Manchester United tops the Internet football league

Davey Winder
Wednesday, 23 July 2008 16:41

Business IT - Networking

Top 10 Premiership Club Sites

1. Manchester United (912,000)
2. Liverpool (887,000)
3. Arsenal (718,000)
4. Chelsea (402,000)
5. Tottenham Hotspur (319,000)
6. Manchester City (204,000)
7. West Ham (203,000)
8. Everton (194,000)
9. Portsmouth (93,000)
10. Fulham (74,000)

As already mentioned, one of the big surprises was the amount of interest in English football from around the world, revealing a broad global fan base. In fact, according to comScore, three of the big four teams drew the majority of their traffic from outside of the United Kingdom. The only exception being Liverpool. Manchester United, however, saw a 64 percent share of its monthly average coming from foreign fans.

Without exception the most popular region driving traffic towards English football club sites is Asia Pacific, responsible for some 30 percent of the Manchester United traffic, 24 percent of Arsenal, 22 percent of Chelsea and 21 percent when it comes to Liverpool. The 'Rest of Europe' region strayed some way behind, providing Chelsea with 19 percent of its traffic, Manchester United and Arsenal 16 percent each and Liverpool 13 percent.

The Middle East and Africa was just ahead of North America, 12 percent of Arsenal visitors being located in the Middle East and Africa region (3 percent North America), 11 percent for Chelsea (5 percent), 9 percent to Manchester United (6 percent) and 6 percent for Liverpool (6 percent). Perhaps surprisingly given their love of the beautiful game, Latin America brought up the rear and drives very little traffic towards the English club sites. Chelsea attracted 2 percent of Latin American visitors, Manchester United 3 percent, while Liverpool and Chelsea sit on 2 percent each.

The data suggests that “there is a substantial market for Premiership football beyond the confines of the U.K" according to comScore analyst Jamie Gavin who argues that it "makes sense that the Football Association would be considering staging an additional ten games per season overseas to help raise the profile of the other clubs" as a result. "Generating additional exposure of these teams across other continents will help establish the Premiership as a sports league with a truly global fan base" he concluded.