EXO's Chanyeol (left), BTS' V (right) (SM Entertainment, Big Hit Entertainment)

The 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia opened a Twitter voting poll on July 4 to leave it up to the public to choose the songs to be played at its final four matches among France, Belgium, Croatia and England.

Among the choices were two K-pop giants: BTS’ Billboard-charting 2018 track “Fake Love” and EXO’s “Power,” the lead track from the band’s 2017 album “The War: The Power of Music,” which was ranked No. 12 on Billboard’s The 20 Best K-pop Albums of 2017.

(Twitter @FIFAWorldCup)

EXO’s “Power” narrowly outdid BTS’ “Fake Love,” as FIFA World Cup’s Twitter announced Monday. The 24-hour fan face-off led to global No. 1 trending hashtags on Twitter, #FIFAxEXOPower and #BTSxFIFAWorldCup, garnering approximately 1.5 million votes each. Of the 3,323,207 total votes, BTS and EXO each took away almost half the pie with 48 percent, with J Balvin’s “Mi Gente” and Zedd’s “The Middle” obtaining 2 percent each.

EXO’s 2017 hit track was also played at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics closing ceremony, as noted by the Olympic Channel in its Twitter reply to FIFA after it came out victorious: “Take it from us, EXO sure know how to rock a stadium!”

The songs will be played at the third place match and semi-finals at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. FIFA’s social media manager Alex Stone thanked fans of the K-pop groups for the huge voter turnout in his Twitter post: “we owe fans of both BTS and EXO a big thank you.”

By Kim Arin (arin@heraldcorp.com)