BTS’ Love Yourself: Speak Yourself tour sold out stadiums throughout the globe barely a year ago. A total of over a million ticket purchasers saw a pounding opening liturgy at the top of the K-pop band’s set in the shape of the song “Dionysus” on each night of the 20-date journey, which made $116 million.
Seven supplicant white figures appeared amid Greek columns and a large altar as flames shot up from the stage. RM (full name: Kim Nam-joon) led the way, twirling the staff of the namesake mythological deity as group members Jin (Kim Seok-jin), SUGA (Min Yoon-gi), j-hope (Jung Ho-seok), Jimin (Park Ji-min), V (Kim Tae-hyung), and Jung Kook (Jeon Jung-kook) flanked him in the procession.
The crowd, in a night of deafening cries, transformed into willing maenads and satyrs, captivated by the band’s presence. An anthem about self-discovery and rebirth through the joyful collective experience of music was accepted as intended – as if from the gods.
Idol worship isn’t a new concept in pop music; recall John Lennon’s daring claim that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus” in 1966? But there’s something about BTS that amps up the adoration. The global army of BTS fans is known as ARMY, which stands for Adorable Representative MC for Youth, a moniker adopted by Big Hit Entertainment, the band’s management firm.
ARMY has the largest Twitter following of any K-pop group, with 29.2 million followers (more than quadruple that of any other K-pop group) and expanding every day. BTS has 30.6 million Instagram followers (which is rapidly growing), second only to YG Entertainment’s Blackpink, which has 29.3 million.
“We exist because ARMY exists,” Jin explains.
To get a sense of BTS Inc.’s scope, consider this: a 2018 research by the Hyundai Research Institute projected that the boy band’s ecosystem contributes $4.9 billion to South Korea’s GDP annually, putting it on track to generate more value over the next ten years than the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
According to the report, one out of every 13 tourists to the country in 2017 came for BTS-related pilgrimages. It’s possible that this ratio will increase in the near future. Since the release of BTS’ first all-English track, “Dynamite,” on Aug. 21, Spotify has seen a 300 percent increase in new listeners.
Source:variety.com