Live Nation is partnering with Korea’s Busan Metropolitan City and to develop a new arena and multi-cultural entertainment complex in Busan, South Korea’s second most populous city.

The new destination will include a 20,000-capacity arena, an exhibition centre, hotels, and an educational facility to foster talent in K-pop and K-culture.

Live Nation will manage the venue, with the local Live Nation Korea team also providing expertise on content and concert promotion to book talent.

“As we continue to expand our global venue business, Busan will be an important touring hub for global superstars who are touring more of the world, as well as K-pop and local artists,” says Live Nation president & CEO Michael Rapino. “We’re excited to help create more opportunities for artists and fans to connect, while also contributing to the growing tourism in the city.”

Busan City will assist with the approval procedures relevant to the project site and provide administrative support. Three potential sites are being investigated for the complex in Busan City’s projects.

“The arena will become a hub of tourism empowered by K-pop, contributing to the local and national economy”

“The arena will become a hub of tourism empowered by K-pop, contributing to the local and national economy,” says Busan’s mayor Heong-Joon Park. “The complex will create many opportunities and synergies with other cultural organizations in Busan including Osiria Sightseeing Complex, Haeundae Beach and local festivals like Busan Fireworks Festival and G-Star. We are looking forward to seeing Busan transforming into a global city full of cultural diversity.”

Live Nation’s Venue Nation owns, operates or has equity interests in a global portfolio of more than 250 live entertainment venues. Across the Asia Pacific, Venue Nation also oversees Grange Road in Singapore, Spark Arena in New Zealand, and the Palais Theatre, Festival Hall, Anita’s Theatre, Fortitude Music Hall, and Hindley Street Music Hall in Australia.

It was reported earlier this year that South Korea is to gain three new concert venues by the end of 2025 as it moves to capitalise on the demand created by the K-pop explosion.

PHOTO: Heong-Joon Park, mayor of Busan City, Greg Gillin, SVP – venue development, Live Nation, and Seung-Han Lee, CEO of B.GET.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Promoters of Bruno Mars’ upcoming concerts in South Korea have cancelled dozens of tickets being touted online at almost six times’ face value.

The American singer and songwriter is slated to perform at the Jamsil Olympic Main Stadium in Seoul on 17-18 June under the banner, Hyundai Card Super Concert 27 Bruno Mars – his first gigs in Korea since 2014.

Tickets went on general sale last month, priced from 77,000 won (€53) to 250,000 won (€172). However, Korea JoongAng Daily reports that despite organiser Live Nation Asia banning the trading of tickets on unauthorised sites, several have changed hands on resale platforms for double their original price, while two ground floor tickets were being offered at 300,000 won (€2,058).

Live Nation has confirmed it intervened and cancelled the initial transactions after discovering more than 60 tickets that were dealt illegally on the secondary market. It says it will continue to check for unauthorised sales.

The shows form part of the 37-year-old’s first tour of Asia in five years

Mars will also play the Philippine Arena in Manila, Philipines, from 24-25 June. The shows form part of the 37-year-old’s first tour of Asia in five years.

His 24K Magic Tour, which garnered US$367.7 million worldwide and is the 17th highest-grossing tour of all-time, stopped off in Japan, Taiwan, China, Macau, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong from April-May 2018.

Mars will also headline two nights at Brazil’s new 105,000-cap festival The Town in São Paulo, with tickets for the 3&10 September dates selling out in just 72 minutes.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

At the epicentre of K-pop, everything moves at lightning speed. With quarantine measures lifting in 2022, the region’s hunger for live shows reaching ravenous extremes, population growing, and its IT platforms outperforming any in the world, South Korea’s live music culture has not so much bounced as catapulted back to life.

“This country is an extremely trendy market, with everything moving fast, including fashion, trends etc,” says Tommy Jinho Yoon, CEO of ACI Live Asia, one of the region’s biggest promoters alongside Live Nation, Creativeman, Summer Sonic, and Ovation Productions. “Everything needs to be done quickly, and there is no time for patience. This is the general mentality of the pop culture in South Korea, and it’s been like this for many years. Korea has always been aggressive towards the entertainment world, meaning people really love music and live shows here. Regardless of any economic changes and challenges that may be faced through the region, there will always be demands for shows here.”

Pre-pandemic, ACI had launched YOURSUMMER Festival, the first festival in Korea to consist largely of international acts (including Rita Ora and Zedd) and saw their show with The 1975 sell out at Seoul’s Olympic Hall. Such levels of international action are swiftly returning to the region. But as K-pop has become a global sensation; Yoon argues that the
business has grown unnecessarily combative in South Korea.

