Mnet Responds To Speculations Of "Produce X 101" Vote Manipulation

Mnet has denied any truth to the rumors of vote manipulation in the live finale of “Produce X 101.”

The 11 members of the new boy group X1 were determined in the July 19 broadcast through a combination of online votes and text votes that were sent in by fans during the show. Kim Yo Han took first place and the center position, with fellow X1 members including Kim Woo Seok, Han Seung Woo, Song Hyeong Jun, Cho Seung Youn, Son Dong Pyo, Lee Han Gyul, Nam Do Hyon, Cha Jun Ho, Kang Min Hee, and Lee Eun Sang. The first 10 members were decided through the latest round of online voting and text votes, while Lee Eun Sang joined the group as the “X” after receiving the next highest accumulated votes throughout the season.

Following the show, some fans speculated that there had been manipulation of the text votes after they compared the announced vote totals of the winning trainees. The speculations center on the similarities between the gaps in votes between trainees. For example, there are five voting gaps between contestants that all come to 29,978 votes —between No. 1 (1,334,011) and No. 2 (1,304,033), No. 3 (1,079,200) and No. 4 (1,049,222), No. 6 (824,389) and No. 7 (794,411), No. 7 and No. 8 (764,433), and No. 10 (749,444) and No. 11 (719,466). There are other combinations of voting gaps that also match each other.

Many people have been calling for a response from Mnet, particularly as fans paid a fee to send in their text votes.

On July 22, it was reported by Ilgan Sports that a source from Mnet stated, “We are aware that there are suspicions regarding the text votes. So we internally kept checking the data, but there was no issue at all.” They added, “There was no issue with the text voting and no manipulation.”

“It’s interesting that the vote gap repeated several times, but that is the score as is, so there is nothing to say,” they stated. “It seems that the suspicions would not subside even if we were to release an official statement, so I don’t think one will be released.”

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