BTS fandom tech firm Weverse reaches beyond K-Pop

YG Entertainment

22/12/2022 23:00

By Joyce Lee
       SEOUL, Dec 23 (Reuters) - When Jin became the first
member of the K-Pop supergroup BTS to enlist for South Korea's
mandatory military service this month, he had a special message
to fans on Weverse, a fan platform app that commands more than 8
million active users.
    "Now it's curtain call time (I wanted to say this when I go
to military service)," said Jin. Devoted fans posted more than
10,000 replies.
    The Weverse platform has proven a major weapon of the K-Pop
group's agency HYBE Co Ltd  352820.KS , offering fan-oriented
experiences interacting with the stars, accessing unique content
and buying merchandise, and is now expanding into subscription
services and more. 
    "We are a fandom business," Weverse President Joon Choi told
Reuters. "There are bigger global services offering functions we
offer, but Weverse's users are superfans characterised by
passionate engagement."
    Before Weverse launched in 2019 fans were scattered across
multiple platforms, said Choi.
    "They bought merch here, watched videos there, communicated
elsewhere... We didn't have a database of our customers. So we
began developing each service in-house." 
    The K-Pop industry has revolved around loyalty and personal
identification with the stars, making it a "recession-proof"
business - revenue is driven by public response to artists'
activities, and upselling is possible, analysts said. 
    However, HYBE is now uniquely positioned to harness such a
loyal fandom to grow its global business through unit Weverse's
technological reach, offering a growth model for future
entertainment, analysts said.
    Around 170 out of 300 Weverse employees are engineers
including programmers and UX specialists, Choi said, with
veterans from gaming companies or local tech giant Naver
 035420.KS  with whom it has a partnership. 
    The app also currently has more than 80 teams of artists
represented including BTS, and about 8-9 million monthly active
users. It also has a high number of repeat visitors and
retention - peak daily active users can number about 6 million. 
    Non-HYBE artists are also on the platform, including rival
agency YG's  122870.KQ  top girl group Blackpink, and it is
expected to see the number of artists - and fandoms - grow to
100 soon. 
    More U.S. and Japanese artists are expected to join next
year, said Choi but declined to reveal who. 
    HYBE acquired Ithaca Holdings, representing Ariana Grande
and Justin Bieber, in a $1.05 billion deal in 2021. 
    Choi, who worked at gaming company Nexon and "Baby Shark"
content creator Pinkfong before joining Weverse, says the app
has added services such as live streaming, Instagram Story-style
updates, free and paid content, artist-to-fan interactions and
merchandise retailing. 
    However, Weverse users' 'superfan' qualities make engagement
in those services turbo-charged, Choi said. 
    "For example, we do commerce, but there is no seasonality...
 We have 80 teams of artists, and some of them are always doing
something," he said. 
    Like K-Pop's popularity, the app is also global. Users are
based in more than 200 countries and only about 10% of the app
users speak Korean, Choi said. Top 5 countries Weverse users are
from include Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, the United States and
South Korea.  
    "There is no other entertainment agency with such a fan
platform with enough users for economy of scale," said Lee
Hye-in, analyst at Yuanta Securities. 
    "Such a centralised platform was possible because in K-Pop,
the agency holds the hegemony - whereas in the U.S. for example,
the artists are the centre." 
 (Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Michael Perry)
 ((joyce.lee@tr.com;))