For BTS fans, it has never been just about the music

On Jan 22 at 9.02am, the virtual queue for BTS’s US tour presale was already in the hundreds of thousands.

By the time Ms Genesis Salone logged into Ticketmaster from her work desk – decorated in the group’s signature color purple with a matching purple iPad and her favorite BT21 plush toy Koya close at hand – at 11am for the Chicago presale start time, the Dayton, Ohio, resident was mildly eased to see that her queue number was 9,500.

“I literally told my supervisor, I’m going through a lot right now. I will get back to work. This is official Army business, and I have to lock in,” the 25-year-old clerical worker says.

Ms Salone was hardly alone. Army, as the K-pop super group’s fans are known, wielded multiple browsers and devices, and fell back on the support of group chats to compare their queue numbers as they feverishly tried to score tickets to BTS’s first world tour in more than six years. Within minutes, the first cities were gone.

Ms Salone managed to secure tickets, but others stuck tens of thousands deep in the queue were met with grayed-out screens and a heartbreaking message: “Sold Out.”

Concert lovers know this ticketing frenzy well. Since the pandemic, tours big and small have routinely triggered overwhelming demand, making long virtual queues just another feature of modern fandom. But the scale of BTS’s return, and the intensity and loyalty of its fanbase, made that demand harder to satisfy. 

The group’s world tour for its new album, Arirang, is expected to span 82 shows and, with merchandise and livestreaming revenue, could generate as much as US$2 billion (S$2.6 billion), rivaling Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras tour.

For American fans of the K-pop sensation, it is not a matter of whether they will go, it is how. It has been six long years since Covid-19 cancelled BTS’s Map of the Soul tour, and almost four since the supergroup’s 10th anniversary video shocked viewers with the announcement of an extended hiatus to allow for solo projects and the enlistment of all seven members in South Korea’s mandatory military service.

“I refuse to watch that video because I’m already so emotional,” said Ms Salone, who was among the millions of fans whose Map of the Soul tickets were cancelled.

Building the Army superfandom

BTS’s ability to generate this level of anticipation is rooted in an artist-to-fan relationship that extends far beyond music – one that has helped define what modern superfandom looks like. For more than a decade, the group has built a constant, multiplatform presence that gives Army an unparalleled degree of access. Although it has been a while since the group has given its fans any new music to enjoy, the light surrounding BTS has not dimmed.

The group has created an around-the-clock stream of content that lets fans follow their daily lives and personalities whenever they want. That ecosystem spans content including Run BTS, a long-running variety show series with more than 150 episodes, as well as livestreams, behind-the-scenes clips of music videos and studio sessions, and frequent posts on YouTube and Hybe’s social platform Weverse.

“My son’s almost 13, and they’re just great role models to see how hard they work, how much they practice,” said 54-year-old Cleveland resident Susan Jarecke, who fell in love with BTS after an episode of Carpool Karaoke. “BTS puts out so much information and so much content.”

Researchers studying K-pop fandoms have noted that this sustained interaction drives unusually high engagement in fan communities, compared with more passive listening audiences of other artists, who engage primarily around major releases or live events. This engagement manifests itself in album and music video streaming campaigns and coordinated purchasing. Group chats and social media guides outline how fans can stream, buy or vote for songs to win awards, turning what are usually individual, mindless actions into a collective movement to support the group.

In BTS’s case, the engagement is often described as parasocial: one-sided relationships between audiences and public figures. But the scale and consistency of the group’s output complicate that label.

Many global artists offer access, but BTS has paired that visibility with a steady alignment between its messaging and actions, giving fans a sense that the connection is not only frequent but genuine. The group’s values – themes of identity, inequality and mental health – align with fans. That distinction becomes most visible in moments when fans move in unison.

Loyalty built on shared values

In 2020, even with their tour revenue lost, BTS and its management donated US$1 million to the Black Lives Matter movement following the killing of George Floyd. Within hours, fans across the world matched the donation, mobilising through the same digital networks they use to organise streaming and chart campaigns.

In the weeks surrounding the protests, Army, as well as K-pop fans broadly, flooded social media with videos and hashtags to disrupt racist messaging. That same capacity for rapid coordination extended into other arenas: After US President Donald Trump’s campaign promoted a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, TikTok users and K-pop fans – including Army – began reserving tickets with no intention of attending as a way to protest, an act that left large sections of the audience empty.

