The Top Soccer Teams on Facebook in February 2016

We rank the biggest soccer clubs on Facebook in February, and find out who’s scoring the most engagement.

Last time we looked at soccer, way back in December, we analyzed how much traffic the major leagues and soccer clubs received from social media vs search. The English Premier League dominated the rankings, with Manchester United, Arsenal, and Liverpool getting the most web traffic from social channels.
Now, we’re diving into which teams get the most engagement on Facebook across likes and reactions, shares, and comments.
For our analysis, we took a look at the biggest and most valuable teams globally to see how many Facebook engagements their official team pages racked up during the month of February. Social media gives fans across the world the ability to connect over their favorite teams and fuel their passion 24/7.
Let’s get into the rankings and see which teams are scoring the most goals. As always, the data comes from Spike, our social signals platform. 

The top teams are not surprising. FC Barcelona, Real Madrid and Manchester United are two of the best known soccer clubs in the world. The English Premier League dominates the top ten list, with five spots, half the list. Spain has two, and France, Turkey, and Italy each make one spot.

Let’s look into February’s soccer content trends.

FC Barcelona Gets Buzz From Legends

FC Barcelona had an astounding 33 million Facebook engagements. Their top engaging post of February featured Leo Messi, Neymar Jr., and Luis Suárez alongside former FC Barcelona legend, Thierry Henry.

FC Barcelona currently has some of the most beloved players in soccer, and getting them all together in one Facebook post is a way to delight fans of each of them. Especially with legacy players, who fans remember with nostalgia. The post had over 628,000 likes and reactions, nearly 55,000 shares, and 8,600 comments.
Their second most engaging post showed the winning score in a match against Valencia CF, and again focused on Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez in the photo. FC Barcelona fans love their team legends, and the comments trend toward pride for the team and these star players.

Real Madrid Has Real Love

Real Madrid was our second team with nearly 24 million engagements, and they were responsible for the two most-engaging posts of February. It’s not surprising, considering that their Facebook fan base is enormous, boasting over 87.2 million Facebook followers.

Real Madrid’s best post of February was this image of a victory over AS Roma. The photo, which showed the victorious athletes and the final scores, had over 687,000 likes, 40,000 shares, and nearly 12,000 comments in a multitude of languages. We’ve seen success with these types of sharable graphics across different sports leagues.
Fans like to feel part of their team’s triumphs. Images like these are highly sharable and capture the emotion of the game significantly better than a static text post.
Real Madrid’s other top content gave fans inside glimpses into the (literal) journey of the team.

[fb_pe url=”https://www.facebook.com/RealMadrid/posts/10150975669359953:0″ bottom=”30″]
This photo of Cristiano Ronaldo on a plane saw 674,000 likes, 5,800 shares, and 6,000 comments. The ‘team hero’, Ronaldo himself has 109.9 million fans on his personal Facebook page. Teams get an engagement boost when they highlight their star players. Real Madrid’s third most-engaging post also showed off the athletes outside of the game.

Their top video of February followed this trend as well, showing Real Madrid manager, Zinedine Zidane, giving his players motivational hugs before the big game against AS Roma.
Behind-the-scenes glimpses are big for engagement. It lets fans connect with their favorite players as more than just moving pieces on a field. Storytelling is an integral part of content marketing, and these snapshots create a narrative of the teams that fans can follow along with.

Forza Italia! Juventus Snags Shares

While Facebook likes generally figure higher, shares are often even more valuable to measure. Sharing often indicates quality content, amplifies that content’s reach, and acts as one of the best quality signals digitally.

Italy’s Juventus surpassed both Manchester United and Real Madrid for the number two spot in shares. Juventus’s top most-shared posts were all graphics that combined scores with thrilling snapshots.

The top post had over 135,000 likes, 68,000 shares, and 3,800 comments. These graphics, as we noted above, lend themselves to being highly-sharable. Social media has far surpassed being “just” a second screen for sports viewers; fans want to check in pregame, during the game, and postgame.

Fans interact on social during games to feel part of the experience, and celebrating a win is an impactful reaction. Shares get us a gauge on how engaged people were with the match and keep the game buzz going.

Manchester United Makes A New Friend In Red

The most commented teams displaced FC Barcelona to number three. Real Madrid had the most comments, followed by Manchester United.
But, before we upset the status quo too much, the post with the highest comments did come from FC Barcelona. This Facebook Live video of the team training drove over 39,000 comments.

The top two most-commented posts of February were from Manchester United. The top video was also the most-shared of February, a tie-in to the the record-breaking superhero movie, “Deadpool”.

