At this year's concerts, the show is on the stage — but sometimes, it's in the crowd, too.
Members of the Kardashian-Jenner family have recently used concerts to drop news, ranging from pregnancy announcements to confirmation of rumored relationships.
The trend began in June, when Kourtney Kardashian Barker revealed she was pregnant with husband Travis Barker's child by holding up a sign during a concert. The Blink-182 drummer left the stage to hug his wife, whom he married in 2022.
What started off as a one-off became a pattern, or close to it, in August, when Kendall Jenner was photographed kissing her rumored beau Bad Bunny in the audience of a Drake concert. (In separate interviews published in June, both declined to comment on their relationship status.)
Then, her sister Kylie Jenner seemingly confirmed her own romance by kissing rumored boyfriend Timothée Chalamet at a star-studded Beyoncé concert in September, and the following weekend at the U.S Open.
Public relations professional Beth Booker sees a trend, especially given the family's history of media-savvy maneuvers. The Kardashian-Jenners are known for turning public events into hyped up moments in their shows.
"None of this happens in a vacuum. I think it's deliberate and planned," she says. "But the point is for it to look otherwise."
But why concerts?
Molly McPherson, author of the book “Indestructible: Reclaim Control and Respond with Confidence in a Media Crisis,” and whose public relations company focuses on crisis management, says concerts are a room full of their target demographic.
And that target demographic has phones. The photos and footage of the Jenners that emerged from the concerts were, notably, spread on social media by fans — not through paparazzi or their own cameras.
"They don't need to create an artificial capturing of these moments. It's built in. Everyone has phones at a concert everyone is filming or ready to count at a concert. How easy is it to move a camera over and film a Kardashian?" McPherson says.
Perhaps the Kardashian-Jenners, who pioneered selfies and the art of using phones to document personal lives, have evolved past the need to use them.
"There's a very different delivery that comes from having a third party spread this news versus a calculated and very obviously curated posts. It's almost like they don't even need to have like their own social media because they already know that their fans are going to be posting it," Booker says. "They’re letting everyone else tell the story for them."
It's a release of control for a family known for shaping their own narratives — but it may be a level up, too.
"They are known for influencing via social media. Now they are bringing it to not only a more elevated level, but a more powerful level, because it's not just one person posting the image. It's multiple people posting, which means multiple people can share that image and share their narrative," McPherson says.
Notably, neither Jenner has confirmed their relationship beyond the photos and videos of them kissing at concerts. Booker sees that as a way to keep interest building.
"It's not something to just have people continue talking about it. That's the whole goal. They don't want people to see it. And then they posted to confirm it and then everyone moves on to the next story. Everyone's going to be checking their social media. They want to look for those Easter eggs too," she says.