Still in the queue: Trying, failing, and trying some more to secure a BTS 'Arirang' PH concert ticket
There is no greater treat and feat than a fan meeting their favorite live. Nothing beats the rush of experiencing and witnessing your favorite idol in their element, doing their thing right before your very eyes, and confirming that yes, they are very much real and not just a video on your feed.
I am no stranger to concerts, Korean pop, and the mix of both. As someone who grew up with South Korea’s 2010 "hallyu wave," second-generation K-pop groups were the soundtrack of my high school years. Even then, the Philippines remains a bankable, favorite stop for many K-pop concerts and fan meetings. And it must be said that the Philippines has always been, and always will be, a BTS country, proving our dedication and loyalty to the boys as a consistent Southeast Asian tour stop since their debut in 2013.
Concerts, post-COVID-19, have evolved into a more common form of joyous investment for a lot of people, and a rite of passage for fans of all genres. Within the realms of K-pop, the infamous ticketing war truly lives up to its reputation. Gone are the days of simply lining up at a box office or opening a website and leisurely scrolling through available seats to purchase. Ticketing has now entered a process that includes registrations and pre-sales to culminate in a free-for-all-battle-royale-esque general sale, where the last person standing is the person who can proudly declare, “Ticket secured!”
As a geriatric ARMY (by induction to the fandom), I sentimentally look back ever so fondly on my ticketing experience for BTS’ WINGS tour in Manila in 2017. There was no prior preparation needed, aside from copy-pasting a ticketing link to my browser. It was simpler times with a smaller competition pool as this was before BTS exploded to the mainstream. However, even then, without the flair of pre-sales, tickets to see K-pop’s biggest group ever felt like an insurmountable feat.
BTS had always had so many fans wanting to see them—and nine years later, this truth still holds.
'Arirang' ticketing war
The past two weeks may have been the most stressful weeks for BTS ARMY in Asia. The ticketing for their 20-show multi-city tour commenced in the first week of June. Ticket-selling is many things: fun, exciting, competitive. But with Arirang serving as BTS' post-military comeback, the tour puts a lot of fans to the ultimate test of speed, luck, and fate.
Getting to see BTS is a whole operation in itself, determined by the many open devices for queueing, the speed of your internet, and the browser of choice. (Safari? Explorer? Chrome? Opera?) All these moving parts may or may not (still a mystery!) have bearing on the queue number you get to enter the website for ticketing; not securing the ticket itself quite yet. There is a steep learning curve in getting a membership code, enrolling that code to get pre-sale access, and calendaring the timings of when the waiting room for queues starts opening. True to the quote, fortune does indeed favor the bold, and in the case of securing tickets to see BTS, fortune favors those who relentlessly sit through hours of a queue that may not yield to anything.
Arirang’s ticketing had been a week-long marathon, each day offering a solid chance to get closer to seeing BTS in person. Across all cities, BTS opened a three-day sale: the ARMY membership pre-sale, the LiveNation pre-sale, and the general on-sale.
Day 1
Of the three, the ARMY membership pre-sale (Day 1) is the most crucial one. It’s known to sell out the best seats offering the lowest queue numbers: lower queue = closer to the barricade with the best, unobstructed views. The pre-sale also gives fans a pilot run of the queue, navigation of the official seat selections, and completion of payment. It often feels like a fever dream to get tickets on this day, but it is not impossible.
While unlucky in Bulacan, I managed to secure tickets to Arirang in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, within 12 minutes after the membership pre-sale opened. Being the very first city for ticketing, my ticketing group—composed of my cousin and my college best friend—was all in lockdown, coordinating every move. As a strict rule, and as recommended by multiple successful ARMYs abroad, open only one tab to queue for a specific day, and only use one device account. Fans have registered to create multiple accounts in the hopes of yielding different queue numbers.
From my own greedy and desperate attempt to score tickets in Bulacan, I used my one Ticketmaster account to line up for multiple queues (opening multiple tabs) for a single date. I eventually got kicked out of a seat selection when my other queue numbers reached the same page. With ticketing, while some get away with it, as a general rule of thumb, less is more, and you can't have your cake and eat it, too.
Day 2
Day 2 of ticketing is often "hosted" by different platforms like Live Nation (Philippines), Klook (Singapore), and Trip.com (Thailand). Chances are a lot slimmer for this day, mostly because of very limited ticket allocations. Think of it as a short intermission, a quick respite.
