" page (in Japanese), LY Corporation. The Basic plan's 3.564% sales fee, the zero setup, fixed, and system fees, the zero sales fee on free tickets, the Basic plan feature list, the description of the survey feature, and the end of new applications for the Professional plan (5.5% sales fee, reserved seating, overseas card payments, and more) on October 3, 2022, are from this page. The page has closed, so it was checked against the Internet Archive copy captured July 2, 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5
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National Tax Agency, No.5930 "Retention Periods for Books and Records" (in Japanese). Corporations must generally keep books and records for seven years from the day after the filing deadline of the final return for the fiscal year (ten years for years with carried-forward blue-return losses, among other cases). ↩
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Based on each service's official pricing page, checked October 4, 2026. Figures are the amounts charged to organizers running events in Japan. TIMEWELL BASE: 4.8% on card payments, 4.8% plus 120 yen per convenience-store transaction, payouts within five business days after the event, and payout fees paid by the organizer, per the pricing page. The pricing page does not state the payout fee amount, which varies by bank, so the calculation uses our guide figure of 200 yen per payout. Square: 3.6% for online payments, with no payout, monthly, or refund fees. Kokuchpro: 4.8% plus 99 yen in sales fees and a 210 yen payout fee per transfer (the fixed fee is calculated as one ticket per order). EventRegist: 8% of ticket sales plus a payout fee of 250 yen for payouts of 30,000 yen or more and 160 yen below that. Doorkeeper: 99 yen plus 2.5% for prepaid tickets, Stripe fees charged separately (3.6% is the example on the page and varies by account type and region), and 1,650 yen a month for the Starter plan. PassMarket's rate is from the organizer page in note 3. The calculation assumes all card payments, one payout, and one month of any monthly fee, with fees rounded per ticket. ↩
