Chapter 200. An Angel Among Angels
This wasn't something I could decide on my own.
It was something that needed to be discussed with our employees.
After all, it could mean changing our previous decision to limit overseas activities.
Of course, it wasn't as if we'd followed that decision perfectly until now.
I turned on my laptop and started a video conference with the employees back in Korea, including Dae-hun and Jin-hee.
"Dae-hun. Your face is way too big on the screen. It's unpleasant. Sit farther back."
"Should I just break through the wall and sit outside, hyung?"
First, I asked Dae-hun to brief me on the current public opinion within the fandom.
"You know Apollo's fanbase is basically divided into three major groups, right? Each group has a different opinion."
Within Apollo, the term elder originally referred only to the Twelve Sages who created the fan club during Blue Moon's hardest days and kept sharing photos and performance schedules.
But now, roughly five thousand fans who had joined Apollo back during the Oh Soo era had all been elevated to elder status.
The original Twelve Sages were currently active as famous named users within the fandom.
They could be considered the first group.
The second group consisted of about eighty thousand fans who had entered the fandom after I became CEO, up until just before the recent United Talenet Live-Super Bowl events.
Many of them had experience participating in other fandoms, so half of them were practically planners themselves.
They had now settled firmly into Apollo and were fairly loyal.
The third group was the wave of new fans who exploded in number after the Super Bowl Halftime Show.
They joined arguments between the first group, the elder fans, and the second group, the incoming fans, while adding their own opinions.
The elder fans actively supported Blue Moon's overseas activities.
They had also carried resentment from watching Blue Moon struggle since their unknown days, so anything that could make Blue Moon more famous still made them charge forward with fire in their eyes.
Their mentality was similar to mine.
On the other hand, the incoming fans recommended limiting overseas activities.
They had seen plenty of other idols crash and burn overseas.
They were convinced Blue Moon might suffer the same fate.
Or even if the group succeeded, Blue Moon might stop being the Blue Moon they knew.
I could understand that to some extent.
"Until now, we've mostly followed the opinions of the incoming fans... Ah, though they absolutely hate being called incoming fans, so you'd cause a huge mess if you called them that on the fan café. Anyway, you could say we've followed their opinion. We figured even the elder fans probably wanted that deep down."
That was true.
We had assumed the fans who supported overseas activities were sending Blue Moon off while wiping away tears with handkerchiefs.
"If things were the same as before, we could just keep doing what we've always done. Give fans reverse-support gifts whenever we go overseas and keep emphasizing that we aren't planning to focus on foreign activities. We'd feel a little sorry for the elder fans, but there are more fans on the other side. The problem is the new fans who joined after the Super Bowl."
For those new fans, their first encounter with Blue Moon had been an overseas schedule called the Super Bowl.
Even if you included United Talenet Live and the Mayway fight before that, it was still the same.
Their position was simple.
Why force Blue Moon to stay trapped in Korea when there was no reason to avoid overseas activities?
According to Dae-hun, the new fans were spread evenly between both sides, leaving overall public opinion almost exactly fifty-fifty.
"Man, this is a headache. Should we put it to a national referendum or something?"
"I was planning to brief you the moment you got back to Korea, but this time I've already got a solution again. Wahahaha."
Kwon Dae-hun was getting better and better at his job.
I loved it.
"What is it?"
"First, we make a minimum pledge regarding domestic activities. We fulfill only that much, then freely do overseas activities without feeling guilty. After reaching that kind of ordinary compromise... we go public."
Go public?
Ah, no.
No, no.
Just hearing the phrase made me hate it.
"Universe's stock price would explode the moment we listed. We'd become a major company almost instantly. That's what we need to eliminate people's anxiety about overseas activities. The head would still be Do Jun-hyeok, but our capital would be almost at Shin Hyung-geol's level."
"No, no. How would Do Jun-hyeok still be the head after that? The moment we go public, I won't even be able to buy a single share of Universe stock, you punk."
If that happened...
Even if I knew 〈Live Singing Contest〉 would be a hit, I might have to go shoot advertisements for some giant investor instead.
Even if I knew 〈Lucky Driver〉 would succeed, I might be forced to release a new song like 〈Marine Amitabha Tiger〉.
If I was going to end up like that, then during Serin's uncle incident I might as well have handed the company over to Cheonghwa.
Why would I have fought to keep it?
When I argued that, Dae-hun said,
"Our Do Jun-hyeok hyung seems to be seriously misunderstanding something."
What?
I'd heard that phrase somewhere before...
Ah.
Right.
Kim Gyu-bong had suggested listing too.
When I'd shown my negative attitude toward it, he had also told me I was misunderstanding something.
"Fine. Let's hear what I'm supposedly misunderstanding."
Dae-hun said,
"Investors aren't putting money in so they can immediately drag Blue Moon around however they want, squeeze everything out of them, then dump the stock once the sweetness is gone. That's what retail investors do."
"Then what is it?"
"They're not investing in Blue Moon. They're investing in Do Jun-hyeok and Universe as a management team. Everyone knows your decisions have been absurdly accurate, practically like a fortune-teller. Do you really think they'd invest and then go against your judgment?"
I was still a little uneasy...
"And even if some shareholder gets weird and starts throwing their weight around just because they own some shares, what are you going to say?"
"I'd tell them to fuck off and pull their investment if they don't like it."
"Exactly. What are they going to do? Call a shareholders' meeting and convince everyone else to throw Do Jun-hyeok out? If the monk doesn't like the temple, the monk leaves."
What Dae-hun described was indeed the ideal form of investment.
As long as I kept doing well, I could fully use that capital for the business.
Even so, it wasn't something I could decide impulsively.
"You're right. Still, once we make this choice, we can't take it back... We've done fine until now, so let's think about it more carefully."
"Ah, I wasn't saying we need to do it immediately either. Of course we should think it through seriously."
Going public...
I'd always thought all I needed to do was raise Blue Moon well.
Come to think of it, for some of our employees, this place was still a job tied directly to their livelihoods.
Just because I worked out of pure fan devotion didn't mean I had the right to demand that every employee become equally noble.
Dae-hun said he'd study the idea more too.
So for now, we postponed the decision.
Nevada State Government, Cultural Business Division.
The employees in the Cultural Business Division were working busily.
