We can no longer escape the K-pop & football intersection — so what can come out of it?
[Disclaimer: this article was originally published on August 5th 2023, and edited on August 20th to add an interview with Rafael Tohr and update the information of CoupangPlay’s Jisoo x Haaland content]
As a researcher of the influence of fandom in marketing & Intellectual Property strategies in the music industry, I’ve been researching the similarities between the sports industry and the music industry for a few months. But even I was caught off guard when a social media phenomenon that many called “the Kpopification of soccer” developed during the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Basically, K-pop fans who were watching the World Cup emulated the typical K-pop fan behavior for the countries they’ve rooted for the players they liked the most. That meant fans creating footballers’ photocards, fancams, fanarts, update fan accounts, and other things that are common to K-pop fandom online practices.
There’s always a potential tension when two different types of fandom come together. And when you got two fandoms as passionate as football and K-pop, it can escalate into a clash really quickly. After all, this is not just the meeting of two of the most powerful online communities. There are tons of other layers too (including some really ugly ones, such as misogyny, and racism).
Clashes aside, while many thought that K-pop fans’ enthusiasm for football would not survive the World Cup buzz, we’re 8 months into Argentina’s historic win and there’s still a lot going on in the world of “footkpop” (as it’s being called in Brazil). “People are finding different ways to talk about football and about K-pop as well”, says Twitch streamer and K-pop content creator Rafael Tohr. “And that’s where this ‘bubble’ thrives: it becomes an intersection of the best of both worlds.”
“The football & K-pop bubble grows more with everyday”, says Twitter user @wonymengo in a Twitter thread on moments of K-pop and football colliding. The user runs a page dedicated to the Brazilian team Flamengo and the K-pop group IVE.
And dare we say, the fans are not the only ones moving and shaking the “footkpop” world.
Walk with me as I explore what happens when K-pop meets football — and what this encounter can mean for the businesses involving these two.
The 2022 World Cup was a turning point for the K-pop & football adjacency
Well, let’s start with the fact that the official song of the 2022 World Cup, “Dreamers”, was sung by none less than one of the biggest K-pop stars on the planet and a member of the biggest K-pop group of all time, Jungkook from BTS.
Besides recording the song together with Qatari singer Fahad Al Kubaisi, Jungkook traveled to Qatar to perform with him at the opening ceremony. That alone drew thousands of BTS fans to the show and the entire competition.
It also helps that the land of K-pop had a charismatic campaign at the 2022 World Cup. When South Korea beat Portugal and advanced into the last 16 countries, captain Son Heugmin went viral for his tears of happiness.
Speaking of Son, he’s a key element in the appeal of football for K-pop fans. The Tottenham Spur star is adored in South Korea in a way that resembles the love K-pop fans show their idols.
After the iconic win against Portugal, South Korea faced Brazil at the Cup, in a play that generated iconic memes and viral moments thanks to the ball moves and goal celebration dances from the Brazilian players. South Korea lost, but K-pop fans might have gained a duo to love, as the match put against each other Son and the charismatic Richarlison (both play together at Tottenham Spurs).
Richarlison himself had a great moment at the World Cup and captivated fans around the world through his massive charisma off-field and his gorgeous goal struck against Serbia, which was even nominated for a FIFA Puskas Award. Both Brazilian and international fans started calling Richarlison “the it boy of the World Cup”, and he received tons of love on social media in true K-pop stardom fashion.
Unfortunately, neither Korea nor Brazil made it to the World Cup semifinals, but not even that stopped K-pop fans from staying engaged.
If die-hard football fans and journalists call the 2022 finals the biggest of all time, it was no less thrilling for the new fans of the sport. France and Argentina’s main stars, Kylian Mbappé and Lionel Messi, also counted on intense cheering from K-pop fans on social media.
So yeah, the 2022 World Cup served plenty of reasons for K-pop fans to engage and fall in love with the sport and its players.
