[Weekend Money] BTS Is Back: Will Their World Tour Break the Global Attendance Record?

"High likelihood of exceeding 5 million attendees"
Previous record was Taylor Swift with 4.6 million
World tour revenue projected at 2 trillion won

The number of attendees for BTS's upcoming world tour, set to mark the group's full-member comeback after completing military service next month, is expected to exceed 5 million. Revenue from the world tour is projected to surpass 2 trillion won.

Kim Youhyuk, an analyst at IBK Investment & Securities, presented this outlook in a recent report titled "High Probability That BTS World Tour Attendance Will Exceed 5 Million." The BTS world tour is scheduled to kick off in Goyang, South Korea, in April and then move on to North America, Europe, South America, and Asia. A total of 79 shows across 34 cities have been announced so far, the highest number of dates ever for a single K-pop artist tour.

"No restricted-view seats, favorable for ticket sales... HYBE is our top pick in the sector"

Kim cited the stage design as the reason for his high estimate of attendance. He said, "This tour will be staged in a 360-degree in-the-round format with the stage in the center, so there will be no restricted-view seats. This is expected to maximize ticket sales at stadiums." He added that his estimate of 2.77 million attendees (41 shows) for the North American and European legs of the tour, calculated without applying the restricted-view seat reduction factor that is normally used for end-stage concerts, is almost identical to the currently disclosed ticket sales figure of 2.79 million (41 shows).

Using the same method and based on the currently announced tour schedule, he estimated the total number of attendees at 5.22 million. He projected that, once additional dates in Japan and the Middle East scheduled to be announced next year are factored in, the figure is highly likely to expand to the high 5 million range. At that scale, the tour is highly likely to rank as the No. 1 global tour in 2026. It would far exceed Coldplay's 2025 global tour (59 shows, 3.5 million attendees), which ranked No. 1 that year, and is also expected to surpass the previous annual record, Taylor Swift's 2023 tour (66 shows, 4.6 million attendees). The highest-grossing tour in history is Taylor Swift's "The Eras Tour," which ran for two years from 2023 to 2024 and drew a total of 10.16 million attendees.

In addition to the world tour, the impact of the concert to be held at Gwanghwamun will also be significant. On March 20, BTS will release its fifth full-length album, and the following day will hold a commemorative concert, "BTS Comeback Live: ARIRANG," at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul to celebrate the release of the fifth studio album. According to an analysis by the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute, a single BTS concert in Korea can generate an economic impact of up to 1.022 trillion won.

Kim projected that the world tour will generate more than 2 trillion won in revenue and over 400 billion won in operating profit. His estimate assumes an average ticket price of 280,000 won, merchandise (MD) sales of 140,000 won per person, and additional sponsorship revenue. Noting that the market consensus currently underestimates the earnings contribution from the BTS world tour, he forecast that HYBE's share price will continue to rise, and stated, "We maintain our Buy rating on HYBE with a target price of 420,000 won, and we continue to view it as our top pick in the sector."

Entertainment Stocks: Continued Growth in Album and Concert Segments

The combined album sales of the four major entertainment companies (HYBE, SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, and YG Entertainment) in January this year are estimated at 4 million copies, up 37.6% from the same period last year. Kim analyzed that, despite January being a traditionally slow season for album releases, HYBE and SM Entertainment drove growth, with first-week sales of 600,000 copies for Dokyeom x Seungkwan (Seventeen), 2.08 million copies for Enhypen, and 910,000 copies for EXO. In terms of digital music, the combined monthly Spotify listeners for the four companies reached an all-time high of 271 million in January. By company, growth rates were 44.5% for HYBE, 21.3% for JYP Entertainment, 17.2% for YG Entertainment, and 5.4% for SM Entertainment.

The combined concert attendance for the four major entertainment companies in January is estimated at about 1.11 million. HYBE drew 220,000 attendees, SM Entertainment 260,000, JYP Entertainment 280,000, and YG Entertainment 340,000. Due to the high base effect from large-scale tours in the same month last year, HYBE's concert attendance declined 5.9% from the previous month. The other three companies, however, continued to post double-digit growth in concert attendance.