In the fall of 2010 a blog post here at Loyalsticity introduced the concept “Social Media Fanbase Penetration” (SMFP) in an attempt to move the focus away from volumes (e.g. number of Facebook friends) and look into what proportion of a club’s actual fanbase a club connects with via social media. SMFP was introduced as an attempt to provide a better comparison measure for social media fan reach as a club like Napoli for example will never reach the same volumes as Real Madrid.

This past week has seen numerous of new articles published (for example on the UK Sports Network and Fotebol Finance) focusing on ranking football clubs by number of Facebook friends and although newsworthy, I believe it is time to take another look at SMFP and see how clubs do in relation to their actual fan bases?

Below are the top European football clubs in terms of European fan bases – and their respective SMFPs:

FC Barcelona: 25%
Real Madrid: 42%
Manchester United: 42%
Chelsea: 24%

[explanation: The SMFP number for FC Barcelona means that the club is connected with 25% of their total fan base via Facebook]

Whereas Real Madrid was leading amongst the top four clubs in Europe in the analysis done in 2010, it is now clear that Manchester United have gained significant ground when it comes to connecting with fans via social media. Looking further down the list, clubs such as Liverpool, Arsenal and AC Milan are now sitting above 20% as well.

Social media is also picking up with the German clubs but as is the case with for example Italian clubs (AC Milan being the exception), there is still quite some way to go and most clubs sit well below a 10% SMFP score. Looking at the major clubs in Eastern Europe who also make it to Sport+Markt Top 20 list, it is evident (even if including numbers from Russia’s biggest social network site VKontakte) that social media still has lots of potential. As comments on the blog post in 2010 indicated, it should be noted that both factors in the hand of clubs (e.g. focus on social media, mobile marketing) as well as external factors (e.g. adoption of IT, internet penetration) contribute to the differences. Nevertheless, looking at what SMFP scores that can be achieved it is clear that most clubs still have great potential “waiting” for them on social networks.

In the beginning of this article Real Madrid and Manchester United were credited with +40% SMFP scores but that is still nothing compared to the following club:

In first place, sitting at a staggering 78% is Galatasaray – followed by city rival Fenerbahce (64%). Galatasaray was the number 1 club on Facebook in volume until August of 2010 and although growth numbers have been much lower than the bigger European clubs, the club has continued to grow its social media involvement and has a very lively and engagement focused Facebook page.

In a few months time we will take another look at SMFP rankings. In the meantime, however, the search will go on to see if better statistics for fan base sizes can be found. As mentioned in the earlier article the number of fans used in this article are based on European figures – as worldwide figures don’t seem to exist for all clubs or are not reliable. Should anyone know of good worldwide statistics showing number of fans, please drop me a note. If anyone even has better European numbers, these will be greatly appreciated – I personally think that some of the clubs mentioned above have many more fans than what they have been assigned.

Until then Galatasaray can enjoy their #1 position in Social Media Fanbase Penetration.

*SMFP is defined as the ratio between likes on Facebook and the fan base of the club. The source used for fan base sizes is Sport+Markt’s recent and highly interesting “Football Top 20 2010″

Today was the day that Lionel Messi launched his official Facebook page. Numerous sites around the world (incl. Mashable) have been busy publishing stories around how Messi has been able to gather almost 7 million friends in just one day!

Although Messi is the best football player on the planet at the moment and his club just took a big step towards the Champions League semi-final, it seems like things have been blown out of proportion in regards to the almost 7 million fans.

Let us take a closer look at the numbers. It is now approximately 12 hours ago since the launch occured. Messi at the moment has 6.77 million “likes”, which would mean that 9,400 people would have clicked on “like” each and every minute the last 12 hours! To make the story even better, Messi already had 6.66 million likes at 2PM (Central European Time) today, which would mean that 22,200 people each and every minute would have become fan in the first hours after the launch (assuming the page was launched at 9AM).

Getting back to reality; the starting number for the Lionel Messi page was already well above the 6 million when it was launched this morning (through people signing up on an unofficial page in the past months). A more realistic growth number on this first day of the official Messi page is 200,000-300,000 which is certainly still an impressive number – although not as interesting a story as one with 6 or 7 million in it!

What has been done very well around the whole launch, however, is the hype that has been created. This has lead to thousands of tweets and articles about the 6-7 million fans in one day. The launch has thus not only reached Messi fans but also sparked additional interest due to its sheer volume. This way the news – and Messi – has made it into regions, onto sites and its way to readers who may not even be big Messi fans in the first place.

What do you think? Great marketing stunt, social media experts uncritically writing news stories or?

Clubs all over the world are busy adopting social media as a way to communicate and interact with current as well as new fans. Where some clubs have built up own networks, most clubs today seek to utilize the leading platforms of the world such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc.

Up until this point, the focus by many clubs seems to be one of adding social media as a(nother) communication channel through which a club can inform fans of news and allow fans to comment. Success is often measured in volume (e.g. number of followers on Twitter) and scanning club pages on social media networks it seems that not only are social media strategies not optimized, they also don’t seem well integrated with the rest of the fan related activities of the club.

A number of clubs, however, are taking things further. They are seeking to get to know their fans on social media platforms better, provide fans with additional engagements opportunities as well as increase the possibilities of communicating with these fans. All of this is based on a focus on using social media as an integrated approach to fan relationships rather than a stand alone “project”.

The most common and simple ways to enhance the engagement with fans are by offering incentives to fans, launch competitions with unique prizes or give fans the possibility to participate in online gaming via social media or other sites. In return, fans are often asked to provide the club with some basic information about themselves (e.g. contact information).

To clubs, the additional information gathered about their fans is vital as it enables them to not only engage with fans and develop the relationship via social media but for example also via email. It also allows them to gain further insight into their fan base, e.g. is the fan a ticket buying fan or does the fan interact with the club in other ways than via social media? In an earlier blog post, I referred to an article about the Boston Celtics, which is a good example of the above mentioned strategy.

Below, a few concrete examples of clubs that have introduced concepts or ideas to further engage with their fans.

Detroit Pistons
Detroit uses the landing page directly to give away tickets. A fan can sign up for a chance to win and is also given the opportunity to sign up for the Detroit Pistons newsletter.

Charlotte Bobcats
On the landing page the fan is encouraged to like the club and offered the opportunity to win a pair of signed Jordan 13 retro shoes. In order to do so, one has to leave contact details with the club.

FC Barcelona
The world’s biggest club on Facebook offers many different ways to get closer connected to the club right from the start when one arrives at their Facebook page. Games, tickets and membership community are just some of the offerings to fans.

There are many ways to engage with fans – in particular via social media. Key to success is to create a win-win situation – only asking fans for information or only providing fans with information will not lead to success. Fans are at the moment very excited to engage with clubs via social media, but the challenge lies with the club; how thought through is the social media approach and how well connected is it with the overall fan relationship strategy? Lots of clubs are currently not only wasting their own time and resources but also missing out on the moment of “engagement opportunity” via social media with the fan. Others are seeking to take advantage of the full potential that social media offers and embracing it as an integrated part of the club’s strategy.