Real Madrid and Arsenal may not have finished at the top of their leagues this season but both clubs have done well when it comes to connecting with fans via Twitter.
The “2009-10 Twitter season within European football” saw several of the top 20 clubs* building momentum on Twitter and with all leagues having come to an end, it is time for some observations/conclusions:
1) Real Madrid is by far #1 on Twitter amongst European football clubs. Not only do they have more than 341,000 followers but Real puts a lot of effort into connecting with fans via Twitter and does it very well. This is shown by being very active, first with the news about the club, tweeting in different languages, using and publishing different types of media and at times also show good interaction with fans.
2) Arsenal is #2 but with its 127,830 followers there is a long way to go before catching up with Real Madrid. But as safe as Real’s #1 spot is for now so is Arsenal’s #2 spot. Through great updates several times a day the club has managed to grow by more than 100k followers in a year.
3) Four other clubs are showing more than 10,000 followers. These are all English and Spanish clubs and will be labelled the “Challengers”. Liverpool stands at 76,212, Chelsea at 39,494, FC Barcelona at 25,137 and Manchester City at17,490. All ”Challengers” have seen good growth throughout the season. Chelsea, for example, sat at 6,600 followers at this time last year.
4) The German clubs are getting started on Twitter and the group of Bundesliga clubs is currently being led by Werder Bremen with almost 6,000 followers. The others follow right after and even Bayern Munchen sits above 4,000 followers despite the fact that the club has yet to publish its first tweet! It will be interesting to follow the Bundesliga next season. I personally wonder if clubs such as BVB, Bayern Munchen and Schalke will “allow” Werder to remain at the top.
5) The French and the Italian teams are either only getting started or don’t seem to be active on Twitter at all.
In summary: For most European football clubs it is thus still very early days when it comes to Twitter and many clubs either don’t participate or don’t put the necessary focus on the area of social media. From the 20 clubs only 6 show Twitter accounts with more than 10,000 followers. There are, however, clubs showing good ways of utilizing tools such as Twitter and one club in particular is leading the way – Real Madrid.
Looking ahead at the 2010/11 season it will be interesting to see if Real Madrid will remain the Kings of Twitter within European Football? It will also be exciting to see if Arsenal can keep the lead in the Premier League or if Liverpool or Chelsea will catch up? The Bundesliga is truly an open race and would Italian clubs not see a good opportunity to reach out to their many international fans via social media?
*As in previous posts the top 20 clubs are based on Deloitte’s Football Money League
