LaLiga and Premier League clubs lead the major sports leagues studied in a new comparison of combined social media followers published by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
The research, published on 17 September using August 2026 data, tracked the main official accounts of more than 300 professional sports teams across 13 leagues. It covered Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube.
The findings offer an interesting picture of football’s reach beyond the matchday crowd. Supporters can follow a club every day, wherever they live, through interviews, training footage, highlights and conversations online.
For some, those channels maintain a connection with a team they have supported since childhood. For others, a video, a player or a shared story may be their first introduction to a club.
There is an important distinction in the figures, however. S&P Global counts followers across accounts and platforms, rather than individual people. Someone following the same club on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube can therefore appear in the totals more than once.
Follower numbers also tell only part of the story. They show the size of an online audience, but cannot explain how much those people care, how often they return or whether they eventually attend a match.
Our view is that the interesting question is what makes people stay. Results provide the headlines, but a club’s character, its people and the conversations around it give supporters reasons to keep coming back between games.
The biggest clubs dominate the numbers. For clubs of every size, though, there is a worthwhile question: what would make someone who has never visited your ground want to follow your story?