Your post was in response to a comment about Shalke having a big fan base. I merely pointed out that other clubs have every bit as large or larger “glorified fan bases”.
Germany having a fan ownership model doesn’t negate fan bases from other countries and make Shalke the 6th largest sports club in the world based on some arbitrary criteria you came up with.
If that model was in other countries we would all be signed up to it.
Yes, fan base was mentioned, but I actually replied to the point that they are a big club, not only for Germany but on a global scale, and used membership numbers as a metric to prove it, simply because it is the most impressive for that club. I didn't mention the size of the fan base at all.
It was you who started mixing up fan membership programs like United have with actual club memberships and that's why I disagreed with you.
I can't even blame you for that as it was United's press release itself which claimed them to surpass Bayern München as the former leader in size. Which is laughable in two ways, because it's two different things and even then Bayern wasn't the biggest club in the world anyways. I truly had to check twice to verify that this BS was actually a club statement, so stupid I think it is.
And again, Germany by far isn't the only country where clubs are still real clubs, see here for reference:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sports_clubs_by_membership
As you can see the clubs are from Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Portugal and Spain. Most of these countries have a more mixed approach than Germany, so that they have both clubs and corporations in their leagues, but on the other hand Leverkusen and Wolfsburg also are privately owned in Germany, so even we have exceptions.
And by the way, in theory nothing would stop you from forming a "Manchester United Ownership Club" and make an offer to the Glazers, that would be a way to get fan ownership in the PL.