How do you determine the size of a fandom?

  • Most people say physical sales? But arent most fans outside East Asia don’t buy albums?


    How do you compare the fandom size of : bp, twice,seventeen, nct and 4th gen boygroups


    Like does twice have a similar fandom size to skz? ( fandom and not general popularity)

    Your average ggs enthusiast...

  • I guess streaming and social media activity could be a good metric. :/

    Streaming include a lot of casual listeners and social media is pretty deceiving like treasure fans are way more active than all groups in my op except maybe bp

    Your average ggs enthusiast...

  • concert

    album sales.

    Merchandise Sales

    brand reputation - I think for this if you were able to keep getting a top spot with or without comeback then your fandom is big.

    Real-time chart - If you can chart well with your b-side as well, then your fandom is pretty huge. Usually, gp doesn't listen to artist b-side.

  • Concert attendance is the best metric. Casual fans don’t spend money to go to concerts. Fans can’t bulkbuy tickets. Some websites like Ticketmaster have restrictions set up. That’s the best way to know fandom size. You can also factor in how fast ticket gets sold. That will show demand and how many fans were actually willing to pay tickets to the concert.

    Because it’s different if for the same arena it takes an act 1hour to sell out, but takes 3 days for another act to sell out


    Physicals isn’t a good metric. Some fans don’t bother with albums and some fans bulkbuy. Not a true measure of popularity


    Streaming too has too many factors and influences involved. It does show popularity but not really a good metric for fandom size

  • Yt views and subscribers, number of instagram followers (individual members too) and spotify listeners


    All are public info, but I think yt subscribers and insta followers could count more

    Isnt this an indication of popularity not fandom. Like bp members destroy nct in all of those but i have a feeling the nct fandom is not a lot smaller than bp fandom.

    Your average ggs enthusiast...

  • Good answer.. how would you rank the fandoms in my op based on this? If you know and like to answer

    Your average ggs enthusiast...

  • concert

    album sales.

    Merchandise Sales

    brand reputation - I think for this if you were able to keep getting a top spot with or without comeback then your fandom is big.

    Real-time chart - If you can chart well with your b-side as well, then your fandom is pretty huge. Usually, gp doesn't listen to artist b-side.

    Twice has big fandom but I never seen their b side chart in any major charts it's always their title tracks was huge I think it is same with seventeen and NCT too

  • Twice has big fandom but I never seen their b side chart in any major charts it's always their title tracks was huge I think it is same with seventeen and NCT too

    How do you conclude that Twice has big fandom?

    I personally think Twice has big fandom, but only within girls group.

    I don't think Twice has bigger fandom than NCT and seventeen.

    However, Twice gp is definitely above all bgs by a lot except BTS of course.

  • It's very hard to do. Streaming definitely isn't it because groups can have different ratios of casual listeners, and depending on the demographics of their fanbase their streams will also vary, and people from different countries behave differently, in some countries they might prefer buying songs and album to streaming.


    The second best metric is concert attendance, but this one also comes with its own set of problems, for one you have to factor in the GDP of each country because let's say a group has 100k fans in the US and they also have 100k fans in a poor country, just based on how much money they have you will get significantly less people able to buy a ticket even though it's the same number of hardcore fans.

    On top of that, even in the case of two countries where people make about the same amount of money you'll have a difference in culture when it comes to concert attendance, in some places people are more willing to attend concerts of artists they don't know or they only know them on a casual basis. There is also ticket pricing.

    The biggest problem with using concert attendance as a metric is the existence of a predetermined number of tickets, as much as labels and event organizers try their best it's hard to judge how many people a group can get to attend their concert, and they will try to be conservative with their estimates, so if a group is constantly growing then their current attendance numbers are gonna be way off relative to how much they can actually pull.


    In my personal opinion the best metric is album sales, BUT you still have to factor in a lot of variables, doing a 1 to 1 comparison of album sales between two groups is gonna be incredibly inaccurate.

    1) How many version does the album have

    2) Price of the album

    3) Length of time between comebacks

    4) Where the sales are coming from: The same as concert attendance, whether it's a poor country or a rich one will matter a lot, how big is the physical market is in that country, and the strength of the fandom culture in that region.

    This also relates to the second variable(price) because not only do albums have different prices from each other, but they can heavily vary depending on where they are sold, an album that cost $20 dollars in Korea might be sold for $50 in another country, And because of that groups who have more fans in areas where albums are more expensive will have their sales reduced.


    This is just a guess, I'm gonna use BTS and give my estimate to how big the fandom of other groups is relative to theirs(hardcore fans, no casuals):

    - Blackpink 1/4

    - NCT 1/4

    - Seventeen 1/5

    - TWICE 1/12

    - TXT 1/14

    - Stray Kids 1/16

  • This is very interesting thank you for taking the time to write this.


    I actually wrote this with bp and nct in mind I wondered if people think they have the same fandom size and you seem to think the same as me. Really thank you for ur reply opened my eyes to some things I haven’t thought of before.

    Your average ggs enthusiast...

  • This is very interesting thank you for taking the time to write this.


    I actually wrote this with bp and nct in mind I wondered if people think they have the same fandom size and you seem to think the same as me. Really thank you for ur reply opened my eyes to some things I haven’t thought of before.

    you're welcome, thanks for reading what I wrote, it took quite some time to write lol

  • I think my biggest issue with your question is 'how do you define someone in the fandom from a casual fan' ?


    Touring seems like an 'unbiased' metric, as people will only buy one ticket for them ( unlike albums that can be bulk-bought ). The likes on the Youtube's MV can be a good metric too, since most people won't bother creating a second account to boost the likes. How many people are following them on Instagram/Twitter too...


    It's kind of a mess, lol.

  • Oh, that's the best answer. I would have thought Twice had a bigger fandom, though, from someone who isn't an Once. Or are they mostly fueled by the GP ? :whatr:

  • Good answer.. how would you rank the fandoms in my op based on this? If you know and like to answer

    Sadly I have no idea about their concerts. This is what I could scramble online for their latest tours.


    Surprisingly SM doesn’t release Attendance numbers for some of NCT concerts so I don’t know for them. But I’ll still list for those I saw.

    NCT: 123334(10 shows)


    Twice: 242147(25 shows)


    Seventeen (most shows got canceled due to covid): 169000(5 shows)


    Blackpink:In your Area world tour(some shows didn’t release attendance figures so I didn’t add) 485889 (24 shows)



    From this it’s obvious Seventeen has the biggest fandom. With only 5 shows they were able to get close to 200000 attendees which is impressive.

    This is followed by Blackpink. Which is also impressive. They pulled the most attendees.

    Twice is the 3rd. And they pulled their biggest numbers from the Japan tour. They definitely have a favourable fanbase there.


    NCT: no position. Their numbers I got were too scanty. Couldn’t make any reference from that

  • This thread contains 11 more posts that have been hidden for guests, please register yourself or login to continue reading.

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!