For those who don’t know, there’s been quite a bit of noise on the Korean side of the kpop space over Illit’s current struggle to fill seats for their encore concerts. A number of posts have been going viral on social media, with people sharing screenshots and screen recordings showing just how many seats are still available.
Since I can’t include the screenshots here, I’ll try my best to describe what the ticketing situation currently looks like. When tickets first went on sale on the 17th, it looked like roughly half of the available seats were sold, maybe not even half. Fast forward a few days to the 20th, and only a few dozen additional seats had been sold compared to the first day. There’s really barely any difference between the first day and now. That means there are still thousands of seats left, with half of the venue still empty. And that’s without even counting the side sections with obstructed views that haven’t been opened, as well as the entire third floor, which is also still unopened. Given the current pace of sales, I wouldn’t bet on those additional sections to be available for sale. They’ll most likely remain closed.
The main difference between these encore concerts and the tour opener back in March is that Illit started their tour at TicketLink Live Arena, which is considerably smaller than Inspire Arena, where the encore concerts are being held. They were able to fill the smaller venue for the tour opener, but they’re now having a much harder time filling the larger venue for the encore. What’s also worth noting is that ticket prices haven’t increased. They’re exactly the same as they were at the beginning of the tour.
Now, it’s pretty unusual to see a well known Kpop group struggle this much to sell concert tickets in South Korea. Ticketing is usually an absolute blood bath experience in Korea. Popular artists typically sell a large portion, if not all, of their tickets as soon as the ticketing period begins, so the current situation is definitely noteworthy.
And unlike concerts outside of Korea, such as in Europe or the US, Korean concerts are predominantly filled with hardcore fans. Casual fans don’t tend to attend domestic concerts in large numbers. Normally, pretty much everyone in the venue will have a lightstick and know the fan chants from A to Z.
So why is this happening? My conjecture is that Belift may have overestimated Illit’s domestic concert demand following the success of It’s Me and booked a venue without having a particularly accurate picture of the size of their actual domestic fandom. Their recent success clearly brought them more attention and listeners, but that doesn’t necessarily mean all of those people converted into dedicated fans who are willing to attend the group’s concert.
For some time now, there’s been a recurring sentiment among domestic kpop fans that Illit doesn’t have a particularly strong core fandom, despite the GP recognition they’ve received from songs like Magnetic and It’s Me. Looking at the current ticket sales, there may be some validity to that sentiment. This is a classic example of a label overestimating the actual demand for their artist.
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