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The story
A discussion on 5ch has taken up the question of whether skipping payment after winning a Hello! Project fan club birthday event lottery—and then not showing up—affects your odds in future lotteries. Some users shared experiences like still winning normally even after forgetting to pay once or twice a year, while others reported that after winning duplicate tickets through two different fan clubs and letting one payment lapse, they stopped winning lotteries for a while afterward. Commenters also warned against paying via convenience store, and expressed hope that a future shift to e-tickets might finally allow for proper cancellations.
What people said
Guess other people forget too.
I've ghosted on Fortune (a separate ticket-lottery service) before.
But this is an FC (official fan club) event, so it's scary.
the ones that involve outside parties.
But they wouldn't actually know if you just skipped, right?
Do they even take attendance?
That's actually really considerate of them, telling you that and giving you the choice.
and I haven't paid yet either.
Then put in a cancellation.
Ghosting on it is the worst.
Oh really? Then maybe it's fine?
As long as you don't pay via convenience store.
For resale they'll probably push credit card payment more.
Just don't pay, that's it.
Then it opens up as second-round entries and day-of tickets.
I already got the payment number notice though.
So I just… don't act on it?
There's no cancellation option, so that really is the only way.
Right, that really is the only option.
Same here, but in that case I do worry about what happens down the line.
I ghost on Fortune all the time,
but when it's the FC itself… that's a different story.
That's with roughly 50 events a year.
Maybe if you go to a ton of events it's fine.
Better hurry up and apologize to Sekky (fan club staff nickname) before it's too late.
At this hour they might already be asleep.
This is my first time, but then again I barely apply through the FC to begin with.
I mostly just buy from resellers.
Through the FC itself, it's really just the May Nagano birthday event and the Angerme Osaka/Aichi shows.
Obviously I couldn't pay for the same event twice, so I had no choice but to let one payment lapse—and after that I stopped winning lotteries for a while.
Whose M-Hallo (event) did that happen with?
For me the agency always coordinates M-Hallo entries every time.
Was this last year?
Sounds like poor coordination between the two FCs.
They probably don't even post a warning about it, right?
An anti of some other idol group posing as a fan?
For M-Hallo, even if you fully apply through both Hello! Project and the M-line, they coordinate behind the scenes so you don't end up winning both.
Re: #70 is probably an agency anti self-posting.
They're dodging Re: #80 instead of answering it, too.
That routes you through a system outside of Up-Front (the talent agency), separate from the usual one.
The penalty for that is severe.
I wonder if the agency still has to pay a system fee per transaction even when a fan ghosts on payment.
Birthday events are convenience-store payment only for regular members though…
Oh no…
Background and Key Points
Hello! Project is Up-Front Works’ idol umbrella label, home to groups like Morning Musume and Angerme, and its official fan clubs (FC) run their own ticket lotteries for members’ birthday events, separate from general public sales or resale platforms like the “Fortune” service mentioned in the thread. In Japan’s idol-FC ecosystem there is traditionally no built-in cancellation or resale mechanism once you win a lottery slot — you either pay by the deadline or you don’t, and payment is frequently restricted to convenience-store terminals, which route through a third-party settlement system outside Up-Front’s own infrastructure rather than a simple in-house transaction.
The thread didn’t converge on an answer. Posters describe years of occasionally missing payments — even dozens of times across a decade of heavy attendance — with no visible consequence, which is the majority experience reported. But at least one poster claims that after accidentally double-winning the same M-Hallo event through two different FC channels and letting one lapse, their luck dried up afterward — a claim other posters immediately contested, suggesting cross-FC coordination is supposed to prevent duplicate wins in the first place and hinting the story may not be genuine.
What outsiders likely miss is that “no cancellation” isn’t strictly true: one poster describes FC staff manually canceling an entry over a phone call, with a warning about future consequences — a discretionary, person-to-person fix that contradicts the broader assumption that ghosting is the only option. The thread also never explains that convenience-store payments may cost Up-Front a processing fee even on a no-show, which is likely why that payment method carries the harshest unofficial penalty.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project) thread「If You Apply for a Birthday Event and Ghost on the Payment, Will You Be Barred From Applying Next Time?」.
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