The MAMA Awards, a major global showcase for k-pop, will stream live exclusively on Samsung TV Plus in the U.S. and other territories.
The awards, whose name is short for Mnet Asian Music Awards, are sometimes called the Grammys of Asia. This year, they will be handed out during a three-day extravaganza from Thursday through Saturday. Performances, presentations and interviews will stream on a k-pop channel recently launched on Samsung TV Plus. The channel, available in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil and Mexico, resulted from a partnership between the smart TV platform and Korean entertainment giant CJ ENM.
This year’s awards will kick off in Los Angeles at the Dolby Theatre, continuing in Osaka, Japan. The stream will be live in multiple time zones.
K-pop artists routinely dominate the social media charts and their videos rack up tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of views across YouTube and other platforms. In Samsung, they will gain a spot on the largest network of smart-TVs in North America. Its free, ad-supported streaming hub has been an increasing strategic focus for the company, which is competing with rival TV maker Vizio as well as companies like Roku and Amazon Fire.
Awards show audiences on the whole have diminished in recent years, but some ceremonies have migrated to streaming, as seen with the SAG Awards jump to Netflix and the CMAs on Prime Video and Twitch. Those are properties behind a subscription pay wall, but purveyors of free streaming have also been stepping up their investments in live programming. Roku last spring landing rights to weekly Major League Baseball games.
Samsung TV Plus says its embrace of k-pop makes sense given the musical genre’s audience is concentrated in the same 18-to-49 demo coveted by streaming advertisers. The platform recently hit 88 million active users, a jump of 50%. It offers almost 4,000 hours of “k-content,” including on-demand Korean dramas, movies, and shows available to U.S. audiences.
Coverage of the MAMA Awards will begin Thursday at 4 p.m. PT with red carpet arrivals. Rapper and producer Anderson .Paak and producer J.Y. Park will then take the stage. Breakout girl group ILLIT will make their U.S. debut during the event, competing for multiple awards, and the roster of performers also includes girl group KATSEYE.