“Collaborating with pop and K-pop artists who are already popularly established in Korea, are the best methods of building an artist here”

“Competition would have to be one of the primary challenges yet also one of the biggest ways of creating opportunities,” he says. “If there is one artist everyone wants, several promoters make several offers, resulting in a bidding war. No holds barred! I’m sure this sort of challenge takes place in other regions as well, but from our experiences having offices in Korea and the US, we see Korea’s competitiveness is at a much higher level, resulting in promoters having no respect for one another.

“Japan still seems to better-understand the meaning of respect in the business world […] generally speaking, there is less of a war in the entertainment world in Japan compared to South Korean entertainment companies.”

The popularity of K-pop is also the key to success for new artists wanting to break in the territory, say Live Nation Korea’s Steven Kim and Yongbae Cho, who say artists’ overall style should be relevant to current K-pop trends.

“Collaborating with pop and K-pop artists who are already popularly established in Korea, are the best methods of building an artist here,” they explain. “Younger fans in Korea are more drawn to discover new artists online who are actively communicating with their followers on social media, sharing their other attributes besides music, for example, talking about and/or sharing their looks, taste in fashion, lifestyle, celebrity friends, and so on.”

“Regardless of the technology advancements, the fundamental ingredients that formed music was from the hearts for the hearts”

Yoon emphasises the importance of trust and firm relationships within the live music industry – alongside a firm grip on social media promotion – as key to success.

“Due to our long history of being one of the promoters that essentially created the international show market and festivals in the region for [the] last 25 years, we have accumulated a person-to-person, relationship-based community with fans, which still plays a very valuable and undeniably important role. And we believe it will always remain as one of, if not the most important tools to sustain concert marketing in the region, regardless of the technical advancement of the marketing world in the future.”

By establishing a unified network of promoter allies across southeast Asia as “the engine to sustain and enhance the development of international tours,” Yoon sets a sense of loyalty between artists, managers, agents, promoters, and fans at the core of a successful South Korean strategy.

“Regardless of the technology advancements, the fundamental ingredients that formed music was from the hearts for the hearts,” he says. “As we promote shows, rather than just looking at numbers, we try to connect with the audience for better communication and to genuinely provide better foundations and to educate each other, which motivates and results in new innovations. Although Korea is extremely trendy and everything moves quickly, there’s still the essence of the basic human foundation that respects genuine music from the heart, regardless of genre. I believe this applies to anywhere in the world.”

The Global Promoters Report is published in print, digitally, and all content is also available as a year-round resource on the IQ site. The Global Promoters Report includes key summaries of the major promoters working across 40+ markets, unique interviews and editorial on key trends and developments across the global live music business.

To access all content from the current Global Promoters Report, click here.

Stray Kids have broken the record for the most tickets sold by a K-pop boy band in Australia.

The group have sold more than 42,000 tickets across four shows – two nights each at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena (17-18 February) and Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena (21-22 February) – on their current Maniac tour, produced by Live Nation.

The previous record was held by Big Bang, who played two nights at Qudos Bank Arena and one night at Rod Laver Arena on their Live Nation-promoted 2015 Made tour.

“The immense popularity of Stray Kids highlights the strong demand for K-Pop in the market and the ever-growing fanbase of the genre in Australia”

“Live Nation is committed to the development of K-pop, not just within Australia but across the Asia Pacific,” says Live Nation Korea MD Yongbae Cho. “This is evidenced by our commitment to touring K-pop in the region, having toured Blackpink, Big Bang, G-Dragon, GOT7, and many others.”

The run marks Stray Kids’ first arena tour in Australia, with the first arena dates selling out within hours of tickets going on sale.  The tour will also mark the return of Aussie-Korean members Bang Chan and Felix to Australia, who are set to perform in front of their hometown crowd in Sydney.

“The immense popularity of Stray Kids highlights the strong demand for K-Pop in the market and the ever-growing fanbase of the genre in Australia,” adds Cho.

“There is a broad community who’s very engaged in the genre in pretty much every market around the world”

Blackpink are also set to visit Australia in June. Roger Field, president of Live Nation Asia Pacific, discussed the K-pop phenomenon in a recent interview with The Australian.

“It’s increasingly part of the mainstream pop offering,” says Field. “A lot of people may not be across it, but there is a broad community who’s very engaged in the genre in pretty much every market around the world, because it delivers fashion, catchy songs, and a lifestyle.

“We’ve had the privilege of a long commitment to growing the genre across the globe, and that commitment is pulling all the levers to escalate these artists very quickly into arenas and stadiums.”

The rise of the genre will be explored in How K-pop Conquered the World, the opening panel of this year’s ILMC at 10am on Wednesday 1 March, chaired by Tommy Jinho Yoon of ICA-Live-Asia.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.