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The story
A post on 5ch’s “Hello! Project” board caught fire after someone noted that an acquaintance who’d just joined the Hello! Project fan club received a membership number in the 160,000s — prompting the observation, “About a year ago (around June 2025) the numbers were only in the 142,000s, so doesn’t that mean nearly 20,000 new members have joined?” Thread posters floated Juice=Juice’s popularity and buzz around new members as reasons behind the apparent surge in new fans, but opinions split on whether the jump in membership numbers actually reflects real membership growth, given the presence of people with multiple accounts and the handling of members who’ve quit. The discussion also branched into a debate over whether concert tickets should go digital.
What people said
My friend just joined the Hello Pro FC and their membership number was over 160,000, so membership's probably grown by around 20,000 this past year…?
June 2025 → around 142,000
Growing is impressive, but stopping the bleeding is the bigger deal for management, honestly.
Back in early 2025 I was kind of thinking about quitting myself.
I joined as a 9th-gen new fan back in 2011, so that used to be me too.
I left the FC for a while so my number's different now.
Kind of a waste — if I'd kept 02-something I could've flexed as an old-timer.
Hope hall concerts go digital-ticket too.
People like you aren't even 5% of the total.
They can't haul that equipment out to every regional venue, and having local promoters handle it isn't realistic, so tours will stay paper tickets for a while yet.
That just means Up-Front (their management company) might not have the equipment — in other idol scenes, digital tickets are the norm even out in the regions.
And since this business model's kept them alive for 30 years, there's not much point criticizing it.
Even so, it's a lottery-loss festival, so bump up the capacity.
Also, Juice=Juice selling out both Budokan and PIA Arena is just abnormal — Tsubaki Factory's numbers are so rough that MoAn (the Morning Musume/Angerme joint activity) had to loosen its conditions.
Because there's no way new fans exist for any other group?
There are posts out there like "I just joined the FC as a new Angerme/BEYOOOOONDS fan."
Exactly this.
The posts I see most are "An Angerme fan joined the FC" type things.
Don't really see that for Juice.
Probably like 10 to 50 out of that 20,000, right?
For venues outside Kanto, isn't it not Up-Front that provides the equipment?
Are you mixing it up with merch?
All the more reason they could easily roll out digital tickets by following other fandoms' lead, no?
"Could do it" and "choosing not to" are different things though?
Like, "please don't"-type reasoning?
If they're not being recycled, that just makes it more certain that it's a straight-up 20,000 increase, no?
If they think fans relying on resale sites make up the core base, they'll end up loosening entry conditions like they did for Oda Sakura's graduation concert.
Fair, that's one way to look at it.
And obviously that pulls up concert attendance and merch sales too — all thanks to Juice=Juice, basically.
Out in the regions the "omaitsu" (regular-attendee) rate drops, so merch was flying off the shelves in both Hiroshima and Kyoto.
So it's grown by a full 100,000 since then?
If we're talking that long a timeframe, wouldn't there also be a lot of people who quit?
Membership numbers got reset once in the past, and after that they were assigned fairly randomly, I think.
I joined about 18 years ago and got an 08,000-something number.
I also had one from about 26 years ago, but that got caught as a duplicate account and I was kicked out, so I don't even remember the number lol.
There might actually be a shot at a dome tour.
Guess I'll just have to take refuge with Tsubaki Factory or Rosy Chronicle for a while.
Is there like a six-month (membership) option or something?
Hello Project only offers annual memberships.
If you worked at the agency you'd actually know the real numbers though.
Judging by Haro-Colle (the Hello! Project fan event), there's at least 30,000.
In the Berryz Kobo/°C-ute era, apparently °C-ute was on a whole different level.
These days you have to register your favorite group when you join, so they probably track it that way now.
Background and Key Points of Debate
Hello! Project membership numbers are issued in order of sign-up, so the gap between two numbers works as a rough gauge of how many people have joined. However, it’s never been officially disclosed whether the numbers of members who quit get reused, or how many of the new numbers belong to people holding multiple accounts just to secure concert tickets — so opinions in the thread were split, ranging from “the real figure is much smaller” to “even accounting for duplicate accounts, it’s still grown.” The debate over digital ticketing also split along lines of whether the holdup is Up-Front’s own equipment or logistics at regional venues, with comparisons drawn to other idol fandoms — though all of this remains speculation. Because membership numbers feed directly into ticket competition rates for FC-only shows and into merch sales, the topic draws attention as a proxy for a group’s drawing power. That said, it’s worth keeping in mind that the “20,000 more members” figure raised in this thread is just one person’s guess based on a single member’s registration number, not an official statistic.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “Thanks to the flood of new fans, Hello! Project’s FC membership is up 20,000.”
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