South Korean supergroup BTS suspends their world stadium tour

South Korea’s hugely successful music export, BTS, are suspending their world stadium tour over worries about the spread of the novel coronavirus. The Map to the Soul Tour, was to build on the back of the success of their latest album, Map to the Soul:7, one of this year’s biggest selling albums in the world and, underlining the achievement, its mostly in Korean.

The 7 member band had already postponed the North American leg of the tour. The tour was scheduled to kick off on April 25 with a Seoul stadium concert, but was cancelled because of the coronavirus outbreak. Last year’s Love Yourself tour grossed US$115,749,000 in ticket sales.

RM, Jin, V, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin and Jungkook had expressed their sincere disappointment over not being able to go ahead with the tour. Its have become seasoned live performers following 7 years of intense performance practice and are recognised as one of the most prolific and hardest working group of performers in the world. They recently topped the ratings in the US when performing live on some of the most popular TV shows when they launched their album.

Management, Big Hit Entertainment, said the scope of the tour and current restrictions made it very difficult to go ahead.

“Due to the nature of BTS concerts involving travel by thousands of international fans no matter where the performances are held; it is also difficult to resume the tour with the current strict restrictions on cross-border movement still in place.”

“Therefore, we have made the difficult decision to suspend the previously announced tour schedule and develop a new schedule.”

The suspension of the tour, which was due to include concerts in Europe, the US and Japan, comes as the coronavirus pandemic has infected more than 3 million people globally. With most countries imposing travel restriction and lockdowns. Big Hit Entertainment said it would give details of a new tour schedule as soon as the situation became more clear.

The world’s biggest music streaming service said BTS had been the most streamed music group in Thailand last year. BTS had more than 3 billion streams. More than 14 million listeners in Thailand follow BTS each month. The Korean girl group Blackpink has 8 million followers a month, according to figures on its website.

Blackpink’s Kill This Love was the K-pop song most streamed in Thailand, followed by the BTS super hit Boy with Luv. Globally, the two songs switched positions, with Boy with Luv coming first, followed by Kill This Love.