The journal Digital Sports Media has placed FC Barcelona top of the global football ranking with a digital fanbase of more than 117 million followers The data collected by prestigious social consultancy RESULT has once against positioned FC Barcelona ahead of the likes of Real Madrid and Manchester United
More than a million new fans a week
Barça has gained about 60 million new followers in 2014, which amounts to an average increase of 1.3 million a week. The main Facebook account has 30 million new followers this year, taking the overall figure to 79 million. Some five million new fans are following the club’s 15 Twitter accounts and other platforms such as Line and Instagram have also witnessed major booms.
And it’s not just the football team that’s raising so much interest. Barça’s handball team has a digital reach of 3,928,154 people, more than all of the next 24 teams together. And the 4 million followers of their Facebook account make the Barça roller hockey team the most digitally popular in the world.
The journal Digital Sports Media, which specialises in sports and new technologies, has once again declared FC Barcelona to be the world leader on digital media with more than 117 million followers. Prestigious social consultancy RESULT has analysed the presence of the world’s biggest clubs on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Google +, and has once again ranked the Catalan giants ahead of Real Madrid (108 million) and Manchester United (70).
But the club’s presence extends way beyond those five networks. Barça can also be found on Line, WeChat, Sina Weibo, Dailymotion and Pinterest, which were not included in the DSM study. Counting these other platforms, Barça has gained 60 million followers so far in 2014.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As the club’s director of new technologies, Dídac Lee, has said, "FC Barcelona’s focus on digital media means much more than merely being the most followed club in the world. Today we are able to communicate with our fans via forty different channels and in nine different languages.”
Video has played a particularly prominent role in recent months, with Barça now featuring on Dailymotion and Vine in addition to YouTube and Instagram, thus exponentially expanding its audiovisual offer. The aim is to improve the experience for Barça supporters and to respond to the demands for such content due, among other factors, to greater bandwidths and more advanced mobile devices.
“This global presence allows us, at the same time, to generate a whole series of monetary assets” adds Lee. “It is a source of income that made some 30 million euros for the club last season.