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?

It looks like the move of Wesley Sneijder from Inter Milan to Manchester United is becoming inevitable, even his sponsors Nike (who also sponsor Inter and United) think so! 

In a move that looks a tad premature and has still not been adjusted by the sponsor even though it has go0ing arounbd the internet for a day or so now.  The problem for them is that they have altered the SEO on their website, so now if you search ‘Nike football Wesley Sneijder’ it comes up with links to their website and info stating that “Wesley Sneijder plays for Man Utd and wears the Nike T90 Laser III.”

It does hark back to the England Rugby Grand Slam video which was leaked on YouTube before the final England game this year in which they lost to Ireland and didnt achieve their ultimate goal.  I’m sure that officials in Milan will be fuming if this reaches their ears, though judging by the papers today it looks like a done deal that will be confirmed in the next 48 hours.

Its not been a good week for the sports giant.  This comes on top of them being targeted in a Greenpeace campaign and reaching the front page of The Metro this morning under the headline “Nike staff: We cant stop bosses beating us”.  Their PR team will be in overdrive in the coming days it seems.

As an Man Utd fan I can only keep my fingers crossed that Nike are right on this one and he joins Young, Jones and De Gea in the United line up next month.

Here is a screengrab of the results…

Yesterday, Manchester United celebrated being on Facebook for a year…and what a successful year it has been!  Going from 0 to almost 17m fans on their new page with a mix of good content (behind the scenes, match info), promotions (kit, tickets, tours) and coversation around games and transfers. 

Currently squeezed between the Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona in the global Facebook league , though it has be remembered that both these clubs have acounts in different languages (Real Madrid include Spanish, Catalan and Japanese as well as English as their core markets).

As part of their celebration United have released this infographic to highlight their achievements on Facebook, is a great picture that am sure will spread and help them grow even more….

Manchester United hit the 11 million Facebook fans mark this week and are set to continue to rise with an astonishing 30k a day growth rate in fan followers. The Mancunian club are just 500k short of the current football and sports page leaders, FC Barcelona.

However, the Catalan side still look like they will remain in number 1 spot, with a growth rate of nearly 40k Facebook fans a day. Whereas Manchester United are using marketing tools such as official Facebook adverts, Barcelona have perhaps been a bit more adventurous and broader in raising awareness of their social media, as seen in the recent ‘Messi wants 10 million‘ call to action video.

In the last three months alone, United have attracted nearly 4 million fans worldwide and currently dwarf other UK based teams’ social media following, their nearest contenders being Arsenal and Liverpool respectively.

In the past week, both teams have passed the 5 million follower mark (With Chelsea currently 500k followers behind). Both clubs are to be commended for the way they operate and engage with their fans. Social media isn’t just about audience size, but the interaction between club and fan. A quick look at both shows that the clubs are actively using dynamic content such as polls, video, fan photos and discussion in order to build a better rapport.

One of the newest and fastest growing Facebook Pages is the official Manchester United page.  In the the two months it has been up it has grown to 2,589,988 (23 Sept) which is a staggering surge.

This gowth has seen it recently pass Liverpool as the largest EPL club page on Facebook.  Liverpool are not far behind with 2,472,588 (23 Sept) but bear in mind that they have been running theirs since March 2009!

We will see if the global appeal of United will see it catch the frontrunners of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Galatasary but there is still some way to go.

It is good to see that it not just being used to push out news feeds from the website but also includes some behind the scenes, product info and fan photos.  Hopefully as time goes by more engagement will be integrated and some of the negatives of recent times can be tuerned around by the club.

Last week Karl Lusbec wrote about the 20 Best Known European Football Brands. The article referenced a Sport+Markt 2009-2010 study of brand recognition among football fans in the top five markets (UK, Germany, Spain, France & Italy).  You can read the report yourself here.

I thought it might be interesting to look at this data and try to extrapolate from it which club brands were the most powerful.  Unscientific of course, but I wanted to see to what degree being aligned with a specific club (or clubs) is a factor, in addition to sponsoring tournaments like the FIFA World Cup, UEFA Champions League or UEFA European Championships.  So, let’s take a look.  Here’s the 2009 Delloitte & Touche Money League of clubs* along with the brands listed in the Sport+Markt survey (and the brands ranking in that survey) associated with them:

1. Real Madrid – adidas (1), Coca-Cola (5), Audi (8), bwin (9)

2. Manchester United – Nike (2), AIG (6), Audi (8),

3. FC Barcelona – Nike (2), Audi (8), Unicef (15)

4. Bayern Munich – adidas (1), Coca-Cola (5), Audi (8)

5. Chelsea – adidas (1), Samsung (10), Heineken (20)

6. Arsenal – Nike (2), Emirates (5)

7. Liverpool – adidas (1), Carlsberg (7)

8. AC Milan – adidas (1), bwin (9)

9. AS Roma -

10. Inter Milan – Nike (2)

11. Juventus – Nike (2)

12. Olympique Lyonnais – Umbro (16), Orange (18)

13. Schalke 04 – adidas (1)

14. Tottenham Hotspur – Puma (3), Carlsberg (7)

15. Hamburger SV – adidas (1), Emirates (5)

16. Olympique Marseille – adidas (1), Orange (18)

17. Newcastle United – adidas (1)

18. VfB Stuttgart – Puma (3), Coca-Cola (4)

19. Fenerbahce – adidas (1), Audi (8)

20. Manchester City – Umbro (16)

*I looked for the list of official club sponsors on official team websites as of February 2010.

Who from the Sport+Markt list weren’t represented by a club from the Delloitte & Touche Money League clubs?

11. Reebok

12. Opel (Read this Sport Business story from 2001 calling them the ‘most successful shirt sponsor’)

13. Vodafone

14. Ford – Champions League

17. MasterCard – Champions League

19. Sony – Champions League

So, the two odd men out appear to be Reebok and Vodafone.  Now, Vodafone is a massive sponsor of sport and had a run with Man Utd a while back from which they may still be seeing a halo effect.  Reebok sponsors Ryan Giggs (Man Utd), Thierry Henry (Barca) and formally kitted out Liverpool and Man City.  AS Roma are the only club in the top 20 not aligned with a big sponsor.

I think a big winner here may be Audi.  Not a name I immediately associated with big time European football, I was surprised to see them so high.  But they have a variety of partnerships with leading clubs, allowing them to also create the Audi Cup in July 2009, which featured ManU, Bayern Munich and AC Milan along with Boca Juniors of Argentina.  I don’t think they’ve spent the same type of money as some of the other top 10 brands, bet I suspect they are reaping rewards from their associations.  Look too for Umbro to move up the charts if the English National Team can make a run in the 2010 FIFA World Cup this summer.