BTS At BBMA 2017: K-Pop Group To Attend Billboard Music Awards With Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Others

UPDATE: 3:25 a.m. EDT Saturday — The Bangtan Boys have received an invitation to attend the Billboard Music Awards later this month but there has been no official confirmation of their attendance. Korea Portal changed a previous article to state that “Big Hit Entertainment may soon be confirming” that BTS’ seven members will be travelling to the United States for the May 21 ceremony.

The ceremony falls between their scheduled performances in Hong Kong and Sydney, which are a part of their 2017 world tour.

Original story:

South Korean band BTS, or the Bangtan Boys, will be attending this year's Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas later this month, a representative of the group’s management agency Big Hit Entertainment confirmed Thursday.

The boy band has been nominated alongside Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, and other big international celebrities in the “Top Social Artist” category at the awards that will be held on May 21 this year.

Read: BTS Makes History With Billboard Music Awards Nomination

The group’s seven members – Rap Monster, Jimin, Jin, Jungkook, J Hope, Suga and V – were in California recently as a part of their ongoing world tour and are set to return to Las Vegas for the ceremony later this month.

According to reports, BTS’ invitation was confirmed when a member of the ARMY – the name by which BTS fans refer to themselves – approached the president of Dick Clark productions, Mike Mahan, to ask him to send an invite to BTS to attend the ceremony. Mahan, who heads the company in charge of the Billboard Music Awards, confirmed that an invite had been sent to the South Korean band.

The group’s fans also launched an online campaign to get BTS to attend the Billboard awards, which got over 100,000 signatures with great ease.

Big Hit Entertainment CEO Bang Shi Hyuk was previously reported as saying by Soompi that he would love for the group to attend the 2017 awards, where they would represent their enormous fan base and also the genre.

When the nomination was revealed, he said: “I didn’t even imagine this happening. It would be great if they ended up winning, but I'm happy that they even got nominated.”

“It definitely won't be easy for them to win since all the other nominees are amazing, but I do look forward to the effort that our passionate ARMYs will be making,” the CEO said at the time.

BTS also retained the top spot on Billboard’s Social 50 chart for the May 6 tally, marking its 22nd week at the first position in the chart. This places the band in third place for the most number of weeks on top of the Social 50, ahead of names like Miley Cyrus and Rihanna. Justin Beiber and Taylor Swift are the only names ahead of the K-pop group now.

BTS has been winning accolades both nationally and internationally, boasting of a spectacular start to 2017. They have maintained the momentum and after experiencing a surge in popularity on social media and video streaming platforms like Twitter and YouTube, the group debuted at the top spot on Tumblr’s K-pop fandometrics list, Soompi reported.

The fandometrics list released by Tumblr is its database of entertainers and entertainment items that helps track users’ preferences, derived from the use of tags, likes, the searches for the tags and reblogs.

BTS faced tough competition in the rankings, with EXO coming in second, followed by GOT7, MONSTA X, SEVENTEEN, SHINee, B.A.P., KARD, BIG BANG and TWICE in the top 10 of the Tumblr list.

Correction: An earlier version of this report wrongly stated that the Billboard Music Awards will be held in Los Angeles instead of Las Vegas. It has since been rectified.