Selected PVR theatres across the country streamed the live and recorded concerts of BTS’ Permission To Dance On Stage: Seoul on March 12. Indian ARMYs in cities such as Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Pune and Chandigarh bought tickets to watch BTS members RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook perform live. While many fans eagerly shared videos and pictures from the screening on the internet, a few cities such as New Delhi and Chennai, unfortunately, did not have shows streaming in theatres.
In a conversation with News18, CEO of PVR Pictures Ltd and Chief of Strategy at PVR Limited Kamal Gianchandani explained how the team went about choosing the cities in which the concert would be streamed live. He explained that factors such as piracy, infrastructure and internet connectivity were a few factors kept in mind while picking the cities and venues.
“Because there were piracy and infrastructural concerns of our distributors and production partners, we were careful in selecting the cities where we’ll stream the BTS concert live,” he said, before adding, “There were other parameters and variables as well. We had to look at the internet structure that was available in that particular city because we wanted to ensure that the content was not buffering while streaming, there’s a constant supply of bandwidth.”
“In this case (BTS concert), the producers also had a role. They wanted to keep the content available in fewer cities as part of their global distribution strategies. They didn’t want to go in for a saturation release. They wanted to generate demand and they wanted to create an appetite for the subsequent releases of the performances and as a result, the strategy was to select the cities carefully and then release accordingly. Their distribution strategy was also a criteria, the producers also had a role and they wanted to be selective in terms of cities and releases,” he added.
Kamal had also revealed that the occupancies for shows that streamed the live and recorded event was 90 percent in India with most audiences belonging to the age bracket of 13 to 22.
The live cinema broadcast event, ‘BTS PERMISSION TO DANCE ON STAGE – SEOUL: LIVE VIEWING’, took place on the second day on March 12 to offer an alternative experience for fans to enjoy the concert live. Presented in 3,711 cinemas in 75 countries/regions, ‘LIVE VIEWING’ met approximately 1.4 million viewers total with reported sell-outs across the world.
BTS wrapped up the three nights of ‘BTS PERMISSION TO DANCE ON STAGE – SEOUL’ at Seoul Olympic Stadium on March 10, 12 and 13. The three-day in-person concert was attended by a total of 45,000 people in compliance with the COVID-19 protocols with a maximum capacity of 15,000 per show. The number of online viewers via live stream summed up to 1.02 million from 191 countries/regions on March 10 and 13.
The K-pop group will now head to Las Vegas for a four-day concert scheduled for next month.
