이 기사는 2021년 04월 07일 08시00분 thebell에 표출된 기사입니다

HYBE, home to K-pop superstar BTS, aims to create synergy with Ithaca Holdings, the U.S. media group behind artists like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande that it agreed to acquire last week, as the South Korean company seeks to expand beyond artist management to become a platform business.

The Ithaca deal underlines the confidence that the South Korean company has in a platform business. It is stepping up efforts to expand as a company beyond the artist management firm and become a platform providing comprehensive music content and related products.

HYBE 360, the company’s online concerts business unit, recorded 101 billion won ($90.13 million) in 2020, more than a twenty-fold increase from a year earlier, despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Another subsidiary, HYBE IP, which produces and distributes secondary content, also recorded more than a three-fold growth in revenue last year.

BTS’s online concert called Bang Bang Con drew global fans numbering about 756,000 across 100 countries in April last year, and another concert in October was viewed by 990,000 people. Bang Bang Con The Live, a pay-per-view streaming service available on HYBE’s fan community platform Weverse, also contributed to an increase in revenue.

In contrast, Ithaca’s revenue fell 4% year-on-year to $131.7 million last year and its operating income slumped 46% to $16.1 million in the same period, according to a regulatory filing.

The decrease was due in large part to the pandemic, which has prevented artists from touring, the primary source of revenue for music labels. Touring accounted for nearly half, or 48.5%, of the global music industry’s revenue last year, compared with 35.2% for the South Korean music industry, according to data from HYBE.

HYBE apparently believes that the deal would create synergy for the two companies in the online business. Its partnership with U.S. live-streaming technology company Kiswe, which was announced last year, was also part of efforts to strengthen its position in the online concert space.

The company recently announced a corporate governance restructuring to better position itself for growth in the online content industry. As part of the restructuring, HYBE 360 and HYBE IP will be merged into the parent company, and three divisions responsible for concert production, video content production, and products and license matters will be newly created. (Reporting by Pil-woo Choi)