Twitter Doesn’t Love Manchester United

How do you measure the popularity of a football club? Match attendance isn’t very accurate because different teams have different sized stadiums and only a small percentage of fans can fit into those grounds each week. So is it TV viewership?  Is it shirt sales? Fan club membership? Or, most likely, a combination of all these factors?

Maybe we should also add Twitter to the mix. Yesterday, the good folks at Twitter released a list of the most commonly used words and phrases – or “trending topics” – by its millions of users in 2009.  According to its category of top sports-related terms Manchester United is not the world’s most popular football team. (That will come as a rude shock to the club’s marketers.) It doesn’t even make the list. Neither does Real Madrid. Or Barcelona. In fact, the most Tweeted-about club is none other than Chelsea FC, which comes in at #6. The only other football club to make the Top 10 is Liverpool, which comes in at #10. Continue on next page…

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