[fb_pe url=”https://www.facebook.com/manchesterunited/videos/10153490807097746/” bottom=”30″]
With over 12.5 million views, the video featured Deadpool scoring a goal and being embraced by Wayne Rooney, Juan Mata, and the rest of the team.
Nearly 315,000 people liked the video, and there were over 144,000 shares and 25,000 comments. “Deadpool” is already a massive hit, so the engagement around this video isn’t wildly surprising. But sports teams like Manchester United often see a synergetic effect on their content when celebrities or athletes from other sports make guest appearances.

Galatasaray snuck into the ranking with the fourth highest amount of comments. Both their and Real Madrid’s most commented posts of February were actually about a match that they lost. Impassioned fans will often voice their distress on games they believe went wrong.
Galatasaray’s other most-commented posts created a fun experience for fans, quizzing them with trivia questions about the team’s legacy. Interactive content like this lets fans show off their team expertise and create memorable, positive moments between the fan and team.

Videos Showcased Soccer Stars

The Red Devils were also responsible for two of the top three videos, while FC Barcelona took the top spot. Deadpool’s appearance ranked #2 in the most engaging videos. Video has become a massive engagement machine on Facebook, and sports are naturally suited to the medium.

The video that scored the most engagements of February showed team favorite Leo Messi scoring a phenomenal goal. The video had 11.8 million views, along with 412,000 reactions, 120,000 shares, and 17,000 comments.
The third top video also showed off some soccer stunts, with Wayne Rooney making an incredible overhead strike goal. Viewers clearly agreed, as the video saw over 14 million views. The fourth top video was a tribute to Manchester United’s Peter Schmeichel, and another top contender was to Ji-Sung Park. Though behind the other two at 6 million views, these nonetheless present a trend.
All of these videos, save for Deadpool, focus on individual athletes, highlighting their accomplishments. Fans are inspired by team heroes they can rally behind. Action-packed videos of those athletes’ best maneuvers can wow fans over and over again.

Teams with an international players can see a boost of engagement from fans who want to show their pride for their nation’s representative.

Liverpool FC Is Obsessed With Facebook

The amount of content produced by these teams varied wildly. Liverpool FC posted 2,096 times to Facebook in February, while FC Schalke 04 (#16 in our rankings) only posted 89 times. Discounting those two outliers, the top ten soccer clubs produced an average of 406 pieces of content in February, while the bottom ten posted 294 times.
It’s not a substantial difference, but it does stay in line with the trend we’ve seen. More content equals more opportunity for engagement.
So what was Liverpool FC posting an average 72 times a day?

Anything, and everything. This hype post about the upcoming match against rival Manchester United had the most shares for Liverpool FC in February. It drew 113,000 reactions, 25,000 shares, and over 8,600 comments, many of them quite inflammatory.

Another one of their top shared-posts was this video showing Mamadou Sakho visiting the charity organization, Zoë’s Place. The video saw over 1.6 million views, 39,000 likes, 7,500 shares, and 1,700 comments. Like Real Madrid’s plane and locker room footage, showing the team beyond the game creates a more powerful emotional connection.
Even with an enormous quantity of content, Liverpool FC was still providing quality to fans, as we can see from the numbers.
Nearly half were photo posts, a third were links, and the remainder was split between mostly videos and text posts. There’s a healthy variety of content, but the most engagement came from the stunning visuals of video and photo posts.

Trends Are Surprisingly Universal

What’s truly fascinating about the global soccer teams’ Facebook content, is that the trends tend to be universal. Though they’re not being tightly governed by a franchise like MLB or NFL, there are overlaps in the type of content they produce.
For February we saw these three trends stick out for driving engagement:
Postgame Score Card Graphics  – fans want to cheer victories, discuss losses in detail, show support
Videos and Photos of Team Stars – fans connect more with individual players that they can follow and celebrate their thrilling feats
Behind-The-Scene Scoops – inside peeks into what the team’s up to outside of the game makes the team seem more human and sympathetic
For any brand, sports or otherwise, knowing your team’s voice and themes is crucial. Manchester United kept their team pride going in all their content, along with a hearty sense of humor, as seen in their Deadpool mashup. Real Madrid used their players’ sizable fan bases to charm fans outside of the game.
All of the teams who made it to the top of the rankings exuded confidence, which instilled deeper loyalty with fans who feel like they have something to be proud of. Staying aware of the image the team is portraying is essential.
Til next time in sports.

Want to beat your rivals in our rankings? Take a free trial of Spike to work engagement trends on your team’s viral content

*We corrected this post on March 8th to accurately reflect FC Barcelona’s standing in the rankings.