» What makes a ‘super club’ ? … And are these the world’s biggest?

by Roger Pielke, Jr.

Sporting Intelligence Global Sports Salaries Survey
May 2015

This edition of the Global Sports Salaries Survey has considered the salaries and social media followings of the clubs that comprise the world’s major sports leagues, has considered success on the field of play and analysed the extent to which money, glory and popularity intersect. Can we use this same data to identify the world’s “biggest” sports teams? Sure we can, at least to identify some of them, as laid out in the accompanying table.

But first let’s point out what is obvious but often unrecognized: any league table is a function of the variables chosen to produce the rankings in the first place. On the field, court or pitch this works because we agree to the rules before the competition begins. Can we agree on the criteria used here, the primary ranking metric being ‘fans’ / ‘followers’ on social media? And have the data been collected accurately and fairly?

We could, of course, use other metrics, like total club revenues, or international broadcast audience, or media mentions. Using social media popularity has the advantage of expressing a truly global reach. This method of ranking has Barcelona at No1 and Real Madrid at No2, each with almost 100 million social media fans. Read more …