The most popular English Premier League team on Facebook, Liverpool FC, has passed a major milestone in acquiring over 2 million ‘likes’ this weekend just passed.

This is a great achievement for the team, fronted by Community Manager Matt Owen, who has the unenvious job of moderating this huge community as well as almost 100,000 Twitter followers. 

What I think sets them apart at the moment is the open and honest way they have approached social media, have been one of the pioneers in the EPL and offer some really good content.

It is a nice touch as well on the opening tab when you go to their profile is the acknowledgement of the fans and their importance to the club with the opening line “Liverpool might be England’s most successful football club but we’re nothing without our supporters”.   It makes a nice change from just landing on a sales page as you see with quite a few at the moment.

Their closest rivals; Chelsea (1.3m), Arsenal (1.2m) and Manchester United (1.4m) still have a lot of catching up to do.  But Liverpool themselves still have some way to go until they catch the top football clubs on Facebook; Galatasaray (4.1m), Barcelona (3.5m) and Real Madrid (2.8m).

It’s amazing to see that Galatasaray, as well as being the most popular football team on Facebook, is even larger than the most heralded sports organisation on social media, The NBA (3.8m)!  They are certainly worth a blog post in their own right

The English Premier League is the most popular league in the world but there is still a long way to go to tap into their worldwide appeal on social media.  I’m sure United have more than 1.4m fans globally and will ideally want to get in touch with their legions of foreign fans, as will Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal.

Can these clubs become the most popular sports team on Facebook and get close to the Barcelona, Real Madrid and Galatasaray’s of this world?  If so, what do they need to do to get their attention?

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