At the weekend, Arsenal passed 3,000,000 followers on Twitter, making them the first Premier League club to pass through the milestone. This surprised me when I see Mesut Ozil has over 4,000,000 and Justin Bieber has 46,000,000. I thought I would explore how many followers the rest of the Premier League have;

Premier League – 3,014,009
Arsenal – 3,005,680
Chelsea – 2,970,819
Liverpool – 2,086,130
Manchester United – 1,296,966*
Manchester City – 1,275,000*
Tottenham – 689,142
Newcastle – 304,220
Everton – 267,676
West Ham United – 228,383
Aston Villa – 221,244
Fulham – 177,848
Sunderland – 176,191
Swansea City – 171,814
Southampton – 156,853
Norwich City – 155,216
Stoke City – 148,038
West Browmich Albion – 104,770
Cardiff City – 79,997
Crystal Palace – 67,720
Hull City – 59,577

Now a lot can be made from the above data. You could argue that it is a cross-section of society and therefore indicates the level of support of each club throughout the world. But it would be ludicrous to claim that Manchester United have less supporters throughout the world than those above them – their amount of followers was surprisingly low.

What it does show is, Manchester United apart – Arsenal still have a strong world-wide supporters base, still above the nouveau clubs Chelsea and Manchester City. Although Chelsea have shown the amount of fans you can gain through success. Are they now supported more throughout the world than Liverpool? Perhaps.

What is certainly shows is Arsenal’s online presence. For a long time, it has been a belief of mine that Arsenal have the strongest online presence in the UK. We have the most and best blogs & podcasts. We eat up social media. It is why media outlets write so much about us, as they know writing about Arsenal will get more online hits then any other club.

And how does Europe compare?

Barcelona (English) – 10,438,412
Real Madrid (Spanish) – 9,318,902
Barcelona (Spanish) – 5,604,562
Barcelona (Catalan) – 3,898,654
Galatasaray – 3,238,592
Arsenal – 3,005,680
Chelsea – 2,970,819
Real Madrid (English) – 2,734,033
Fenerbache – 2,490,906
Liverpool – 2,086,130
AC Milan – 1,560,114
Manchester United – 1,296,966
Paris Saint-Germain – 900,593
Juventus – 836,397
Olympique Marseille – 774,761
Bayern Munich – 714,642
Borussia Dortmund – 611,246
Atletico de Madrid – 518,833
Inter Milan – 403,667
Valencia – 322,284
Ajax – 277,414
Celtic – 189,556
Olympique Lyonnais – 187,281
FC Porto – 134,317
Benfica – 132,109

A few things jump out. Firstly the popularity of Barcelona & Real Madrid. This clearly shows them as the two biggest clubs in the world. But also shows a fascination with both clubs outside of Spain. The fact that Barcelona’s English account is has the most followers shows the fascination with them outside of Spain, and in the UK itself. Real Madrid’s English account also being high shows the unhealthy fascination with Spanish football and El Classico within the UK.

The second thing was how high Galatasaray and Fenerbache were. this perhaps shows why the ‘Arab Spring’ spread so fast throughout Social Media such as Twitter and Facebook. Twitters popularity in the ‘middle east’ and surrounding area is interesting – and not really for a football blog – but the popularity in Turkey is likely to also be the reason why Mesut Ozil has 3,000,000 followers.

Lastly is the lack of followers both German clubs and other Central European sides have. Which shows more how little Twitter has taken off in Central Europe.

A lot of opinions can be made about Twitter, including size of football following, Twitter throughout the world, and popularity of social media throughout the world. Or you can just say this was boring and pointless.

Either way, I found it interesting

Keenos
Follow @KeenosAFC

*Manchester United also have an Official Indonesian account (93,747), Spanish (31,891) & Malaysian (9,551)
*Manchester City have an additional 9 foreign language accounts totaling 33,202
*All at time of writing, Noon on Sunday 3rd November