A little over a year since it was first started, the biggest club in British football is celebrating this latest milestone.  Manchester United may not be the biggest football team on the platform with both Barcelona and Real Madrid eclipsing them but they are way ahead in the UK.  Barca now have over 21 million fans to leave them sitting pretty at the top of that particular table.

Some may say that United aren’t the biggest club in British football but by global fan base and also revenue they certainly are.  The new boys on the block, Manchester City, may be the richest by way of their benefactors but they still have a long way to go in terms of fans – currently 1.2m on Facebook.

The other big boys of our football league are Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool.  They all have a similar number of fans on Facebook with figures of 7.7m, 7.4m and 7.2m for each respectively.  A long way from United’s 20m!

They have managed this through engaging content; polls, behind the scene’s and match photo’s, asking fans opinions of games and not just linking off to their webpage to regurgitate content from there.

To celebrate the landmark, the club had a banner made that sat across the goal at their training ground.  This ‘Facebook Goal Challenge‘ was then put to use by Owen, Nani and Berbatov.  Photo’s have been added the the page and a video is promised in the next few days.  It’s great to see them having some fun and bringing the players into it too.

Now they have all these fans from around the world it will be a case of what next.  How do you increase engagement of such a large community, give them new and fun content and take things to the next level?