From albums to stadiums: K-pop companies look for higher revenue in live concerts

CNBC

15 hours ago

When Blackpink kicks off their "Deadline" world tour in Goyang, South Korea, this weekend, they'll be aiming to top the record-breaking run of their previous tour, which grossed over $330 million and was reportedly the highest-earning in history by a girl group.
Projections from Daishin Securities show that the new tour by the four-member group is likely to rake in 600 billion South Korean won ($440 million), according to South Korean outlet e-daily.
Blackpink's concerts are just one example of how K-pop companies are turning to concerts to shore up their balance sheets.
Amid a decline in album sales that battered their revenue and tanked their share prices in 2024, these agencies lost a combined market cap of 35% from the second half of 2023 to the end of 2024, according to a June 3 note by Goldman Sachs.
South Korea's "Big Four" K-pop agencies are all publicly listed. Hybe Corporation is the largest and is listed on the blue-chip Kospi, while SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment and YG Entertainment are on the small-cap Kosdaq.
Live concerts are one way the "Big Four" are addressing the slumping sales of albums, which traditionally form the bulk of the firms' revenue.
Billboard's midyear Boxscore report revealed that boy group Seventeen, managed by Hybe subsidiary Pledis Entertainment, "essentially doubled its midyear gross for the second consecutive year," thanks to its Right Here world tour, which ran from October 12, 2024, to February 12 this year.
Billboard's information covers all reported shows between Oct. 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025.
The group was the third-highest grossing act in the period, pulling in $120.9 million and an attendance of 842,000 over 30 shows.
Five K-pop acts are on Billboard's top-50 list, up from three in 2023 and 2024 and two in 2022.
"K-pop acts on the midyear Top Tours chart brought in a collective $228 million and sold 1.6 million tickets from 78 shows. That marks a 79% increase over the genre's 2024 showing, which itself was a 93% jump from 2023," Billboard said.
More notably, K-pop concerts defied the broader downtrend in global concert trends. Billboard noted that "this year's midyear charts are down significantly compared with 2024," with a 28% drop year over year in touring revenues, although Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino noted that more artists are waiting until the second and third quarters to launch their tours.
Jiwoo Oh, a research analyst at investment firm CGS International, told CNBC that companies are now turning to concerts because the profit margins of live events are higher compared with album sales.
By holding concerts, companies also have the opportunity to sell merchandise, which has an even higher profit margin than the concerts themselves. The profit margin for merchandise, she said, can reach as high as 50%.
This shift to concerts as a revenue stream can be seen in the companies' first-quarter results. Out of the four major publicly listed K-pop companies, three saw huge increases in concert revenues. JYP Entertainment was the exception.
Most notably, Kospi-listed Hybe Corporation, South Korea's largest K-pop company by market capitalization, saw its concert revenue surpass album and digital sales in the first quarter of 2025.
Concerts accounted for 31% of total revenue in Hybe's first quarter, surpassing the 27.3% share from music sales. In the first quarter of 2024, music revenue made up over 40% of revenue, while concert revenue stood at 12%.
YG Entertainment experienced the largest jump in concert revenue among the four companies, with concert revenue spiking over 270%, reportedly due to world tours from its boy band Treasure and newly debuted girl group Babymonster.
The only exception to the trend was JYP Entertainment, which reported a drop in both concert revenue and profit. The company explained in its first-quarter earnings note that this was due to a lack of large-scale concerts by major artists during the period.
In line with this surge of concert revenue, K-pop stocks — with the exception of JYP — rose between 60% and over 100% year to date, vastly outperforming the Kospi's 28% gain and the Kosdaq's 15.2% increase.
CGS' Oh said that while Hybe and YG are poised to see the largest gains because of the resumption of activities from BTS and Blackpink, respectively, YG is likely to see a higher growth rate because of its smaller stable of artists.
YG currently only has three groups in its stable, the smallest bench among all four companies.
However, a June 26 note by Morgan Stanley said that they believe that expectations for Blackpink have been "over-reflected" in the share price of YG, adding that the agency's "high reliance on a single IP and its shallow slate of performers remains a concern."
The dismal performance of JYP was due to investor concern over contract renewals, CGS' Oh added. Girl group Itzy's contracts are expected to expire in 2025, while members of boy band Stray Kids are facing the possibility of serving South Korea's military service.
Morgan Stanley's note echoes this point on JYP, saying that "we believe the stock needs to see more artists contributing to top line growth, and new teams emerge to support longer term growth."
While rising revenue from concerts is likely to lift all companies, some can capitalize on this trend better than others.
Goldman Sachs said that investors should look out for companies that have "Mega IPs," which are groups that can gross an audience figure of over 1.5 million audience per tour. This figure implies the artist has been able to reach beyond K-pop's traditional target markets and into the Western music scene, it said.
"We believe K-pop is still a growth sector where the leading companies have established a 'system' that can repeatedly produce such global Mega IPs and consequently continue to expand their global audience," Goldman added.
Currently, only four groups meet this criterion. Goldman has singled out Hybe, saying two of its groups are "on the verge" of becoming Mega IPs.
This should bring in fast scaling of concerts and merchandising revenue, and provide stronger evidence that Hybe can repeatedly produce Mega IPs.
By contrast, Goldman is more pessimistic on SM Entertainment, citing its lack of "Mega IPs."
The Wall Street bank also sees earnings turbulence in YG, due to its reliance on Blackpink's activities. A "successful ramp-up of Babymonster is key to seeing multi-year earnings growth," it added.