With 1 trillion won to be made anyway, what’s 300 billion? The ‘fandom war’ to unfold at Kakao Arena

Kakao Corp. is stepping up efforts to tap the fandom market. It has secured a site and begun raising the structure for a mega-sized concert venue, aiming to get ahead of competitors. Its strategy is to leverage its platform’s membership and booking and payment systems, artificial intelligence (AI), content subsidiaries, user base and technological capabilities to build online and offline hubs for next-generation entertainment.

The Kakao Arena in Chang-dong, Dobong-gu, Seoul, which Maekyung AX visited on the 27th, was in the thick of construction. Vehicles and workers came and went through the cold autumn wind, and warning lights flashed amid clouds of dust. Through it all, the arena’s rounded outline came into view. It was taking shape much like the rendering displayed at the front of the construction site. It brought to mind either a futuristic spaceship that had landed in the city or a sculpture cast by an artist.

In 2024, Kakao Corp. began construction of what is set to be the country’s largest K-pop concert venue. It selected its affiliate Seoul Arena as the operator and Hanwha Corporation E&C Division as the builder. A complex with two basement levels and six above-ground floors will be built on a 50,149.3-square-meter site. It will have a capacity of 18,269, but can admit up to 28,000 people with standing-room areas included. The total project cost amounts to 331 billion won.

Last July, following board approval, Kakao Corp. signed a 10-billion-won sole-IT industry have tended to call it Kakao Arena, but that is not its exact name. Kakao Corp. is expected to decide on the name when construction is complete, operate the facility for 30 years, and then transfer ownership to the Seoul Metropolitan Government

Kakao Corp. plans to open the venue in the first half of 2027. Last month, it began accepting official rental applications from concert promoters and entertainment agencies. During an on-site tour for around 100 people in the concert industry, 93% of respondents said they were willing to consider holding a concert there.

Profitability and synergy are cited as reasons Kakao Corp. is investing heavily in the venue. Since Kakao Corp. has Kakao Entertainment Corp., Melon and Melon Ticket among its affiliates, it plans to offer a user experience that connects everything from listening to music and booking tickets to attending concerts and taking part in fandom activities.

It would also be easy to include cultural perks in membership subscriptions, such as free invitations to performances. According to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST), ticket sales for popular music performances totaled 981.7 billion won last year, up nearly 30% from 761 billion won in 2024. The growth potential of K-culture has been demonstrated, and global demand is also explosive.

A person identified as A, who said they were a longtime resident of Dobong-gu, said, “It used to be a quiet neighborhood except right by the subway, but it’s bound to get noisy every night and public transportation and road traffic will become congested.” They added, “A large facility will bring vitality and improve the area’s image, so I expect it to have a positive effect.”

Oh Ji-hun, CEO of Seoul Arena, said, “A concert venue is infrastructure that offers endless opportunities to engage with technology and audiences. We will freely bring to life the stages artists and production teams envision and provide audiences with live experiences that maximize immersion,” he pledged.

The previous day, NAVER also announced that it had secured naming rights from Inspire Entertainment Resort on Yeongjong Island in Incheon and would embark on wide-ranging cooperation. The 15,000-seat Inspire Arena will be renamed NAVER Arena starting next month. The contract term is three years.

NAVER plans to support concert bookings through NAVER Place, use NAVER Pay’s facial-recognition access and authentication service FaceSign and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as concert tickets, and introduce augmented reality (AR) wayfinding based on NAVER LABS Corp.’s digital-twin technology.

This article has been translated by GripLabs Mingo AI.