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