As of Monday, FC Barcelona have over 50 million Instagram followers. The Club have become the first sporting institution to reach this milestone on the social media site.

In April, Barça also reached 100 million fans on Facebook. These two achievements reflect Barça’s position as a leading player in the digital world and its status as one of the most admired, loved and global sporting teams in the globe as the 2015-2021 Strategic Plan envisaged.

Incredible figures

From the opening of the Instagram.com/FCBarcelona account in January 2013, it has been a roaring success with a total of over 11.9 million comments and 2.7 billion ‘likes’.

The Barça fans are the largest sports group on Instagram ahead of the likes of Real Madrid (49.1M), Manchester United (17.6M) and global leagues such as the NBA (23M), the Premier League (11.7M) or the NFL (9.3M).

These excellent stats highlight the importance Barça have given this social media channel through its main site and its accounts for other sections (@FCBBasket, @FCBHandbol, @FCBfutsal, @FCBhoquei) as well as for the academy and women’s side (@FCBMasia, @FCBFemeni).

Beyond Instagram

FC Barcelona’s digital leadership extends beyond Instagram as they are the biggest sporting club in the world across the main social media sites. On Twitter, the Club has 42 million fans across all its official accounts; on YouTube, they are about to reach 3 million subscribers; and the combined total of Barça’s official Facebook accounts comes in at just under 130 million.

This means FC Barcelona has an unmatched total of 286 million fans around the world.