CJ E&M announced on Sunday that the 2017 Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA) would be hosted in three cities over a span of four day. Kicking off on November 25, the award show will be held in Vietnam, Japan and Hong Kong. The final location will be home to two of the four days of festivities, with each day being held at a different venue. MAMA, arguably the most popular Korean music awards show, will be celebrating its ninth anniversary this year.

Roxanne Wilson

More often than not I find myself questioning the decisions of big names in the K-Pop industry. MAMA has always been a very long awards show so it makes sense, to me at least, to split it up as a two day event in Hong Kong. What makes absolutely zero sense is stretching that awards show out to four dates in three different locations. They might have been able to get away with multiple dates in one location, but moving an awards show into three vastly separate locations seems like far more work than it should be. Plus, wouldn’t that skyrocket the cost of the entire venture, since three separate arenas would need to be rented out? I suppose someone decided this was a good idea for marketing purposes, but I’ve got to say that I definitely don’t understand the thought process behind it. Can’t wait to watch the logistics of this venture collapse before my very eyes!

Courtney Lazore

MAMA announced a while ago they were considering multiple locations, and one of those locations was Seoul. It made sense to have it in Seoul, but multiple stops? That seemed a little weird. I totally forgot about that news until they just announced the FOUR DATES in three countries. I know it's a long awards show, but... logistically, how will that work? It seems unlikely that everyone can attend all three locations, so how is that decided? If they split the awards between all three places, that basically makes it too short of a show at each place, so what’s the point? Extending the show to a second day would make sense, but having it in three separate locations just seems like overkill. (It also seems really disorganized. Like I don't have much faith of this going well.)

Haley Whisennand

Rumors surrounding MAMA’s expansion have been bubbling for a while, so I can’t say that this news is entirely surprising. That being said, the news of four days and multiple countries has really left me confused. The show has really had a hard time staying within its allotted run time the past couple years, so no doubt CJ E&M had two options this year: either cut back on the performances or extend the show. Making the whole shebang into a two-night event made sense to me. Essentially cutting the awards in half in some way would mean that some artists would only have to attend one of the two days and each night’s performance lineups would be unique. It’d be something we haven’t really seen before, but it would still make sense in terms of being, first and foremost, an award show. Stretching that across multiple countries and four days, however, takes all sense and throws it out the window. I’ll be eager to find out more as details are released in the next few months. For now, though, the whole thing seems ridiculous.