GGRAsia – Macau’s Wynn Palace to host outdoor K-pop festival in Oct

Macau’s Wynn Palace to host outdoor K-pop festival in Oct

Aug 23, 2023 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

The Wynn Palace casino resort (pictured), in Macau’s Cotai district, is hosting on October 21 and 22 a pop music festival featuring a line-up of artists from South Korea. The announcement was made on Wednesday by the property’s owner and promoter, casino operator Wynn Macau Ltd.

The company said it would bring “HallyuPopFest to Macau for the first time, where some of the biggest names in K-pop will perform live on the Wynn Palace lawn”.

HallyuPopFest is a music festival featuring some of the top names of pop music from South Korea, a music style also known as ‘K-pop’ that has risen to international prominence in recent years.

The festival’s first two editions were held in Singapore in 2018 and 2019. The event-brand returned last year, with editions in London, in the United Kingdom; and in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Wynn Macau Ltd said artists performing at the Macau event would include: NCT Dream and SHINee, as well as Hyolyn, Kard, Sam Kim, Verivery, Cherry Bullet, Omega X, H1-Key and Nine to Six.

Tickets will go on sale on Friday, the firm said.

The press release quoted Wynn Macau Ltd’s president and vice chairman, Linda Chen, as saying that “music tourism is on the rise around the world, and this annual K-pop festival has rapidly become a global sensation”.

She added: “By hosting major international music festivals such as these at Wynn Palace, our goal is to put Macau on the map as a top-tier destination for international events.”

Wynn Macau Ltd – which also runs the Wynn Macau casino resort on the city’s peninsula – is to invest MOP17.7 billion (US$2.19 billion) in Macau over the course of its decade-long concession that started in January, with MOP16.5 billion set for expanding international markets and non-gaming investments.

Earlier this year, acclaimed K-pop band Blackpink performed two sold-out shows at the 16,000-seat, multipurpose Galaxy Arena, part of Phase 3 of integrated resort Galaxy Macau, a property under casino operator Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd. According to several investment analysts covering the gaming sector, the two concerts helped drive additional consumer traffic to Galaxy Macau and increase retail sales there.

Similar trends have been seen in other Macau properties recently hosting concerts with high-profile artists. “A few major concerts helped” the casino resort sector’s performance in the second quarter, wrote banking group Morgan Stanley in a note published at the end of June.

Analysts Praveen Choudhary, Gareth Leung, and Stephen Grambling added at the time they expected the trend to “continue in third-quarter 2023.”