It is no secret that I am a fan of BTS, and J-Hope is my bias.

I was excited to learn that he was planning a worldwide tour this Spring and that he would be coming to the United States. However, as most K-pop fans (especially BTS fans, also known as Army) know, buying tickets for BTS is extremely complicated and expensive, and nearly impossible anyway. In fact, it is so complex that I was unable to correctly follow each step. Still, I managed to get tickets! Let me explain what the process was like.

Tickets go on sale on Ticketmaster (the primary company through which Americans purchase concert tickets) on a particular day and time. For J-Hope, the general sale date was Jan. 23, 2025. However, because BTS tickets always sell out within the first half hour or so of the presale (usually the day before), there is no point in trying to buy tickets on the general sale date. In order to be eligible for the presale, you have to buy a US Army membership from Hybe. For people in the US, this costs $22. Not only that, you must buy it for your region. So, if you’re an Army member registered in Korea, you would not be eligible for the presale for an American show.

You also have to become a member before Jan. 15, 2025. In addition, one had to register through Weverse “From 6 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 14 to 8 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025 (ET).” I neglected to do this step.

My friend and I decided we would both try to buy tickets. She and I added the presale date and time to our calendar (Jan. 22, 2025, 3 p.m.) and we were prepared. That morning, I logged into my Ticketmaster account and made sure that my credit card number was entered and ready to go.

I tried to log in an hour earlier, but Ticketmaster would not allow ticket buyers onto the page. By 2:30 p.m. (half an hour before the purchase time), I was allowed into the Ticketmaster “waiting room.” I was anxious that my Army membership number wouldn’t work, but there was no way to test it. When I went to Weverse, I was able to log in and I had a membership number.

At this point I still had no idea how much tickets were going to cost, but honestly it was irrelevant. I was unlikely to get any tickets. Sometime between 2:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. as I waited in the virtual waiting room, the following message popped up:

“Please have your 9-digit US Army membership number ready to shop when it’s your turn.

"Tickets for this event have been priced in advance by the tour from $73.05-$995.00, including service fees. Price ranges do not apply to VIP packages. Tickets are subject to availability.

"Wait times for today’s sale may exceed 1 hour for some fans.”

In other words, the cheapest tickets were $73, and the most expensive were $995. In the US, Ticketmaster charges many extra fees, so tickets that are $995 could easily have another $150 in fees (so it would have been more like $1,145). These did not include the VIP packages, which would add another $500 to $600 onto the ticket price, plus the extra fees charged by Ticketmaster. One could spend $1,800 total.

At precisely 3:00 p.m., Ticketmaster placed me in the queue. My spot was 73,975. There were 73,974 people in front of me. Still, I was luckier than my friend, whose spot in line was around 78,000. The venue I was trying to buy tickets for (Barclays Center in New York) has a capacity of 19,000. Still, I was in line, so I might as well wait.

By the time it was 3:11 p.m., I had moved up to 71,550.

3:37 p.m. -- 54,138

3:45 p.m. --- 34,358

3:52 p.m. -- 15,758

3:55 p.m. -- 758

About 5 minutes later, I was finally on the page where I could purchase a ticket. First, I had to enter my 9-digit US Army membership number. Unfortunately, every time I entered it, Ticketmaster told me it was invalid. During this time, I frantically texted my friend -- she asked me if I had registered the number at Weverse, and I had not. It didn’t matter because she was on the page to buy tickets a minute later, and there were no tickets left.

So, we had failed to buy tickets on the primary market. Still, there is a secondary market. In the US, these sites are regulated, and Ticketmaster also allows people to resell their tickets. My friend and I decided that we would buy tickets anyway -- even above the very high ticket prices. We would connect later that night to strategize.

Sometime after dinner, we visited a number of secondary market vendors (Stubhub, SeatGeek, VividSeats, Tickpick and so forth) online. We went back and forth about what we were willing to pay. I was not willing to pay $500 for tickets on the balcony -- somehow, I convinced my friend that we should get floor seats and treat ourselves. I told her we were old and could afford it.

In the end, we bought tickets in the center of the floor section, in Row 9. I paid more than I’ve ever paid for a concert ticket, but it was not much more than the secondary market prices for the front of the sections above the floor and even on the balcony. There were front-row tickets at the same venue going for about $3,500 that night, and ours were cheaper than that. This is how I justified the expense to myself.

So, we bit the bullet. She and I are thrilled to see Hobi. We’re not bringing our husbands, so we rationalized that it’s really only half price. I looked on the website the next day, and tickets for the front row in Oakland, California, were over $10,000. Relative to that price, our tickets were a bargain!

Grace Kao

Grace Kao is an IBM professor of sociology and professor of ethnicity, race and migration at Yale University. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. -- Ed.