Rank the 10 biggest clubs in the world

[SportingCP96]

“Biggest” means taking everything into consideration. Size of fanbase, trophies won, history, ability to attract world class players, etc...

In my opinion:

1. Real Madrid

2. Manchester United

3. Barcelona

4. Bayern Munich

5. Liverpool

6. Juventus

7. AC Milan

8. Inter Milan

9. Arsenal

10. Ajax

Honestly this list is as accurate as possible except I think Arsenal could be swapped but them being on the list is not bad either.

 

[mwake]

Its crazy to see teams like Chelsea, Man City and PSG doing better than Liverpool on facebook and instagram etc

However some good news...it was announced last week that Liverpool are the highest-earning football club on YouTube earning 500k a month. Liverpool's strength is in their fanbase but unlike the others they haven't really tapped into it as much as they should have, but things are changing hopefully. They have a new kit deal with Nike which should boost presence and bring in more money, some speculate it might bring them 100m+ a season.

 

[filibuster]

I'm not sure it does. The article you linked even said that the club barely registers outside Latin America yet they manage to be the 15th most popular club in the world? The social media presence on that list is heavily dictated by Latin America. These figures don't line up with TV figures. PL is the most watched league by far and the correlation between people watching the league on TV, attending games doesn't line up with social media likes. And you absolutely have to take into account how popular each social media platform is per country. Brazil is a huge country and it's the country that has the 6th highest percentage of users. Brazil is 2nd in terms of Instagram users and 4th for Facebook. Of course those numbers add up. Turkey is 5th on Twitter, 6th on Instagram and 10th on Facebook and look, Galatasaray is on the list of top 15 clubs. Spain and Italy don't register on the top 10 in any of the lists, Germany and UK only some.

What the social media chart also doesn't take into consideration is the age of the profiles. For Real Madrid the numbers are based on multiple Twitter accounts, not the one like with United. How many of the accounts are bots and not real people? Purchasing likes is a thing you can do.

A small anecdote of how social media is so much bigger in Latin America. An Icelandic player went into the WC with about 10k followers. After the WC he had more than 1m and the data showed that it was mostly just Argentina and Brazil. Basically thirsty women who wanted to look at him. He's more of a model now than a footballer because of that tournament.

The multiple accounts and other similar issues will always be negligible, each team on that list will have less than 1% of those unless you think it's a substantial percentage, for some particular teams.

Regarding Brazil and Turkey, yes I agree, but those are big countries with large populations so it's normal they would come in the top for a lot of users, but % wise is quite similar with the majority of countries in Europe. It is clear that Real and Barca benefit a lot from Latin America following because they built their brands better in relation to that region.

Numbers are numbers, and they don't lie. Or in your opinion popularity in Latin America doesn't count towards global popularity or what? I don't understand why them being 15th most popular club in the world is an issue for you. Maybe you can explain.

Its crazy to see teams like Chelsea, Man City and PSG doing better than Liverpool on facebook and instagram etc

However some good news...it was announced last week that Liverpool are the highest-earning football club on YouTube earning 500k a month. Liverpool's strength is in their fanbase but unlike the others they haven't really tapped into it as much as they should have, but things are changing hopefully. They have a new kit deal with Nike which should boost presence and bring in more money, some speculate it might bring them 100m+ a season.

Yeah, I also saw that Liverpool has more following on YouTube compared to the PL rivals, so that income really seems in line with that.

 

[riis]

Tier 1: Real Madrid
Tier 2: Man Utd, Barcelona, Liverpool, Bayern
Tier 3: Juventus, Milan, Inter, Ajax

Can't really go further down the list without neglecting at least two of the parameters mentioned in the OP. You could even argue that Inter and Ajax lacks the global fanbase to be in the top 10 or Milan lacking the current ability to attract world class players (and frankly Man Utd aren't that far off lacking this ability either unless you can turn your fortunes around sooner rather than later).

 

[RedRonaldo]

Very good list and rating system, though I would change the fanbase of City/PSG to 7 (at most).

The fan base rating is based on total no. of followings from social media as someone has posted here. Surprisingly City and PSG is among top 10 most followed club in the world currently.

 

[riis]

The fan base rating is based on total no. of followings from social media as someone has posted here. Surprisingly City and PSG is among top 10 most followed club in the world currently.

So they can afford more Bangladeshi click farms than anyone else, means nothing.

 

[Redplane]

To me these kinds of threads are completely pointless if we attribute a lot of weight to financial power to attract supposed top players. In the grand scheme of footie history a lot of the big money clubs still have a long way to go to match the likes of Ajax, AC Milan, Benfica etc. Today's "biggest" clubs are marketing machines first- footie clubs second. And that will forever be sad.

 

[Snow]

The multiple accounts and other similar issues will always be negligible, each team on that list will have less than 1% of those unless you think it's a substantial percentage, for some particular teams.

Regarding Brazil and Turkey, yes I agree, but those are big countries with large populations so it's normal they would come in the top for a lot of users, but % wise is quite similar with the majority of countries in Europe. It is clear that Real and Barca benefit a lot from Latin America following because they built their brands better in relation to that region.

I was only talking about percentage wise regarding users, not the total numbers.

It's not neglible for Real. Over 10m users on their English twitter.

Numbers are numbers, and they don't lie. Or in your opinion popularity in Latin America doesn't count towards global popularity or what? I don't understand why them being 15th most popular club in the world is an issue for you. Maybe you can explain.

That was the whole point of my post, pointing out that these social media platforms are a lot more popular in S-America than most of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia so Corinthians and latin clubs like Real and Barca will have a proportionally higher following than other clubs.

Also these numbers do line. There are millions of bot accounts, there are people that like multiple clubs etc. I do not believe that these numbers are correct within a margin of error and as such you can't take them as fact.

 

[Nucks]

United are above Barcelona imo. Pre 2009 barca weren't as big.

And post Fergie we've been dog shit on the footballing side of things. We're rapidly heading towards the wilderness years of Liverpool.

 

[Mr. P Mosh]

I don't see why Brazilian clubs can't be among the most supported teams in the world... especially when there are few European teams that are attractive to the international "fans" and most of the European countries are small compared to Brazil (I'd argue Chivas & America from Mexico can be around the top 20 as well). i'm more surprised by the fact Corinthians ranks higher than Flamengo though.