Dear Gossips,

It is Memorial Day in the United States and the American Music Awards are happening tonight in Las Vegas. But that’s not the biggest show in Vegas right now.

As noted last week, Vegas for days has been taken over by BTS. This is not an exaggeration. The whole city has been painted red, the ARIRANG album colour.

There’s been a “steady decline in overall visitors” over the last year, dropping 7.5% in 2025, which is “its sharpest decline outside the pandemic since record-keeping began in 1970”. The early part of 2026 did not show any significant recovery – so the point is, Vegas needed BTS more than ever. And they’re getting an assist. Videos of the BTS merch line were going viral all weekend.

That’s how many people were willing to get up at the crack of ass, and many of those people are spending even more money on hotels, food, transportation etc.

It’s been reported that BTS fans spend as much as three times more than the average tourist so for Vegas specifically, this represents an injection of hundreds of millions into the local economy. Which, again, is why the city’s social channels are pretty much BTS feeds at the moment.

So, to go back to the American Music Awards, they too will likely benefit from the BTS presence tonight. It was confirmed that RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook will make a “special appearance” at the event tonight though they are not officially listed as performers. Understandable if they don’t end up performing since they just played two sold-out shows at Allegiant on Saturday and Sunday night and have two more on Wednesday and Thursday before they head home to Korea to prepare for their two concerts in Busan mid-June to celebrate their anniversary, known as FESTA. This might end up being the biggest FESTA on the books.

Let’s not skip over Vegas too soon though because I would very much like to continue living in the viral K-drama rom-com that happened on Saturday night, starring Jimin and the Security Guard.

Sir, this woman is trying to do her job – and she did it beautifully – so why are you out here with your slut strands messing with her bag?! For me it’s the way he’s basically open-mouth breathing on her, only for her to remain unbothered, before he leans forward on his knee, thirsty minx who won’t take no for an answer.

The script writes itself: Blonde Idol can’t stop thinking about the cute Mystery Security Girl in Red, he looks for her the next night but she was only working that one shift and now he’s desperate to find her. I would watch this show!

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Photo credits: Instagram/Vegas

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