And in 2021, in partnership with Unicef, the group delivered remarks on youth, resilience and global cooperation at the UN General Assembly. It has helped generate almost 5 million tweets on the topic, while raising around US$3.6 million for Unicef initiatives, according to the organisation.

That alignment between what the group says and does has helped turn moments of support into a collective desire to support the group’s moral efforts and messages.

“I remember listening to Blue & Grey (from 2020’s BE album), and it catapulted me,” says Waynesboro, Virginia, resident Zaniah Harris, who said she’s dealt not only with Covid-19 and racial injustice over the past six years, but also the loss of her parents.

“BTS’s music was a steady, reassuring presence. That song told me to acknowledge the pain that I was feeling, and that it’s fine to want to be happier than what you are right now,” she said. Ms Harris has tickets to see BTS in Las Vegas and Chicago in 2026.

In the days leading up to a typical BTS album release, the buildup can feel as significant as the music itself, all designed to make fans feel special and stoke loyalty. Arirang was no different.

It started with cryptic advertisements on billboards and bus stops asking citizens: “What is your love song?” Then, it turned into an extravagant display of roses handed out to Army – and non-Army – in London, Los Angeles and Seoul. Landmarks and public spaces were transformed with projections and large-scale posters tied to the comeback. There are even free listening cruises on the Han River in partnership with Spotify, along with other global pop-ups, in-app experiences and fan events.

Even hiccups do not quite capture the full picture of BTS’s momentum. Shares of Hybe fell sharply following a heavily promoted BTS comeback concert at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul, in partnership with Netflix, that drew a smaller in-person crowd than expected, prompting renewed scrutiny of how closely the company’s fortunes are tied to BTS.

Fans blamed the attendance on strict crowd-control measures, with authorities limiting access and closing off large sections of surrounding streets to manage safety. The comeback concert’s stream drew 18.4 million global viewers, becoming Netflix’s most-watched title that week and the No. 1 show in 24 countries.

What fans are willing to spend

Ms Nayeli Martinez, an 18-year-old college student from Tampa, Florida, prepared for months for concert tickets, bolting to buy the act’s US$22 Army Membership on Weverse even before Arirang tour dates and locations were confirmed. The hope: solidify her chances of securing the user-unique presale code for ticketing, rather than fighting for a ticket during general sale.

“Even if they don’t come to Florida, I could still use it to buy the tour merch,” she said. After that, she began researching how-to videos on TikTok for ticketing day while also checking her bank accounts to set a spending limit, which she originally capped at US$600 but stretched to US$700 after her dad offered to help her out.

She was lucky enough to secure a cheaper ticket in Tampa for April 25. “Many of us thought nosebleeds were gonna be like US$500.”

Demand for BTS’s music has been just as high. Many K-pop groups, including BTS, typically release blurred previews of album components before sales begin, but this rollout offered even less detail. Fans were met with white silhouettes instead of the album’s features, each accompanied by a brief description, leaving them to purchase the product without knowing what they were getting. Within 30 minutes of the initial preorders for the band’s multi-edition release, all 16 different collectible versions sold out on Weverse.

The rush reflects the scale of demand that has followed the group for years. Arirang surpassed 4 million preorders in its first week, topping BTS’s previous effort, Map of the Soul: 7’s record of 3.42 million preorders. It went on to become Spotify’s most-streamed album of 2026 in a single day, with about 110 million streams. According to Hybe, Hotels.com showed that overseas searches for Seoul rose 160 per cent within 48 hours of the tour announcement.

For 54-year-old Stephanie Solomon, seeing BTS in person has almost become non-negotiable. As a lifelong Prince fan, she wished she had seen him perform more before he died in 2016.

“That was kind of my impetus. I’m going to see them as much as I can. I’m going to see the artists I love as much as I can,” she said.

Some of her friends will attend as many as 12 performances, but Ms Solomon will see the group perform live six times: twice in Tampa, twice in El Paso, Texas, once in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and once in Saint-Denis, France. She expects to spend more than US$7,500 on this effort.

Although there are no signs of fatigue in the fandom-driven economy among fans celebrating BTS’s comeback, questions remain over how sustainable such spending will be as the pop, gaming and sports industries increasingly sought to replicate and scale the fan monetisation model during the group’s absence. For now, however, fans who have been waiting for a tour since the pandemic are ready to go all in.

Ms Solomon said that if money were not a factor, she would never stop spending on BTS. Instead, she has set her ceiling for this tour at around US$10,000. BLOOMBERG