“I don’t find it strange that [the community of fans who love both K-pop & football] got more intense during the World Cup and I won’t find it strange if it continues”, says Tohr.
I guess the adrenaline that anyone could feel from watching the France and Argentina match was so addictive that no one was ready to let go of that feeling. So it’s no wonder that even after the World Cup ended, fans wanted to find a way to stay connected with the players, and maybe, be able to feel the excitement and adrenaline of a football match again.
Because one thing is true about K-pop fans: not only can they handle strong emotions; they actually pursue them.
Football and K-pop: are fans hallucinating the similarities?
Rafael Tohr started noticing the similarities between the football & the K-pop communities around 2021. Along with a group of content creator friends, he started to jokingly make football comparisons in videos about the K-pop reality show Girls Planet 999. “I think those two worlds are constantly in conversation with each other because it’s easy for them to do so”, says Tohr. “There are many similarities in the intensity of the passion [for football & K-pop]. This is the biggest similarity, even if not the only one, and even if the differences can make it tough.”
Specifically for football and K-pop, the similarities lie not only in the level of devotion these fans have. There’s a degree of competitiveness in K-pop culture that is kinda similar to football when it comes to music show awards and voting competitions, sales, etc.
“K-pop deals with a great amount of content, every day, just like football.
The football fan keeps up with their favorite team, but they also watch other teams’ matches, they follow other leagues, they consume football content all day long. The K-pop fan too. There are new releases every day in K-pop; there are many K-pop groups; it’s a very lively industry. People fall in love with K-pop because they know they’ll have a great amount of content to consume.I don’t think it’s just the number of people who love K-pop and football that is growing. People are just no longer scared to say they love both. They are finding different ways to talk about football, and K-pop as well. And that’s where this ‘bubble’ thrives: it becomes an intersection of the best of both worlds.”
— Rafael Tohr, Twitch streamer and K-pop content creator
But as I said in the introduction of this article, we’re not here to talk only about fandom culture. The parallels happen on the business level too, and they’re getting more intense as the football industry is increasingly investing in branded content strategies to engage fans.
Teams like Paris Saint Germain found on YouTube and other types of self-owned media a good vehicle to get their fans to connect with the team and its players — very similar to when BTS created their own YouTube variety show “Run BTS” in 2015.
Sports & entertainment is far from a new connection. In “The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace”, Kotler, Rein, and Shields write that strategies that explore the entertainment potential of sports as entertainment date back to when the American basketball team Harlem Globetrotters became a force to be reckoned with, in the 1950s.
So it’s hard to tell whether football’s recent obsession with content and entertainment strategies is a reflection of how these strategies are paying off for pretty much any industry, or if it’s just the hyper expansion of something that has always been there.
One thing is true, though: the fan has never been a more valued asset than it is today, and many industries are taking cues from K-pop culture (and if they’re not, they should!) to create more sophisticated strategies to attract and captivate fans.
So whether football and K-pop are or aren’t industries that already get inspiration from each other, I’d say eventually they will.
“Footkpop” after the World Cup: what business is going on?
Many K-pop fans who became football fans during the 2022 World Cup were mocked and felt unwelcome. Football fans doubted those fans were really interested in the sports rather than the hype or just the players’ physical beauty and charisma, and many hated the way these fans “kpopified” their favorite sport.
Whether there is or isn’t a right way to enjoy a sport, there’s more to the K-pop and football collision than the feuds and online discussions that the fandom association generates.
K-pop stars meeting football stars took over social media several times after that. “If one year ago it was rare to see K-pop stars and football stars meeting, or K-pop stars attending football matches, now it’s not something that absurd to think of”, Tohr says.
Attentive to the repercussion of these encounters, brands are starting to capitalize on that. CoupangPlay put together two of the biggest stars in each of their fields, BLACKPINK’s Jisoo and Manchester City’s Erling Haaland, in a collaboration that resulted in exclusive content (with Haaland even learning the dance moves from one of Jisoo’s songs), and of course, lots of love from each fandom.
