Barcelona and Real Madrid lead the way as Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool try to keep up. But are clubs attaching too much importance to social media followers?

The burgeoning significance of social media to the 21st-century global football club was illustrated clearly last month when Manchester United’s Ed Woodward’s conference call regarding the latest accounts began by focusing on the club’s digital presence.

“Ángel di María saw a 12-times increase on Google searches on the day of his transfer from Real Madrid, Falcao a 10-times increase compared to the day he signed for Atlético [Madrid]. When Daley Blind signed from Ajax his total Twitter following increased 72%,” United’s executive vice-chairman said. “The club has 61m followers on Facebook, 3.8m followers on Twitter with a cumulative total of 87m followers across all social media. We’re directly in contact with over 100m fans, when you add in our 37m of CRM records [“Customer Relationship Management”, United’s fan information database].”

Woodward’s last comment is the big reveal of why United and their competitors are in a social media arms race to engage digitally with supporters. The modern-day leviathan club views itself as a multinational concern involved in a quest to corral as many fans worldwide for optimal commercial return. And a prime way of doing so is through virtual platforms. The social media big four of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram offer instant and direct access to potential new supporters with the hope that these will become consumers.

The quartet have become vital to United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Real Madrid and Barcelona, as well as the other clubs that rank among the 10 most popular on their respective platforms. Today’s football is no longer about just the fans who turn up to watch their team; far from it.

As Tim Bridge, a consultant at football finance experts Deloitte, says: “Quite simply, clubs cannot afford not to. For many, social media has become their default source for information. If clubs don’t engage with their fans using the most modern and popular methods they may be open to criticism, or even lose fan support. The use of social media is only going to increase – the modern day fan’s connection with his or her club comes as much from an online video clip from training as it does from attending a match on a Saturday. Clubs know they must embrace this.”

United were viewed as relative dinosaurs for not having a Twitter account until the summer of 2013 but as Woodward’s conference call illustrates under his leadership the club is now primed regarding how vital and, more pertinently, valuable a slick social media presence is.

Bridge adds: “There is an opportunity to engage with a global population – inexpensive access to potential customers – [and] to give the “club message” free of any subjective opinion from outsiders. And an opportunity to direct people to their merchandising or ticket sale portals. There is a chance to be seen as a forward-thinking, modern club [and] access to the fans of tomorrow – this is how young people communicate and access information now.”

Of the big four Facebook has the greatest reach, according to their spokesperson Glenn Miller, engaging over “1.3bn people, including 500m football fans”; Barcelona have 79.1m likes; Real Madrid are not far behind on 77.7m; and United are third with 61.6m.

The same clubs dominate on Twitter and Instagram, which was bought by Facebook in April 2012 for $1bn (£629m), and is primarily a photo-sharing platform that allows clubs to offer visual content to fans. “With over 200m people now posting and interacting through Instagram every month there are a growing number of football fans on the platform,” says Miller. “Clubs who embrace Instagram are sharing content in a new and exciting way – it could be behind-the-scenes photos of training, or announcements of new signings or squad lineups. Fans love to get an inside look into the day-to-day of the world’s biggest clubs.”

Once the traditional pre-season tour may have been to Europe for a week or so. Now, United, Real, Barcelona and company fly to more distant destinations in the battle for greater revenue. However, not every part of the world can be covered in a summer. So might the virtual arena become as essential as the annual money-spinner? Tomos Grace, YouTube’s head of UK sport, says: “YouTube certainly plays an important role in the global visibility of the clubs. For example, fans in Indonesia will connect daily to the Manchester City YouTube channel to check for updates. Where else will they get daily video news on their favourite club?”

The English champions are in many ways the Premier League’s pioneers, constantly innovating in ways to freshen up product and content. In October the club launched its CityMatchday app. “The idea came from our fans – from observing what they do and understanding their needs,” says Diego Gigliani, director of media and fan relationship. “We’ve seen a growing trend of people using their mobile devices as a “second screen” when watching our matches on TV or live in the stadium. We looked at what people were doing with their devices but, more importantly, asked them what they wanted to do with them.

“And after distilling all of those lessons, we found three core needs. (1) To watch complementary live video, especially behind-the-scenes action and in-stadium replays. (2) To have all the key info at their fingertips, including team sheets, stats, other teams’ results, etc. (3) To play some simple games to stay engaged throughout the day, compete with friends and win prizes. CityMatchday was born.”

But how does City’s presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram and the new app help the club to increase support? “The key way to grow our fan base is to create a great team, play beautiful football, and compete for trophies at all levels,” says Gigliani. “That combined with the broad global TV coverage that the Premier League enjoys is step one. Then our digital media strategy can help to create more touch points with our fans, especially those that are far away and can’t come to the Etihad Stadium. Through innovative products like our CityMatchday app or great video content like tunnelcam, City Today, or even the Ice Bucket Challenge, we can engage with our fans more often, developing a closer, stronger relationship with them.”

The word “relationship” is key here and Josh Cowls, of Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute, which examines societal implications of the Internet, offers analysis of how clubs subtly harness digital presence.

He believes potent psychological triggers are being pressed. “Clubs – particularly top clubs in England and Spain – have tapped into residual support around the world, using these social tools to open up lucrative markets. Social media are particularly effective in this sense because they play upon the social and emotional aspects of supporting a club, particularly for supporters who are geographically far away from their team’s base.

“Declaring your support for Barcelona on Facebook, for example, is a more socially visible act than visiting a club’s website or even shouting support in a pub. This obviously opens up huge commercial potential for clubs, although they have shown sophistication in their use of these platforms: the focus seems to be on building long-term communities rather than taking the first opportunity to hawk shirts.

“As a result, many or most posts from clubs to followers are informational or entertaining rather than acutely commercial in nature. And even where commercial impulses are more apparent, this seems just as likely to involve selling virtual content, eg premium video on a club’s website – as physical merchandise.”

The hoped-for synergy between clubs and new and current fans is also reflected by the mutually beneficial relationship between a City, Real or Galatasaray and social media. Cowls says: “It’s also worth noting that the platforms themselves are more than willing to accommodate and operationalise this support. For example, Facebook prominently displays a user’s support for sports teams on their profile, with links to the club’s official Facebook page – which suggests a win-win relationship between sports brands and social media platforms. In this sense, social media has absolutely become as or more valuable to clubs than annual tours – though the greatest benefits are obviously gained by using these in combination, building online support for events offline.”

But – and here is the key question: given the commercial imperative behind the prioritising of social media, beyond being a driver of revenue, can a club’s virtual presence itself actually be monetised? Bridge says: “A real challenge to all clubs, even those with the most followers, is how to monetise their social media outlets. It is currently unclear whether any of them make any revenue directly from their social media – while they provide the content and the followers, it is the social media platform which will receive any revenue from, for example, associated advertising.

“While clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona have over 10m followers on Twitter of their [first language] accounts, there is little or no evidence of any direct revenue from this. We can assume clubs will see some indirect revenue as they release information to their followers of how to buy tickets or merchandise. However, it is difficult to assess whether social media has provided an increase in these revenue streams, or whether those fans would have made those purchases via the more traditional routes anyway.”

This is the next – but arguably the most important – challenge in the social media arms race.