KAMP & Eventim Announce KAMP LA 2022, K-Pop Mega Concert at Rose Bowl With MONSTA X, KAI, Somi, Super Junior

South Korea’s KAMP Global in partnership with Eventim Live Asia today announced KAMP LA 2022, a two-day K-pop mega-concert extravaganza running Oct. 15-16 at the Rose Bowl and featuring MONSTA X, KAI (of EXO and Super M), Jeon Somi, Super Junior, iKON, BamBam, Zion.T, and Lapillus among others.

“We want KAMP LA to be the ultimate K-pop experience in all aspects. U.S. fans have waited so long for great music because of the pandemic–they need to see their favorite artists for the first time in two years in many cases,” said KAMP Global CEO Tim Kim in a statement. “Everyone in K-pop wants to break into America. There’s a deep connection between Korean culture and L.A. This was always the place to start.”

Indeed, in recent years K-Pop has grown exponentially in the U.S. live market. Witness, for example, BTS’ four-day ‘Permission To Dance On Stage’ concerts late last year at L.A.s SoFi Stadium, which sold 214,000 tickets and grossed more than $33.3 million.

“K-Pop has exploded globally and we’re in a fantastic position to be able to capitalize on that,” Jason Miller, CEO of Eventim Live Asia, told Pollstar. “We’re really trying to bring a lot of acts in to serve the fans and give them acts that a haven’t been to Los Angeles in quite some time or perhaps never performed in North America before. It’s a really good mix of younger acts, newer acts, some more established acts we’re very excited about.”

A number of the artists on the KAMP LA bill, Miller notes, are arena-level acts, including MONSTA X, who, according to Pollstar Boxoffice Reports, have an average gross of $565K, as well as EXO (of which KAI is a member) and Super Junior.

The Eventim Live Asia CEO says they will be rolling out more acts for KAMP LA 2022 in the coming days.

KAMP LA 2022 will be held inside the Rose Bowl and feature immersive experiences including arts, culinary, gaming, and brand collaborations. Interestingly, this will also include a partnership with famed artist Kenny Scharf, who came up in NYC’s East Village scene in the 1980s and who will help create the event’s imagery and aesthetics.

Through its partnerships with Dingo Music and i-Aurora, KAMP will also bring exclusive content and new technologies to the event, including personalized, collectible KAMP LA-branded South Korean payment cards.

Miller said he’s had his eye on working with KAMP’s CEO from when he first came over to Eventim from Live Nation last July. “I launched the Asia division about almost exactly a year ago. Shortly thereafter, through some industry contacts, I met Tim Kim out of Seoul who runs KAMP Global and he produced an event in Singapore pre-COVID which was very successful. The plan was to roll it out to the rest of the world. So we met and both had a similar vision for what we wanted to accomplish and felt like there wasn’t really anything like this, and, why not launch it big and launch it in what is arguably the biggest market in the world— Los Angeles? And we’ve got a monster monster line up.”

CTS Eventim, one of Europe’s largest promoters, over the last few years has quietly made major in-roads into the U.S. live market from a variety of angles. The company collaborated with Michael Cohl on Genesis’ “Last Domino? Tour” which topped Pollstar’s 2022 Q1 Global Touring Chart grossing an impressive $46.4 million on 230.5k tickets sold – $13 million more than any other act. Eventim also worked with the Black Promoters Collective which promoted tours by Maxwell and New Edition.

When asked if he’s concerned about rolling out the two-day concert eight weeks before launch, in what’s been an uneven concert market, at a large venue like the Rose Bowl (cap. 91.8K, which will be cut down for this concert), Miller is confident.

“We recognize that K-pop fans are tremendously passionate and they want to take every and all opportunity to see the acts they love and to do it in a unique way,” he said. “There’s a really great value proposition here. We’re bringing in tremendous production, massive LED screens, a gigantic show with a big, big, big line-up.”

As for future KAMP and Eventim events, according to KAMP CEO Kim, this is just the beginning. “We are also going to bring K-pop worldwide with KAMP and Eventim Live Asia,” he stated.  “We will go to all markets where K-pop resonates—which is everywhere these days.”