Manchester United’s social media followers top 100m
Manchester United has become the first Premier League team to accumulate 100m global social media followers, having only recently become football’s first $1bn brand.
The Mancunian team attained their numerical feat by combining their follower count for their 10 most popular social networks, led by Facebook which accounted for 63.9 per cent of the total.
The remainder is accounted for by Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo, Line, Instagram, Google Plus and Twitter which each account for between 5 and 8 per cent – with the first two highlighting the growing importance of the Chinese market to the club.
This follows a period of stratospheric growth in the club’s digital fan base which has expanded by over 200 per cent in the last two years alone, up from just 33m in 2013, despite a dry spell which has seen the team fail to add any new silverware to their threadbare trophy cabinet.
Manchester United still have a mountain to climb if they wish to reach the top of the global tree however with both Barcelona and Real Madrid sitting pretty with 196m and 145m followers respectively.