Immediately after the Big Hit offline concert ticket price was announced, a big controversy broke out over whether this was ‘reasonable’ or ‘too expensive’ for fans.
Big Hit announced the line-up and announced the official offline ticket price.
On November 12 at 4 PM KST, Big Hit Entertainment released more information about the joint ‘2021 New Year’s Eve Live’ concert of the label’s artists. In particular, this concert will take place in both online and offline forms on December 31, 2020. ‘2021 NEW YEAR’s EVE LIVE presented by Weverse’ is the first concert with Big Hit Labels artists’ participation at the same event.
Big Hit Entertainment announced a joint performance as they unveiled the various artists that will be joining the concert, including NU’EST, TXT, GFriend, and BTS.
Besides, yesterday (November 12), Big Hit also officially announced the OFFLINE ticket price of this concert. Accordingly, three packages cover different expenses and benefits. The tickets are on sale for 154,000 KRW (~138.15 USD) for the base ‘Live Package.’ The ‘CONNECT Package’ includes the tickets for soundcheck and red carpet entrance for 242,000 KRW (~217.10 USD), and the ‘WE’VE package’ consists of the concert ticket, soundcheck, and red carpet entrance, and a ‘FUN Kit’ for 275,000 KRW (~246.70 USD). It is known that offline tickets will have random seats and will still be purchased through the raffle (a form of the lucky lottery).
Only official Fanclub members of the artists in the line-up are allowed to register for the raffle. They then have to go through a validation process before they can buy a ticket. Big Hit once again did quite rigorously controlling ticket sales to avoid ‘black market tickets.’
Big Hit is criticized for being too greedy because the ticket price is too high
Many fans were very excited about the show as they will see their beloved artist again by the end of 2020 and welcome the new year 2021 with them through this concert. However, when Big Hit Labels revealed the ticket price, many fans and netizens were more upset than excited.
On Theqoo forum, many posts have reached the top of the hot topic for one common reason: Knet thinks this ticket price is too high. According to them, if this is the ticket price of an artist’s own concert, it is reasonable, but this is too expensive for a concert by the company. They gave an example that there will be a lot of BTS fans who want to buy tickets to see idols, but they have to pay high prices to see other idols perform whileBTS will only perform a few songs.
Knet also criticizes the venue for the concert as the KINTEX 1 Exhibition Center in Ilsan. Many people say this is a shabby place, not good quality, and sometimes even arranging plastic chairs for the audience. With such high ticket prices, many people expected Big Hit to do better, but in the end, they only received disappointment. On the online forums, many Knet criticize Big Hit for showing more and more greed.
They think the company used BTS’s name to push the price as high as possible because they believe that no matter what, fans of the group will buy tickets, regardless of whether this is a joint concert, not a private concert of BTS.
Many other netizens think this ticket price is ‘reasonable.’
On the contrary, many fans and netizens said they feel that the concert price is reasonable and not too expensive. Some people point out that although the KINTEX hall is not of top quality, it will be arranged by Big Hit more reasonably. Hence, it seems too early to criticize the company at the moment.
On the other hand, many people think that because of holding offline concerts, Big Hit will have to strictly comply with government regulations in the face of the risk of the COVID-19 epidemic. Accordingly, the company will have to spend a lot of money on disinfection processes, temperature checks, medical staff…
In the section on safety regulations while watching the concert, Big Hit listed many procedures they have followed and will follow. Some examples can be mentioned, such as: Disinfection of the entire hall, seats, stage, doorknobs, restrooms …; Provide hand sanitizer and many other preventive devices; Install multiple cameras to measure body temperature; The medical team is on duty in case of an emergency etc.
