Sumo association to visit London after 20-year overseas hiatus

With Japan now experiencing increased tourism from abroad, grand sumo tournaments have become popular stops for overseas visitors.

Exhibitions are fun, but you can’t beat the intensity of top wrestlers at real tournaments inside Japan.

Unfortunately, many tickets for Japan’s six annual tournaments are being snatched by tour operators, who are then repackaging/reselling those tickets at higher prices to tourists, thus making tickets less available to local residents. 

It’s also sad to see sumo tournaments being used as “brief cultural stops.” At a tournament in Tokyo earlier this year, I witnessed 50 non-Japanese enter together with a guide at 16:00 and then depart together at 17:00, which is an hour before the end of the day’s bouts. That hour is when all the top matches occur! What a complete waste! There are so many true fans of sumo who would love to have those unused seats.

Moreover, because seats are being hoarded by tour operators selling at higher prices to overseas tourists, many seats are actually going unused. At every sold-out tournament, batches of empty seats can be seen everywhere, particularly in the second tier of Tokyo’s Kokugikan. The Japan Sumo Association drops the “full house” banner every day, but the Association also asserts the venue needs to be “only about 85% full” for the banner to be dropped.