[Grace Kao] What it’s like to buy BTS tickets in US

Last weekend, I hurt my wrists. I had trouble picking up a mug with my left hand, and my right wrist hurt a bit too. Believe it or not, BTS is to blame.

I was part of the mad rush to buy BTS tickets for their upcoming world tour “Arirang.” For me, it caused disruption to my sleep, an elevated heart rate during the day of the presale, and tenseness in my arms and wrist from clicking and typing while trying to buy tickets. Some describe it as akin to the Hunger Games, and they would not be wrong.

Let me share with you my experience.

Taking part in the presale required a BTS Army membership. A global membership costs about $19 and a US membership is $22 on Weverse. Even though the first presale for North America was on Jan. 22, you had to have joined before Jan. 18 to register for the presale. Would-be concertgoers then had to log in to the presale registration site (separate from the Army membership site) and could only select three cities in North America to attempt to buy tickets for during the presale.

If you were interested in tickets in Europe as well as the US, you would have to buy both memberships (US and Global). The global membership would give you the possibility of attempting to enter the presale for three European cities.

All of this is to simply vie for the possibility of entering the presale. Even if you did these first two steps correctly, you might never have the chance to buy tickets during the presale. A lot can go wrong before these two steps, as fans discovered. For example, the BTS Global Army membership actually sold out for a little while during this mad rush.

Next, you had to keep track of the time of the start of the presale date and time for the cities for which you selected. The East Rutherford, New Jersey concerts at the MetLife Stadium on Aug. 1 and 2 are the closest to my house (but the venue is still 12 kilometers away), so I attempted to buy tickets for both shows. The competition might be especially fierce since this is equivalent to the New York City venue. The presale time period was from 11 a.m. to 9:59 p.m. on Jan. 22, local time. This means that you had to log in to Ticketmaster (the required ticket vendor) at least 15-30 minutes before the start of the presale. Of course, you needed to have an account on Ticketmaster and to have entered your credit card information.

Just a few minutes before the presale begins, Ticketmaster puts you in a “Waiting Room.” As soon as you enter, you are given a position in the queue. I was able to stand in the virtual line for both dates and I was incredibly lucky. I began at around No. 3,400 in one and No. 2,800 in the other. Many Army posted online that they were close to 300,000th in line. With the prevalence of AI-altered images, I don’t know if these are real, but I know many people that were No. 28,000 or No. 40,000 in line (my sisters). When I tried to buy tickets for J-Hope last year, my initial position in the queue was No. 73,975.

I waited less than 10 minutes before Ticketmaster opened the presale page for me. At that moment, I had to enter my BTS Army membership number. As soon as that was accepted, the ticket map opened for me. There were tickets available in every section because my position in the queue was so good.

The issue is that one had no idea how much tickets were until one entered the presale. I didn’t even have time to take a screenshot of the range of prices, but online I found images that align with my memory of the range — $83.80-$786.60. The MetLife Stadium has a capacity of close to 60,000 for concerts, so the seats that are $100 to $200 are not that great. If you want to be on the floor, be ready to pay the high end of the range.

In the US, we are allowed to buy up to four tickets. The resale of tickets is legal and widely done. Many Army had no idea if they could get any tickets so they were likely coordinating with their friends and their virtual Army friends.

While I understand that Korean Army are unhappy with the increase in prices of the BTS concerts at Goyang Stadium in April, the most expensive tickets there are about $183, as reported earlier in The Korea Herald. Face-value floor seats would be in the $700-$800 range in the US. Currently, the most expensive tickets on Stubhub (a commonly-used ticket reseller website) for the Aug. 2 BTS concert at the MetLife Stadium is $12,000 for a pair of tickets.

Are these prices exorbitant? In the abstract, it may seem ridiculous to spend $1,000 on concert tickets. However, these prices are in line with (and perhaps a bit less than) what similar artists charge.

I was so fortunate and secured tickets for myself and my friends. I’ve never seen BTS live before (except for J-Hope’s solo tour), so I am beyond excited. Was it worth the injury to my wrists? Absolutely.

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.