Away from the confines of a club’s home ground, fans get the opportunity to connect with each other on the social media, and some of these platforms have become a 2nd home, though virtually to football clubs and their ever-burgeoning followers.
On here, there are no geographical or even language barriers, and a club supporter in Australia can express how exactly he feels about whatever issues as regards to the side his heart beats for to his fellow fan in far away South America.
One club that boasts of a very massive following on Twitter and Facebook – 2 of the most popular social media sites on the planet, is Manchester United.
The Red Devils command approximately 71.5million in Facebook audience, while 9.23million people on Twitter follow the club’s official account.
In the words of the club’s sporting director Richard Arnold, Manchester United’s popularity, as indicated by their online fan base is as big as a religion, and it would be right to say that they are becoming one of the largest social media circuses.
Red Devils faithful from around the world get to meet and connect over the internet, and the camaraderie it helps to foster is second to none.
Having recently had their 1 billionth interaction on Facebook, the rapport the club establishes with worldwide fans continue to help them gauge what the followers want, subsequently providing them areas to improve on as they further attract followers.
This was perhaps exemplified during the offseason while wrapping up the signing of football’s ever most expensive player Paul Pogba. United painted Twitter red with the campaign – #Pogback, garnering more attention than what the unveiling of Barcelona’s Luis Suarez and Real Madrid’s Gareth Bale commanded.
The official unveiling of the 23-year-old midfielder trended for a couple of days on the social media platform, with the post bearing his first picture in a Manchester United shirt earning as much as 89,000 retweets and 98,000 likes.
With an estimated 659million followers worldwide – double the size of North America, Richard Arnold believes it like having two Americas that love the same team.
Speaking at Web Summit 2016, Arnold was quoted by the Dailymail saying:
‘The level we are engaging at, to put it in context, is akin to religion.
‘John Lennon was famously quoted as saying The Beatles were “bigger than Jesus”.
‘Whilst we wouldn’t want to be disrespectful in that way, what you are seeing from a measurement point of view is that the level of engagement and fervour we get is on par with the world’s major religions and those are the only things at the same level as Manchester United in terms of that interaction and engagement.’
No celebrity or club comes close to how large the United following is. With around 80% of the world’s television broadcasting platforms having channels that broadcast the club’s games live, one isn’t left with no much choice than to agree with Arnold’s description of the club as ‘a really key part of modern popular culture around the world’
On the pitch, their success level of recent time might not be able to rival those of other traditional big wigs in England, or match the achievements of other top European clubs, but despite their shaky campaigns in the past 4 years or thereabout, their followership hasn’t waned.
Social media is the best yardstick to measure success as regards that, and with the club’s Facebook likes and Twitter followers steadily increasing every other minute, it can’t just be denied that they are getting bigger every day, and Manchester United are becoming a social media circus as the day goes by.