Which football club has the biggest fanbase?

John Fernandez

Madridista, Spain and FIFA Nut.

109w ago

So, let's give this answer a good old fashioned run:

Global Clubs
Fundamentally, there are 15 clubs which I would call "global". 

England (6). Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham.

Spain (2). Real Madrid, Barcelona.

France (1). Paris Saint Germain.

Germany (2). Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund.

Italy (4). Juventus, Roma, Inter Milan, AC Milan.

(There are clubs in other leagues such as Benfica, Porto, Celtic, Rangers, Olympiakos, etc. which are important, but in my mind wouldn't qualify, as well as outside of Europe teams like LA Galaxy, Santos, Boca Juniors, River Plate, etc. which are important, but definitely not in this tier.)

These clubs have global footprint, they have a global fan base, you'll see their jerseys in every city, etc. Whatever the top club is, it's probably here.

So let's do this - we're going to measure by combining the follower ranks on 3 social media sites: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The most popular club on Instagram gets 15 points, the lowest gets 1 point, then we just total points, ok?

Let's see how the math turns out:

(Follower counts as of November 29th, 2015)

And after my rankings are applied (tiebreak is head-to-head on who won the most social media sites):

So in the end, it's pretty easy: 

Barcelona. #1 in followers on Facebook & Instagram, and #2 on Twitter, in the 120M+ club with Real Madrid.

Real Madrid. Neck and neck with Barcelona, but, like recent history, Barcelona is just slightly better.

Manchester United. An impressive 81M followers across all the sites, much better than Chelsea's 54M and Arsenal's 45M, but nowhere near Barcelona & Real Madrid.

Chelsea.

Arsenal.

Bayern Munich.

Liverpool.

Paris Saint Germain.

AC Milan.

Juventus.

Manchester City.

Borussia Dortmund.

Tottenham.

AS Roma.

Inter Milan.

In hindsight, maybe Tottenham, AS Roma and Inter shouldn't have made the list.

Peter Geoghegan

interest in life

135w ago

According to Top 10 Football clubs with highest fan-base around the the world, the top few are (July 2013):
1- ManU 659 million supporters
2- Barce 260M
3- RMadrid  180M
4- Chelsea 140M
5- Arsenal 115M
6- ACMil 98M
7- Liverpool 70M
8- Bayern 50M
9- Inter 24M
10- Juve 21M

- The website "source" is the ever famous "recent study", so take that for what it's worth.
- Who knows how these numbers are tabulated. How do they know who I support? If my gf watches 10 minutes of a match with me, do they count her as well? There are a million obvious follow up questions.

Although the numbers may be inflated or guesstimates, I would think the list of the top 10 clubs is somewhat accurate, although I see far more people wearing Barcelona gear than anyone else.

Vivek Jay

Grad student, Programmer, Foodie, the try guy, Nature lover

101w ago

Like many fans pointed out here before, Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid lead the footballing world in terms of brand value, commercial success and global reach.

Counting the social media followers like someone did previously is an easy way. But beware its a flawed one. Mainly because half the world population does not have access to the internet. So how do you expect such people to 'like' or 'follow' these clubs. For instance football has a large number of followers in Asia mainly China and India. But many in these countries don't have proper access to the social media.

A good example of this is Manchester united. They have biggest number of their fans from India & China (more than 100 million). So when you take social media count, the population of these fans are not truly reflected. Hence it is difficult to say the true popularity level on a global scale.

Manchester united's popularity came to its peak after their treble winning season. They were the first english team to win the impossible treble, just like they were the first team to win the European cup back in 1968. Their style of play and attacking flair made them one of the most exciting teams in the world. The presence of icons like Beckham, Cantona also boosted their popularity. If we look at the last 20 years Manchester United can arguably be said as the most popular football club on the planet. Mainly because English premier league was the most widely televised sport in the world. And they were the best team in it for a long time. EPL was telecast widely in the  third world countries when La liga, Serie A, and Bundesliga were only talked about in papers. The effect of this can be seen in the brand value of Manchester United. Their commericial pull is quite uncredible so much so that Adidas pays 75 million USD a year for printing their jersey. Chevrolet pays a similiar amount for printing their name on their jersey as the main sponsor. Both these deals are the biggest in the footballing world. And by quite a distance. To put that into perspective, United's Adidas deal is almost twice what they pay Real madrid.

Barcelona and Real madrid are two teams whose popularity is regularly debated to be because of the fans who follow their iconic players. For instance fans who follow Ronaldo or Messi will obviously also follow the club. Real madrid has always utilised this principle. They have always shrewdly bought players of such iconic status and used them to increase both their commerical revenue (by shirt sales) and their popularity. Barcelona meanwhile became popular mostly in the last decade by their incredible on-field success and the presence of iconic players of the stature of Messi and Ronaldinho to name a few. Manchester United can currently claim to have the largest fan base but Real madrid and barcelona are catching up. Mainly due to a reversal in on-pitch successes of these clubs in the last few years.