While not related to K-pop, the Barcelona FC & Spotify/Rosalía collaboration also comes to mind. As I wrote on LinkedIn, a deal like this “sheds light on one thing sports fans and music fans have in common: they love to wear their passion.”
“Sports jerseys and music shirts are huge identity symbols; fans love to wear a shirt of their favorite band or the team they root for as a way to express who they are and which community they belong to.
This partnership also shows how sports and music audiences can connect and benefit from each other: as this Spotify press release shows, Rosalía’s “Despechá” had a boost of streams after a Barcelona and Barcelona Femení soccer match. On social media, I’ve also seen many Rosalía fans (who are not necessarily FC Barcelona supporters or may not even like soccer) saying they’d buy the special Rosalía x FC Barcelona shirt. Also, these shirts also have the potential to become collector’s items.
Music and sports are no strangers after all, but there’s still a lot of potential in this intersection, especially now that both industries are increasingly turning to fan-centric approaches.”
K-pop fans love merch, and love wearing shirts that take the names of their idols accompanied by their birth year number, in a way that resembles the classic jersey designs. And licensing strategies are among K-pop’s favorite ways to profit from their IP and diversify their revenues.
So yeah, there’s a lot of potential for interesting merchandising collaborations here.
Where do we go from here? A few hints and trend predictions
There are enough similarities between the K-pop and the football industries for them to mirror each other more with every day, and I wouldn’t be surprised if such parallels became true intersections.
Just for the sake of coolhunting practice, I did an exercise of trying to imagine a few ways in which the K-pop and football industries could continue to collaborate and influence each other even more.
Here are a few hints or trend predictions:
Short-term
- Collaborations/licensing strategies such as the ones Spotify is doing with artists like Rosalía, for the release of personalized jerseys and other products;
- More K-pop artists performing at football-related events;
Mid to long-term
- K-pop companies possibly investing in sports (like Roc Nation does). I think it’s only a matter of time until a company like HYBE does that: it already invests in games and other businesses related to entertainment;
- Korean football getting a boost from K-pop. Brazilian soccer has boosted Brazilian music more than once. Could it be that for Korea it would be the opposite?, that is: could Korean music boost Korean football? Many K-pop fans got interested in Korean football players and their respective teams…
Very long-term
- Okay, that’s a super long shot but who knows, could we see football lightsticks in stadiums? Haha
- … or maybe football players and entrepreneurs investing in K-pop? Some players turn out to be great businessmen who diversify their investments across different fields; and K-pop is growing to be a very profitable one.
Well, writing these was fun! Let’s see if any of these wild guesses will come to life. If not, at least for now, I think we can no longer ignore the K-pop and football intersection.
If you’re interested in more parallels between thesports and the music industries, you may also want to check these other articles I wrote:
◾ Sports and music may converge as both turn to fan-centric approaches (self-published here in this blog)
◾ Fans & IP: similarities between music and sports fans, and impacts in Intellectual Property (“Fãs & PI: similaridades entre fãs de música e de esportes e os impactos para a Propriedade Intelectual” (in Portuguese) (self-published in LinkedIn)
I’m an attorney, writer, researcher, and a coolhunter/consultant working on the intersection of creative, Intellectual Property (IP) Law, and communication services. I write about K-pop music since 2017, with bylines in PopMatters, Consequence, Rolling Stone Korea, The Line of Best Fit, KultScene, and more; amd research K-pop fandom’s influence in IP & the music industry since ~2019 (interviews for Harpers Bazaar Brasil, Stroke of Genius podcast; articles published in WIPO Magazine, KPOP ETF, HIT! Magazine, and more).
This post was published merely for informational purposes and to showcase my work, and is not intended to promote any of the artists, brands, or companies here mentioned. This blog is not monetized.
If you’re interested in my consultancy and writing services, I can be reached through 3Três Consultoria e Criação (Consulting & Creative).