I didn't succeed again, but I have a lucky friend who did. Fellow ARMY Tippi Sy and her friend were surprised to get a very low queue number, with about 4,000 and 800 people ahead of them, respectively, for the Live Nation pre-sale this week. “I've been consistently getting better results using this browser called Arc. Nahihirapan talaga ang Chrome tumawid to the next steps for me. The wait wasn't long either," she said. "But feeling ko kasi, super konti lang allocation for the Live Nation sale, mabilis maubos. So even if I tried different sections at kahit solo seats, nauubusan ako agad."
Despite the hiccups from moving on from the queue and selecting available seats, Tippi won the ticketing war, securing VIP soundcheck tickets in Bulacan.
Day 3
Day 3, the general on-sale, is the final Hail Mary for any fan who wants to lock in their concert attendance. Certain anomalies within the queue became a lot more obvious on this day.
Fellow BTS fan Mai Navales, who was my concert buddy for WINGS in 2017, entered the queue with around 6,000 people ahead of her. As she patiently waited for her screen to load, she was forcibly kicked out of her queue and pushed back to a slot with 70,000+ people ahead.
While unconfirmed, these instances are allegedly ticketing bots bypassing regular, human fans in line for online tickets. With the intersection of tech and commerce, it is commonplace now to purchase bots or links that bypass queues.
Like Mai, my efforts were to no avail.
The concert’s Philippine leg officially sold out within an hour of the general sale, showing BTS' continued hold on Filipino fans. It's also a sentimental culmination given that 2027 marks the 10th anniversary of their last concert, the WINGS tour, in the country.
The lottery of good luck
As a Filipino, Bulacan is special because, for obvious reasons, it's our homecourt. Witnessing a live Filipino audience and then the artists' reaction to the acclaimed never-out-of-tune crowd karaoke remains to be one of the best live experiences out there (and I’ve been around). The Philippines is also the last Southeast Asian stop of the tour, for now. If there is anything we can expect, it's that these two nights in the country would be one for the books.
Like most fans, my ticketing group attempted throughout all days of this week’s Bulacan ticketing sales. We did everything “right”: early entry into the website, minimal windows open, strongest possible Wi-Fi. Sadly, no matter how hard we refreshed, how long we waited, and how quickly we clicked on any seat that opened up for us, our luck did not check out.
The stages of concert grief hit you when your queue number is upwards 150,000 juxtaposed to the Philippine Sports Stadium’s 35,000-50,000 capacity. No matter how many times I refreshed my page (denial and anger), tried to click on whatever I could to try and get my order moving (bargaining), I could never reach payment (depression). The final nail in the coffin is when the website’s "very limited seating" and "nearly sold out" prompts start appearing, and you have nothing left to click on to anchor your hope onto (acceptance).
My cousin and I had to quite literally manifest miracles into the last and final hours of the ticket sale (which involved playing When You Believe on loop), but to no avail. Mai reflected on this week’s whirlwind and hopes for a surprise announcement of an additional Day 3 for the Philippine stop: “Walang susuko. I’m hoping for a Day 3 sa ngayon. I don’t plan on buying from resellers or other sources because I want to secure tickets fairly, unlike some other people.” My cousin, Ella Enerio, reminds us, “Hanggang 'di pa nagsisimula ang concert, may pag-asa pa.” So until the first note of Hooligan plays in the Philippine Sports Stadium, the chances of seeing BTS are just low, not zero.
Arirang brings fans to witness a historic full-circle and culmination of "seven normal boys from Korea" solidifying their stead and legacy on the global stage, slowly removing the "K" in K-pop, simply and finally, recognizing them as the musicians they have always been. For a working fangirl like me, securing tickets feels like a major annual deliverable, taking as much mental and emotional toll to even get past the queue.
You may ask, "What is it even for?" Ticketing often feels like a vindication and relief of knowing so many moving parts—internet speed, queue number, seat availability—conspire together to lead me to the "Payment Confirmed" page and bring me in the same space with my favorite band.
We do it for the love of music, getting to sit, stand, scream with your fellow fans, reciting every lyric like your life depends on it. As sports fans put it, “We do it for the love of the game,” where purchasing a ticket feels more like winning it. As someone who's been at this for 10 years, securing a ticket feels like the seal of approval, the culmination, the dawn of our place as fans in the universe that is Bangtan Sonyeondan.