Coupang, a grocery app, sold every seat to Korea's biggest concert
BIGBANG played to more than 100,000 people at Goyang Stadium over three nights from 21 to 23 August, in a run presented by Coupang Play, which held the only route to a domestic ticket.
The Korea JoongAng Daily put attendance above 100,000 across the three nights, the group's first tour dates in nine years. Buyers outside Korea were routed to NOL World, the ticketing platform owned by the travel company Yanolja.
YG Entertainment said the general sale on 25 June drew 210,000 concurrent users and cleared in 22 minutes. The company has not supported either figure with independent data, and neither has Coupang.
Live performance is where the money in this industry has concentrated. HYBE booked ₩763.9bn (about £377m) in concert revenue for the 2025 financial year, up 69.4 per cent across 279 shows, according to its annual results.
Neither company selling BIGBANG tickets does ticketing as its main business. Coupang delivers groceries overnight. Yanolja books hotels. Neither Interpark nor Melon Ticket, which have handled large Korean on-sales for years, sold a Goyang seat.
BIGBANG's twentieth-anniversary tour opened at Goyang. Inside Korea the only route to a ticket was an e-commerce subscription.
Coupang Play is bundled into Coupang's Rocket Wow membership rather than sold on its own. That makes a concert exclusive a reason to hold a delivery subscription as much as a reason to attend a show.
A seller of that kind also knows more than a ticket agency does. It knows what the buyer watches, what they order and how often they come back, and it keeps knowing after the show.
YG said returned seats would be released in stages rather than at once, that accounts were limited to one device, and that identification would be checked against the booking at the gate. Those are the terms of entry to a stadium Coupang does not own, on a tour it does not promote outside one country.
The measures arrive as Korea tightens the law around them. Revised provisions of the Public Performance Act take effect on Friday, allowing administrative fines of up to 50 times the value of illegally resold tickets.
Photo Credit: AEG Presents UK
AEG Presents promotes the London and Paris dates, including Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on 26 September, according to its own event listing. That is a conventional promoter arrangement: a venue deal, production costs, a spread on ticketing, and a night that has to pay for itself.
The same three performers are being sold two ways on the same tour. One seller is counting accounts. The other is counting the gate.
There is a reading in which none of this is strategic. Coupang Play may have been paid to run a sale it was well placed to handle, with no exclusivity worth the name and no stake in the tour. Neither company has disclosed the terms, the fee, or how revenue divides.
The tour lists 19 cities. For most of them, the company selling the tickets has not been named.
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