European teams lead social media boom

'Like' leaders
Top teams worldwide for social media (combined Twitter and Facebook totals)
RANK	TEAM	TOTAL
1	FC Barcelona	13,540,055
2	Real Madrid	13,255,196
3	Manchester United	12,157,901
4	Los Angeles Lakers	9,577,996
5	Arsenal	5,903,251

Despite the continuing meteoric growth of sports on social media outlets, particularly Facebook and Twitter, most North American sports properties remain well behind top European and Asian soccer clubs in terms of global followers.

Of the 20 individual sports teams in terms of largest combined Facebook and Twitter audiences, nine of them, including the top three and seven of the top eight, are soccer teams from England, Spain or Turkey.

“If there’s anything to be learned from what’s happening abroad, it’s that these [soccer] teams are global brands,” said Bryan Perez, NBA Digital senior vice president and general manager. NBA Digital, a partnership between the league and Turner Sports, collaborates with NBA executives, notably marketing vice president Melissa Rosenthal Brenner, on the property’s social media efforts.

“They have truly vibrant global followings, exactly the kind of thing we’re trying to build here, and social media, of course, is going to be a key tool in that,” Perez said.

Fenway Sports Group, owner of Liverpool FC, which sports a Facebook following of more than 5.2 million, said marketing and commercial elements are not necessarily as overt on social media with many European soccer clubs.

“A lot of what’s happening there is content-based, a lot of unique content, and the players are really involved,” said Billy Hogan, managing director for FSG’s Fenway Sports Management and a key liaison to Liverpool FC and the club’s head of technology, Andrew Robinson.

“They’ve taken extra pains to make sure the social media is primarily about engaging fans, as opposed to it being more marketing related. In fact, they don’t market as much as they maybe could. But they’ve really grasped that it’s one thing … to have someone sign up and follow, but yet another to keep them engaged.”

Back in the U.S., another set of emerging dynamics is at play. The NBA, as it has for some time, holds the largest following of the major leagues with more than 37.8 million total fans and followers when combining the Twitter and Facebook audiences for the central league feed and those of the 30 individual teams.

But numbers and rankings are changing almost by the day. Major League Baseball’s total Facebook and Twitter audience of more than 20.6 million has more than doubled in size just since the end of the 2010 World Series, and projects to be north of 30 million by this fall. The more even balance among team-level followings in MLB and the NFL show a more localized social media fan development strategy than the more league-centric strategies shown by the NBA and others.

“We have an overarching strategy that we want Facebook users to become baseball fans, and not necessarily the other way around,” said Bob Bowman, MLB Advanced Media president and chief executive. “And beyond sheer numbers, we want to grow our [social media] users in two dimensions, both qualitatively and quantitatively, and be truly engaged.”

Clubs’ social media followings are getting large enough that they are dictating long-term, high-level strategic thought on the same level given to traditional broadband and TV programming efforts.

“You’re going to see every league realize that … these are sort of parallel cable networks,” said Michael Lazerow, chief executive of Buddy Media, which has counseled many teams and leagues and built tools for their social media endeavors. “That means you have to program against them with content in a concerted, dedicated way. We definitely continue to move into uncharted waters here.”

Still, debate within the industry percolates as to what social media audience sizes really mean beyond bragging rights.

“Whatever you do in social media ideally has to be tied to some kind of measurable business objective,” said Pat Coyle, president of Coyle Media, which also counsels sports properties and has created SportsFanGraph.com, a real-time ranking of social media followers for teams and leagues. “Whether it’s selling tickets, building an audience for sponsorship or whatever, there needs to be a stronger, direct link.”

