Manchester United vs FC Barcelona – the Social Media Champions League

Manchester United TwitterManchester United’s manager Sir Alex Ferguson recently hinted that his players may be banned from using Twitter. Tonight his club will face FC Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League final on Wembley in London. This game between two of the world’s most popular football teams is predicted to be one of the best finals in a long time. Discussions and opinions about the game will be all over social media and it will probably dominate the trending topics on Twitter today.

In spite of Ferguson’s hesitancy towards Twitter, both clubs have managed to gather quite a large following in social media. The question is, how does Man Utd stand in comparison to FC Barcelona, in terms of presence in social media?

Facebook – close win for Barcelona
Both teams are very active and a typical status update can draw as many as 30,000 likes and 3,000 comments. Man Utd has 14,418,000 fans on Facebook, Barcelona has 15,311,000 fans. United is also growing its fanbase slightly faster during the last month.

Man Utd FC Barcelona Facebook pages

Twitter – a clear win for Barcelona
The teams are also active on Twitter. Man Utd has 282,900 followers,  FC Barcelona has two major Twitter accounts, one in Spanish with 826,200 followers and one in English with 719,200 followers. The Spanish Barca account has been growing more rapidly than the Man Utd account.

Man Utd FC Barcelona Twitter followers

YouTube – Barcelona wins on walk over
FC Barcelona Twitter Manchester United publish videos on MUTV, on its own web page and from what I can find, the club is not active on YouTube. Barcelona on the other hand, has an active YouTube channel with 82,600 subscribers and a total of 42.2 million views. But Man Utd frequently posts videos on Facebook, so the English team has merely chosen a slightly different strategy.

Conclusion: both teams have millions of fans that follow them via social media, but FC Barcelona is slightly more popular. This has probably no impact on tonight’s Champions League final, but be sure that fans will actively cheer for their teams tonight and celebrate (or mourn) the outcome. May the best team win!

Footnote: stats from Wildfire App.

7 thoughts on “Manchester United vs FC Barcelona – the Social Media Champions League”

  1. Snacka om en perfekt tajmad artikel. Själv är jag kluven om vem som vinner kriget idag. Hoppas på Barcelona men har haft en mardröm att det är Rooney som avgör till Man united’s fördel. Frågan är ju om man ska gå på drömmar eller sunt förnuft. Ska bli en otroligt rolig match att följa.

  2. In the twitter competition you left out close to 700k Catalan followers (@FCBarcelona_cat) Not that it changes the order, just the magnitude.

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