On June 21, the Korean music chart INSTIZ published a chart that is known as the 2014 Male Idol Fan Cafe Rankings. The story which broke outside of Korea, in the blog Koreaboo, reveals startling statistics for EXO fan cafe members.

EXO, which once ranked number three on the Male Idol Fan Cafe Chart has lost a stunning number of fans, dropping to ninth place.

EXO currently has 118,552 fan members remaining, according to the report. This is sharp decline is attributed to the fact that 189,419 members left the cafe since the last report. As indicated by Koreaboo, these statistics reflect numbers have been declining over the past four months.

TVXQ remains strong with 608,975 fan cafe members. Fans of TVXQ (Cassiopeia) have continued to be fervent supporters of the duo, who has most recently promoted in Japan.

Big Bang, who are poised for a comeback in 2014, only lost 3,227 members (VIPS) to come in at a total of 293,706 fans.

What is the significance of these numbers?

This report holds great significance in terms of domestic support and future domestic sales for K-Pop male groups. The numbers clearly reflect the difference between organized fan groups and those that have remained disorganized.

Fans have speculated that the lower member count for EXO could be due to the recent controversy surrounding an alleged lawsuit involving Kris, but the decline in fans could be attributed to additional contributing factors.

Although, EXO debuted in 2012, the group and SM Entertainment has yet to determine an official fan club, fan name, and associated details. This may seem insignificant to international fans, but could possibly be responsible for what is essentially separated fan group

Korean fan cafe statistics generally only reflect the number of fans that are present within Korea or fans who have Korean identification. While these numbers may indicate a loss of fans within Korea, it is not a reflection of the global following for EXO.

In addition, the fact that the decline has occurred over the past four months, may indicate that EXO fans have aligned themselves with recently debuted groups such as GOT7 and WINNER.

Another interesting component of the report is that more established groups such as Big Bang, TVXQ, and BEAST displayed greater strength in membership, even with a drop to 273,578 fans as witnessed with BEAST.

BEAST only experienced a membership loss of 3,778 members (Beauty), which enabled the group to replace EXO in third place overall.

EXO fans built a negative reputation during chart show tapings.
Korean EXO fans have been plagued by negative perception, largely based on incidents which occurred during music chart show performances. The 2013 release "Growl" was a commercially successful and critically acclaimed hit.

However, fans of EXO were banned from attending tapings of the popular SBS program "Inkigayo" on August 3, 2013. "Inkigayo" not only banned EXO fans from attending tapings, the program refused to designate separate space for the fans.

This ban came after widespread reports of EXO fans ignoring the instructions of program staff and behavior such as large groups chasing vans containing EXO members who were leaving from the taping.

In addition, international EXO fans who attempted to attend tapings complained of harassment from their domestic counterparts.