[Article] ‘Burn The Stage’ and the Rising Power of BTS’ Indian Fan Base
Rollingstone India that has introduced many K-pop artists and Hallyu recently highlighted BTS' 'Burn The Stage' release in India. The article explains how the movie was finally released and how passionately the massive Indian fan worked for it, which will be a new example of the presence of Hallyu in India. Here are some quoted parts of the article.
Now Burn The Stage:The Movie‘s entry in India is particularly significant for several reasons; as the first ‘official’ BTS event in the country, it’s one of the few landmark moments of acknowledgment from the band’s company BigHit Entertainment that an audience exists here–other landmark moments include Rolling Stone India‘s exclusive interview with BTS’ leader RM in 2017 and the addition of BTS’ entire discography to Apple Music India in February this year. The second and possibly most important reason, is that there will finally be a legitimate estimate of the size of a paying audience in India. Ticket sales from the film can act as a tally to calculate a more accurate ‘fans per city’ number than music streaming apps or YouTube views. With a fresh record of purchase, the film’s release in India will give BigHit and local concert promoters an idea of the current total size of the swiftly expanding fanbase–and therefore a total number of potential customers for a future show.
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Interestingly, the entire snafu seemed to further fuel the fandom’s drive–it didn’t matter if they got the film late, they decided to view it as an opportunity to rally for more screenings across the country and push purchase numbers to new heights. When tickets finally did go online on Monday, November 19th, there was a mad scramble to try and book seats–INOX’s website crashed almost immediately. “Fans just kept on pushing for tickets at all of our locations and I, for the first time, personally experienced the true meaning of the phrase ‘sold like hot cakes,'” Saurabh Varma, Chief Marketing Officer of INOX, tells Rolling Stone India. “We received emails and calls from fans from all parts of India as well as from U.S., Nepal and many other countries. Right from the daughter of my neighbor to the teenage sons and daughters of film stars and celebs, everyone wanted to come experience the movie.” INOX confirms they sold around 25,000 tickets on the first day and with show-timings selling out across the country, they’re still being forced to increase the number of screens per city every few hours. Varma says, “We initially opened two odd shows in 36 locations all over India. In our planning this was extremely extensive and have never given so many shows to such an event. The bookings opened on Monday and everything was sold out by 3:00 pm. The fans were all over our social network, pages, and our website–all we could read was ‘we want tickets!’ Our cellphones since then have just not stopped ringing.”
Full Article is available at Rollingstone India , http://rollingstoneindia.com/burn-the-stage-bts-india/