The first day of the Mnet Asian Music Awards became controversial
Mnet Asian Music Awards 2023 (MAMA 2023) witnessed the fierce competition between fandoms for the “Worldwide Fans’ Choice” category, as this category was not influenced by experts’ evaluation and only relied on fans’ vote. Particularly, Mnet announced the Worldwide Fans’ Choice Awards (Bonsang) would be decided based on 70% from fans’ votes on its app and 30% from votes on Spotify.
Finally, the result of this category was revealed on November 28, the first day of the MAMA 2023 ceremony. The list of winners includes ATEEZ, BTS, ENHYPEN, Lim Young Woong, NCT DREAM, SEVENTEEN, Stray Kids, TWICE, TXT and ZEROBASEONE.
Unexpectedly, TREASURE was not included, angering their fans. Fans were quick to come at Mnet, as the group had been constantly near the highest position of the votes until the very last minutes, so them not making the top ten was unbelievable.
Similar to TREASURE, EXO was also predicted to be in the TOP 10 of Worldwide Fans’ Choice winners. However, fans were very shocked and angry to see other artists who did not appear in the predicted Top 10 receive the award instead of EXO. Many even pointed out that this is not the first time EXO got their win robbed by Mnet.
As such, EXO fans went on X and pushed the tag “EXO MOST ROBBED IN MAMA” to the Top Trending in Korea.
In fact, there have been many controversies over their award criteria and results in previous MAMA awards ceremonies. Seeing the incident that happened to EXO and TREASURE this year, netizens once again expressed disappointment towards Mnet.
Source: koreaboo
