BTS Played Stanford Stadium Three Nights. 152,000 People Showed Up. Korean Enrollment Went With Them.
The third show wasn't on the original schedule. BTS announced Stanford dates for May 16 and 17. Demand forced a third - May 19 - which sold out immediately after going on sale. Over three nights at Stanford Stadium's 54,000-seat venue, approximately 152,000 people attended the Arirang World Tour's Northern California stop, making it the largest concert run in the stadium's history.
BTS is only the second musical act to perform at Stanford Stadium. Coldplay played the inaugural shows there last year. The comparison is instructive: Coldplay's Stanford run generated significant local press; BTS's drew a KTVU news segment on Korean language enrollment, a Stanford Report photo essay, and a statement from the university's vice president for the arts. "BTS is one of the biggest bands of all time," Deborah Cullinan told the Stanford Report before the shows. "Being able to say 'I was here for that' is pretty special."
The enrollment angle wasn't incidental. Dafna Zur, an associate professor at Stanford's Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, told KTVU her program has seen a surge in students with no Korean heritage signing up specifically because of K-pop. "It kind of stemmed from the desire to understand lyrics and then grew into 'I'm having fun learning Korean, so I want to continue,'" said Emily Schwab, a Stanford student who attended two of the three shows. Zur teaches at a Korean immersive language camp in Minnesota in addition to her Stanford course load - and said the K-12 pipeline feeding that camp has visibly shifted in recent years.
The Stanford leg is part of BTS's broader North America run, which continues this week in Las Vegas. Four sold-out nights at Allegiant Stadium - May 23-24 and 27-28 - follow the Stanford stop before the tour moves east. The group also appears tonight at the 52nd American Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena, their first award show attendance in four years.
The Arirang World Tour, which opened April 9 in Goyang, spans 85 shows across 34 cities. The North America leg runs through June before European dates begin in the summer. Stanford was the only Northern California stop.
