Is BTS' Jimin a Las Vegas Raiders fan? NFL locker room photo sparks curiosity among fans

There was one fateful crossover event that captured the attention of fans on-line years before K-pop started appearing in American sports bars and sweeping across the globe. In October 2022, J-Hope posted an emotional birthday post to Jimin, which surprisingly linked NFL and the music industry. One of the photos in the tribute was an impressive old picture of Jimin sitting in the locker room of the Las Vegas Raiders.The post, at the time, rapidly circulated on fan communities, particularly the immense fanbase that BTS had by that point, their ARMY fanbase. For a lot of fans, the picture showed how the group's fame had grown beyond just music charts. It also reflected a moment when NFL stadiums were beginning to host global pop events that attracted audiences from every corner of the world.The image shared by J-Hope came from BTS’s Permission to Dance On Stage tour stop in Las Vegas earlier in 2022. The group performed four sold-out concerts at Allegiant Stadium, turning the home of the Raiders into a sea of purple lights as tens of thousands of fans gathered each night.In the birthday post, one standout photo showed Jimin seated near a locker with a customized Raiders jersey hanging behind him. It was a simple backstage moment, yet it captured the scale of the group’s presence in venues typically reserved for professional football.The Las Vegas shows were among the biggest stops on BTS’s North American tour. Each night filled the stadium with more than 60,000 fans, proving that NFL arenas had become global entertainment stages as well as sports venues.Earlier in the tour, BTS had already put on another historic set of shows at California's SoFi Stadium. The band played there for four nights in late 2021. This was their long-awaited return to touring after live concerts were put on hold because of the pandemic.Those concerts changed the way people enjoyed stadium entertainment. The shows were more than concerts as people arrived at them all over the US and even other countries.The fact that J-Hope dedicated his birthday to Jimin is also a nostalgic recollection of the period. It took fans back to the novel blending of music and sporting arenas that introduced the world pop music within the NFL stadiums.