BTS brings its ARIRANG tour to AT&T Stadium for two sold-out shows Aug. 15-16. Fans drove hours and waited in Texas heat to be there.
ARLINGTON, Texas — BTS is back, and the comeback is big business.
The South Korean pop group’s ARIRANG world tour brings two back-to-back sold-out shows to AT&T Stadium on Aug. 15 and 16 — and fans have traveled a long way, and spent a lot, to get here.
Ask about ticket prices and you get a wince before you get a number.
This story continues below.
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“Oof! An arm and a leg,” said Maggie Sanchez, a fan who came in from Alabama.
Several fans said they paid hundreds. Ara Davila and Star Vasquez, who came from Odessa, called the cost way too much — then said in the same breath that it was worth it.
The devotion doesn’t stop at the box office. Thousands of fans lined up Friday at Choctaw Stadium to buy official merchandise ahead of the weekend shows. Sanchez was one of them.
“We waited like six hours in line to get merch in this Texas heat,” she said. “So yeah, that should tell you something.”
Sanchez drove nine hours from Alabama to be there, while Davila and Vasquez drove five hours from Odessa.
The fan community has a name for that kind of devotion: BTS Army.
Part of what has fans this excited is the timing. ARIRANG is the first world tour bringing together all seven members of BTS after they completed their mandatory military service in South Korea.
“It sucked in the moment,” Davila said. “It’s over now, so it’s all good!”
“Once they came back it was like the best feeling in the world,” Vasquez said.
The tour spans 88 shows across 23 countries. Holy Cross economics and accounting professor Victor Matheson told WFAA over Zoom that the scale of it puts the tour in rare company.
“In a worldwide tour sense, it is likely to challenge Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour to become the highest revenue music tour in the history of the world,” Matheson said.
The Army’s devotion crosses another barrier, too. Sanchez said she doesn’t fully understand the lyrics, which are in Korean.
Davila and Vasquez said people question that all the time.
“They’re like, ‘What? How can you listen to music in another language?'”
It doesn’t matter to them.
“Music just brings people together,” Sanchez said. “That’s my thing.”
Fans said the shows have become a place to relate to one another and make friends — one more reason the weekend means what it does.