MLB
RANK	LEAGUE/TEAM	TWITTER	FACEBOOK	TOTAL
—	MLB	1,186,103	321,018	1,507,121
1	N.Y. Yankees	352,191	3,548,692	3,900,883
2	Boston	64,582	2,292,832	2,357,414
3	Philadelphia	618,503	834,722	1,453,225
4	Chicago Cubs	37,049	1,143,409	1,180,458
5	San Francisco	115,534	908,811	1,024,345
6	Atlanta	60,090	662,383	722,473
7	St. Louis	20,957	688,506	709,463
8	L.A. Dodgers	49,085	593,053	642,138
9	Detroit	8,935	595,491	604,426
10	Chicago White Sox	18,409	583,393	601,802
11	Texas	34,982	565,964	600,946
12	Minnesota	9,162	564,309	573,471
13	N.Y.Mets	25,017	375,760	400,777
14	Milwaukee	15,807	357,980	373,787
15	Cincinnati	8,156	340,265	348,421
16	Cleveland	9,560	332,108	341,668
17	Seattle	19,287	301,619	320,906
18	Colorado	10,757	283,627	294,384
19	Tampa Bay	19,480	270,082	289,562
20	Toronto	32,286	249,529	281,815
21	Houston	8,406	271,852	280,258
22	L.A. Angels	16,319	249,052	265,371
23	Oakland	4,894	254,156	259,050
24	Baltimore	16,091	234,827	250,918
25	San Diego	5,968	239,469	245,437
26	Kansas City	18,661	197,670	216,331
27	Pittsburgh	7,647	171,741	179,388
28	Florida	5,350	150,390	155,740
29	Arizona	10,277	126,288	136,565
30	Washington	11,610	84,422	96,032
	TOTALS	2,821,155	17,793,420	20,614,575

NBA
RANK	LEAGUE/TEAM	TWITTER	FACEBOOK	TOTAL
—	NBA	2,464,557	8,234,810	10,699,367
1	L.A. Lakers	1,944,384	7,633,612	9,577,996
2	Boston	163,676	3,949,904	4,113,580
3	Miami	140,828	2,099,736	2,240,564
4	Chicago	112,249	1,949,103	2,061,352
5	Orlando	1,061,001	771,877	1,832,878
6	N.Y. Knicks	93,409	806,243	899,652
7	Cleveland	65,208	669,770	734,978
8	San Antonio	56,743	612,260	669,003
9	Denver	41,123	530,254	571,377
10	Dallas	48,921	439,799	488,720
11	Phoenix	61,031	425,986	487,017
12	Oklahoma City	38,075	371,321	409,396
13	Houston	42,415	306,261	348,676
14	Portland	32,600	252,356	284,956
15	Detroit	26,226	251,026	277,252
16	Utah	36,090	229,750	265,840
17	Toronto	30,693	204,690	235,383
18	GoldenState	25,700	203,337	229,037
19	Philadelphia	31,229	154,015	185,244
20	Milwaukee	22,524	137,442	159,966
21	New Jersey	38,782	103,223	142,005
22	Atlanta	21,968	119,081	141,049
23	Sacramento	23,295	116,935	140,230
24	L.A. Clippers	34,475	77,865	112,340
25	Indiana	22,787	84,273	107,060
26	Washington	25,563	77,556	103,119
27	Minnesota	18,524	79,813	98,337
28	Charlotte	20,524	60,939	81,463
29	Memphis	23,882	55,419	79,301
30	New Orleans	26,140	33,912	60,052
	TOTALS	6,794,622	31,042,568	37,837,190

NHL
RANK	LEAGUE/TEAM	TWITTER	FACEBOOK	TOTAL
—	NHL	570,605	1,491,130	2,061,735
1	Montreal	124,808	641,313	766,121
2	Chicago	65,830	698,308	764,138
3	Boston	39,875	577,970	617,845
4	Pittsburgh	80,386	522,482	602,868
5	Philadelphia	43,925	518,549	562,474
6	Detroit	54,049	502,026	556,075
7	Vancouver	86,485	364,941	451,426
8	Toronto	48,679	378,764	427,443
9	Washington	39,247	305,748	344,995
10	N.Y. Rangers	34,212	242,980	277,192
11	Colorado	18,900	228,201	247,101
12	SanJose	29,197	206,652	235,849
13	Buffalo	24,663	195,921	220,584
14	New Jersey	22,684	165,880	188,564
15	Edmonton	41,818	127,345	169,163
16	Minnesota	19,149	126,285	145,434
17	Los Angeles	27,535	110,674	138,209
18	St. Louis	22,479	115,501	137,980
19	Anaheim	19,727	118,138	137,865
20	Carolina	14,908	115,837	130,745
21	Tampa Bay	18,949	109,923	128,872
22	Dallas	20,546	100,457	121,003
23	Ottawa	17,579	89,879	107,458
24	Calgary	37,492	61,943	99,435
25	Nashville	14,014	59,650	73,664
26	Phoenix	10,962	46,073	57,035
27	Columbus	14,055	42,859	56,914
28	N.Y. Islanders	10,629	32,969	43,598
29	Florida	11,332	32,074	43,406
30	Atlanta	11,895	30,574	42,469
	TOTALS	1,596,614	8,361,046	9,957,660

