Football gets on the park with Facebook
Monday, November 9th, 2009 by Andrew Doyle
In today’s guest blog post Staniforth Manchester intern, Andrew Doyle, checks the scores of UK football clubs when it comes to the Facebook league.
With the season just under a third of the way through, English football’s most successful clubs are battling against each other for domestic dominance. But it is not only within the Premier League that England’s footballing giants are competing for success. Research conducted by Revolution magazine indicates that the country’s top teams are also competing with each other in terms of their popularity on Facebook.
Leading the pack with over one million fans signed up to the club’s official Facebook group is Liverpool, while Manchester United are just behind their studded heels with 955,377 followers. Also making it into the top ten, although trailing some way behind are Arsenal and Chelsea, with Stoke
| Position | Club | Facebook Fans |
| 1 | Liverpool | 1,002,619 |
| 2 | Manchester United | 955,377 |
| 3 | Arsenal | 515,816 |
| 4 | Chelsea | 394,000 |
| 5 | Tottenham Hotspur | 67,489 |
| 6 | Aston Villa | 60,732 |
| 7 | Manchester City | 28,963 |
| 8 | Everton | 21,036 |
| 9 | Hull City | 11,163 |
| 10 | Stoke City | 9,252 |
The growing presence of football clubs within the social media network is not, perhaps, something to be surprised by.
Before the investment of wealth through the BSkyB revolution, it was easy to see how football clubs regarded their fans as one of the main reason for their existence. Compare that to the initial changes stimulated by BSkyB’s involvement and the subsequent affluence it generated, it is possible to see how football clubs came to see fans less in this way and more as customers, each of whom is a potential stakeholder in a commercial transaction.
Thus it comes as no shock to me that football clubs are using sites such as Facebook in an attempt to ‘get back in touch’ and communicate with fans and the community in an effort to bridge the divide that has been created. However could this be regarded as something of a two-edged sword? This leads to the question: what are the motives for clubs having a presence on such sites? Is this altruism and benevolence or a shrewd and cynical attempt to raise the profile of clubs across the world in a business still dominated by global markets and financial opportunism?
