BTS, the South Korean pop group, closed its three-night São Paulo run on Saturday and left Brazilian regulators with open questions. Our BTS São Paulo live updates hub follows the run and the reviews that came after it.
Three Sold-Out Nights at One Stadium
BTS played the third and last of its three sold-out São Paulo shows at the MorumBIS football stadium on Saturday, Oct. 31. The concert was due to start at 8 p.m. in São Paulo (Brasília time, UTC−3), which is 7 p.m. Eastern Time.
The nights of Oct. 28, 30 and 31 were the only Brazilian dates of the ARIRANG World Tour, which is scheduled to run to March 2027 across 34 cities. Ticketmaster, the official seller, marked all three dates sold out, and sales closed in under 90 minutes.
The group last played in Brazil in May 2019, with two shows at Allianz Parque, a São Paulo arena. This tour marks its return to group activity after solo projects and military service in South Korea.
Neymar, the Brazilian footballer, attended the Oct. 30 show with family. He joined a crowd that SPTuris projected at about 84,000 fans a night.
File photo: the MorumBIS stadium in São Paulo, May 2023. Photo: Mtvdanilo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).How Big Was the Crowd, and How Did Fans Get In?
SPTuris, the city tourism company, projected 253,374 spectators across the three shows, with a capacity of 84,458 per show. Press estimates run from more than 80,000 to about 90,000 fans a night, and none is an official count.
The São Paulo state Military Police has run a security operation named BRAvO around the stadium since Oct. 27. CET, the city traffic engineering company, deployed 82 traffic agents on Saturday.
On the opening night, Oct. 28, fans reported long queues, trouble validating tickets and a gate that stayed closed for about an hour. A storm also blocked roads to the stadium before that show, and fans demanded that the gates open.
These accounts come from spectators and press reports. No official figure for the number of people affected has been published.
Why Regulators Are Still Looking
Senacon, the national consumer secretariat under Brazil’s Justice Ministry, suspended five resale platforms as a precaution on Oct. 28. It cited a risk of collective damage of difficult reparation and opened sanction proceedings against four of the five, not Viagogo International.
The five platforms are BuyTicket, FunBuyNet, StubHub, TicketSwap Brasil and Viagogo International. BuyTicket said it was still operating and had received no formal notification.
Procon-SP, the São Paulo state consumer protection agency, recorded 518 complaints against Live Nation Brasil, 460 of them about the show structure, as of Oct. 21. Live Nation confirmed four screens, all on a central tower, while other legs of the tour had 12 LED panels in a 360-degree layout.
The São Paulo state prosecutor’s office gave Ticketmaster 15 days to explain how it calculates its service fee, after a complaint from a state legislator. The start date of that period was not found, so the deadline cannot be fixed.
What It Means for US Readers
The Brazilian reviews target ticket resale and the show’s staging, not the band. They draw a US audience because Live Nation promotes the tour and owns Ticketmaster, its ticket-selling arm.
The tour’s North American leg opened in Tampa, Florida, on April 25. It ended in early September at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.
What Is Not Known
No official attendance figure or incident balance for the Oct. 31 show has been found, and no Military Police, city or SPTrans (the city transit authority) numbers were available. Claims of overcrowding on the opening night remain allegations by spectators.
It is not known whether Senacon’s suspension was upheld or challenged. The outcome of Procon-SP’s notification of Live Nation is also unknown.
We found no poll by a named institute on this story. We also found no prediction-market odds.
Sources
Published Sunday, Nov. 1, 5:30 p.m. ET. Source: Senacon, Procon-SP, the São Paulo state prosecutor’s office, SPTuris, CET, the São Paulo state Military Police, statements by Live Nation Brasil, and The Rio Times reporting.