NFL
RANK	LEAGUE/TEAM	TWITTER	FACEBOOK	TOTAL
—	NFL	2,033,992	3,002,111	5,036,103
1	Dallas	72,466	2,573,707	2,646,173
2	Pittsburgh	83,925	2,209,866	2,293,791
3	New England	87,209	1,935,500	2,022,709
4	GreenBay	71,436	1,500,069	1,571,505
5	Chicago	45,988	1,498,398	1,544,386
6	New Orleans	49,175	1,292,911	1,342,086
7	Indianapolis	8,831	1,066,858	1,075,689
8	Minnesota	47,351	918,788	966,139
9	Philadelphia	33,945	904,106	938,051
10	N.Y. Jets	134,346	747,875	882,221
11	Oakland	53,981	784,584	838,565
12	N.Y. Giants	10,668	789,205	799,873
13	San Diego	58,340	720,539	778,879
14	Miami	47,843	643,620	691,463
15	San Francisco	49,903	597,615	647,518
16	Denver	44,505	595,507	640,012
17	Washington	19,130	555,803	574,933
18	Baltimore	32,901	501,231	534,132
19	Seattle	34,587	460,163	494,750
20	Kansas City	30,109	408,098	438,207
21	Cincinnati	38,190	386,092	424,282
22	Detroit	21,443	316,817	338,260
23	Cleveland	32,650	265,944	298,594
24	Houston	22,966	259,056	282,022
25	Tampa Bay	18,287	246,987	265,274
26	Arizona	5,614	245,479	251,093
27	Buffalo	24,635	221,201	245,836
28	Tennessee	30,663	204,755	235,418
29	Carolina	15,956	205,144	221,100
30	Atlanta	43,495	160,486	203,981
31	Jacksonville	13,692	160,422	174,114
32	St. Louis	15,241	90,754	105,995
	TOTALS	3,333,463	26,469,691	29,803,154

Worldwide teams
RANK	TEAM	TWITTER	FACEBOOK	TOTAL
1	FC Barcelona	660,378	12,879,677	13,540,055
2	Real Madrid	1,441,758	11,813,438	13,255,196
3	Manchester United	0	12,157,901	12,157,901
4	Los Angeles Lakers	1,944,384	7,633,612	9,577,996
5	Arsenal	567,179	5,336,072	5,903,251
6	Galatasaray	101,801	5,203,835	5,305,636
7	Liverpool	4,109	5,260,015	5,264,124
8	Chelsea	170,095	4,898,204	5,068,299
9	Boston Celtics	163,676	3,949,904	4,113,580
10	New York Yankees	352,191	3,548,692	3,900,883
11	Fenerbahçe	0	3,790,151	3,790,151
12	AC Milan	60,604	3,417,345	3,477,949
13	Dallas Cowboys	72,466	2,573,707	2,646,173
14	Boston Red Sox	64,582	2,292,832	2,357,414
15	Pittsburgh Steelers	83,925	2,209,866	2,293,791
16	Miami Heat	140,828	2,099,736	2,240,564
17	Chicago Bulls	112,249	1,949,103	2,061,352
18	New England Patriots	87,209	1,935,500	2,022,709
19	Orlando Magic	1,061,001	771,877	1,832,878
20	Green Bay Packers	71,436	1,500,069	1,571,505

About the research
The charts presented here show the number of Twitter “followers” and Facebook “likes” for team and league sites as of April 19. The teams are ranked by their combined number of fans across the two sites.

The sites tracked were those sites identified as “official sites” by the leagues and teams. Many teams do have multiple sites — official and unofficial — used to reach fans, including sites created by front-office personnel.

Player sites also provide points of access, but for this listing, only “official sites” were monitored.

Numbers listed reflect what was reported on each individual site. For the league/property and worldwide teams charts, teams were identified for listing by the rankings available from SportsFanGraph.com, and the individual sites’ updated numbers were then taken directly from the listed sites.