Big Hit To Hold First Concert With All Sublabels—But It Clashes With One Of The Biggest Events Of The Year

Today, Big Hit Labels announced a new upcoming online and offline concert featuring artists from all of Big Hit Entertainment‘s subsidiary agencies. There’s just one catch: it’s going to clash with one of the biggest events of the year.

According to Big Hit Labels’s announcement, the 2021 New Year’s Eve Live will be presented by Weverse on December 31 this year. The concert is set to start on New Year’s Eve and carry through to a countdown at midnight (Korean standard time). Alongside the online broadcast, the agency has also planned an offline concert with limited seating, subject to government regulations.

| Big Hit Entertainment

The 2021 New Year’s Eve Live will be the company’s first ever concert to include artists from all its subsidiary labels: Pledis Entertainment, Source Music, and BE:LIFT Lab. The first lineup reveal includes NU’EST…

| Pledis Entertainment

… and upcoming rookie group ENHYPEN, with the rest of the roster announcements coming on November 11 and November 12.

| BE:LIFT Lab

Of course, fans are already expecting to see GFRIEND,

| Source Music

SEVENTEEN,

| Pledis Entertainment

TXT,

| Big Hit Entertainment

and BTS at the show.

| Big Hit Entertainment

The online concert is a dream come true for any fan of Big Hit Labels’s groups, but there is one catch. The 2021 New Year’s Eve Live is set to clash with one of the biggest events of the year: MBC‘s year end festival, MBC Gayo Daejejeon.

MBC Gayo Daejejeon 2019 | MBC

MBC Gayo Daejejeon has been held annually almost every year since 1966. Originally created as an awards show, the festival event became a multi-artist New Year’s Eve concert with no awards from 2005. In the past, it’s played host to many Big Hit Labels artists—including BTS, who last performed in 2018.

However, after BTS declined to attend MBC Gayo Daejejeon in 2019 in favor of performing on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in the U.S., things changed.

| Astrid Stawiarz

After TXT and GFRIEND were also found missing from 2019’s MBC lineup, netizens and insiders accused the network of gapjil (abuse of power). Claims arose that MBC had blocked other Big Hit Labels artists from attending the year-end festival as “revenge” for Big Hit Entertainment pulling BTS (and thus, ARMY viewership) from the concert. Since then, Big Hit Labels groups have also stopped performing on MBC’s music show, Show! Music Core.

“Show! Music Core” hosts SF9’s Chani, IZ*ONE’s Minju, and Stray Kids’s Hyunjin | MBC

The fact that it’s become difficult for any artist related to Big Hit Entertainment to appear on MBC is well known throughout the industry.

— Industry insider

As such, fans of Big Hit Labels groups are naming the 2021 New Year’s Eve Live a true “power move”.

The mbc banned the bighit artist so the bighit made their own concert. pic.twitter.com/AbInrDwEOP

— flare || ᴇɴ-⁷ (@eileadrom) November 10, 2020

With so many popular groups likely to perform at Big Hit Labels’s event, some fans even believe it could out-view the popular MBC Gayo Daejejeon. This is likely to depend on ticket prices for the 2021 New Year’s Eve Live, as MBC’s festival is free to view.

watch bighit's family concert have more viewers than mbc gayo on december 31. pic.twitter.com/yD5uCZMs7t

— jelz ⁷ (@kkoobap) November 10, 2020

Of course, while the online concert is a blessing for fans of BTS, TXT, GFRIEND, and more, it’s also a bummer for “multi” fans who will be forced to choose which event to tune into on December 31st.