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The story
At the food event “Local Food Fight in Tottori,” held November 7–8 in Kurayoshi, Tottori Prefecture, a massive gap between projected and actual turnout has become a problem. Organizers had expected 50,000 visitors, but actual turnout was only in the hundreds, prompting vendors to complain of financial losses. The event’s executive committee chair was YouTuber “Sayoto.” (260,000 subscribers), who, along with Yasumi Matsubayashi, representative of organizing company TOSU LLC, issued a string of apologies from November 10 to 11. On 5ch, opinions split over the gap between subscriber count and real-world drawing power, lax advertising, and whether vendors’ own sales estimates had been reasonable.
November 11, 2026, 12:00 PM
Vendors at the gourmet food event “Local Food Fight in Tottori,” held November 7–8 in Kurayoshi, Tottori Prefecture, have been voicing complaints of financial losses one after another. Although organizers had advertised an expected turnout of 50,000, actual attendance reportedly came in at only a few hundred. Executive committee chair “Sayoto.” (260,000 subscribers) and Yasumi Matsubayashi, representative of organizing company TOSU LLC, issued a series of apologies from November 10 through 11.
Local Food Fight in Tottori was a two-day food event held November 7–8 on the lawn at the Ōmidō temple ruins site in front of the Tottori Prefectural Museum of Art. Food vendors gathered from across Japan were split into an “East” team and a “West” team, competing based on two-day sales totals. Admission was free, and food was obtained by buying meal tickets at a reception desk and exchanging them for items at each booth.
Source: yutura.net / Original article here
What people said
I mean, even the participants should've realized there's no way 50,000 people were showing up in Tottori, right?
There were famous YouTubers and supposedly capable marketers involved, so why did it flop
Was it the location?
It says 'guaranteed' view counts
How does that even work
Kinda curious
Why do the people in the bottom right only have job titles listed with no names? lol
Nothing good ever comes of amateurs running large-scale events
Just stick to a neighborhood bazaar
Normal day
Pokémon GO event
People still turn out in numbers like that?
Is this a recent photo?
Coming from a guy with 8 subscribers, lol
But anyone with a normal brain would know this wasn't the kind of event that pulls 50,000 people… the vendors are the ones at fault here
Even past a million subscribers, pulling in 50,000 people would be touch and go
The West team I get, but did the East team restaurants even properly show up?
Looking at the vendor list, yeah, it was overwhelmingly dominated by western Japan including Tottori
Calling that an 'East vs West' battle doesn't even make sense to begin with lol
Rica Matsumoto's live performance didn't even get a stage — she was just on the stone pavement lol
https://x.com/rica_matsumoto3/status/2118971444239687742?a=D-0H_vyzOwMOF4wtJ3I&s=19
It's not just a bad turnout estimate, there's clear negligence here too
Did they just carelessly assume the YouTuber's fans would show up?
These guys are supposed to be experienced at this kind of thing though
https://image.news.livedoor.com/newsimage/stf/0/b/0ba7b_1610_e5d533fc_126f310e.jpg
Even if 50,000 people had shown up, sales wouldn't rise if the food wasn't good. And if 500 people came but a stall still only sold 10 servings, that's overwhelmingly the stall's own fault.
Nobody does this stuff as a volunteer anymore these days
'It's the haters' fault'
'My chronic illness got worse because of it'
And the one replying is the executive committee chair himself
Jumping right in to shift the blame
Did they not even realize other prefectures built their events up from scratch over years…
They underestimated every single aspect of this
Seeing stuff like this, I kind of get why the park-use permit wasn't approved until the last minute
Feels like the locals weren't too keen on this happening either
You just don't know anything, do you
If anything, I'd say 500 people showing up is impressive
Most local residents have zero interest in the event itself, so it only works if you draw people in from outside
Should be obvious if you think about it normally lol
An Aeon Mall out in the boonies had a YouTuber with over a million subscribers visit a while back, and it was still dead empty
Honestly, I bet even in Tokyo they wouldn't get 1,000 people
Background and Key Points of This Story
At the root of this controversy is a structural gap: subscriber counts on YouTube and social media don’t necessarily translate into real-world drawing power. A figure like 260,000 subscribers signals a certain level of name recognition, but it guarantees nothing about actual turnout — real-world constraints such as how well the event was publicized, transportation access to the venue, and the size of the host city’s population (Kurayoshi has a population of roughly 45,000, as commenters on the thread pointed out) all shape the outcome. Thread commenters were split between those arguing the basis for the 50,000-visitor projection was never made clear, and those arguing vendors themselves should have known better than to trust such a rosy estimate — so no single party has been pinned with sole responsibility. The fact that the executive committee chair responded to criticism on social media by attributing it to “haters” also drew attention as an example of deflecting blame.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Sports/Entertainment News+) thread “YouTuber with 260,000 subscribers serves as executive committee chair for food event; expected to draw 50,000 but only hundreds show up, vendors report losses.”
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