SMTOWN Live in Taiwan breaks records and brings in huge profit

Over 28,000 fans packed the Hsinchu County Stadium on Saturday, June 9th, for the SMTOWN World Tour stop in Taiwan. Although there was a little rain prior to the beginning of the concert, the fans’ enthusiasm for seeing their favorite artists perform remained unchanged. With a total of 46 SM Entertainment artists in attendance, this four hour concert broke the record for the highest number of foreign performers to ever share a single stage in Taiwan.

The concert began at around 5:30PM, and the opening act was given to singer Zhang Liyin, who was then followed by f(x) with their performance of "Hot Summer." Former H.O.T member Kangta also made an appearance onstage and sang a Chinese love song before greeting Taiwanese fans in Mandarin with, “好久不見(Long time no see),” causing the audience to erupt into excited cheers and screams. Artists BoA and TVXQ also performed while EXO-K and EXO-M also entertained the audience despite not having any previous stage experience in Taiwan. But the group with most performances of the evening was Super Junior, who sang a total of nine songs, including their hits "Sorry, Sorry" and "BONAMANA." SHINee received the second highest amount of stage time with seven songs while Girls’ Generation performed six. Special collaborations across groups also took place throughout the night with Changmin and Kyuhyun singing Bruno Mars’ "Just the Way You Are" and the Jung sisters (Jessica and Krystal) dancing to Katy Perry’s "California Girls." The concert eventually concluded with all 46 SM artists singing "Hope" and with more than 8,000 balloons floating into the arena. Overall, there were 50 performances at the concert, breaking the record for the highest number of songs ever sung at any SMTOWN concert.

The SMTOWN concert in Taiwan was a large scale performance and needed over 1,000 staff members to help the show run. But the returns for this huge concert were high. Selling out 95% of the tickets, SM Entertainment was able to make 11,760,000 NTD (approximately $3 million USD), which, according to some experts, may leave SM with a 30-40% profit from this concert alone.


Source: TVBS via Koreaboo | Posted by @hansoshi