Simon Jordan belittling Manchester City again..
By: Ted Fred Franky, Refuting misinformation, March 6, 2024 5 months ago
When will this guy give it a rest?
So here have Simon Jordan belittling Manchester City once again on TalkSport circa 11am on Wednesday 6th March.
He says that he has done some research into Social Media and Manchester City have 150m followers if you add up all the major platforms and Manchester United have 250m therefore Manchester United are 70% bigger than City and always will be.
This sort of shallow analysis really doesn’t show a true picture, here are the figures I collated on 14 February 2024:-
| Man Utd | Man City | Chelsea | Liverpool | Arsenal | Tottenham | |
| 76 2m | 42.8m | 50.5m | 40.0m | 38.6m | 31.9m | |
| 63.0m | 51.0m | 42.0m | 44.0m | 29.0m | 17.0m | |
| 37.6m | 17.4m | 25.4m | 24.3m | 22.3m | 8.8m | |
| TikTok | 24.6m | 23.3m | 15.4m | 17.9m | 6.6m | 34.0m |
| Total | 201.4m | 134.5m | 133.3m | 126.2m | 96.5m | 91.7m |
Obviously there are many more social media sites, but the four above are the biggest and most influential by far.
- Facebook is the original social media platform and the biggest by some way. It is mainly older people who have Facebook accounts but also younger people too. Users are also fairly unifromly spread across the world.
- Instagram is far more popular with younger people, so good performance here demostrates where the next generation of people are ie which clubs are growing.
- Twitter is very much the most vociferous in the West, and probaly a fair reflection of how support is split in the UK.
- TikTok is from China and very much a South East Asian initiative, and gives an insight into where this part of the world is headed.
What may surprise many in the UK is how far ahead City and Chelsea are of clubs like Liverpool, Arsenal and Spurs across all platforms.
On Instagram, it should be no surprise how far City are ahead of the others and how close they are to United. This reflects people who have grown up only knowing City and Chelsea as being successful sides.
Now let’s look at how Deloitte and Touche recorded these figures way back in 2015 when they first started recording this stuff:-
| Man Utd | Man City | Chelsea | Liverpool | Arsenal | Tottenham | |
| Facebook 20015 | 63.9m | 18m | 40.4m | 24.9m | 31.9m | 6.1m |
| Facebook 2024 | 76 2m | 42.8m | 50.5m | 40.0m | 38.6m | 31.9m |
| Facebook Increase | 12.3m | 24.8m | 10.1m | 15.1m | 6.7m | 25.8m |
| Twitter 2015 | 4.2m | 2.3m | 5.0m | 3.8m | 5.2m | 1.0m |
| Twitter 2024 | 37.6m | 17.4m | 25.4m | 24.3m | 22.3m | 8.8m |
| Twitter Increase | 33.4m | 15.1m | 25.4m | 20.5m | 17.1m | 7.8m |
| Total Increase | 45.7m | 39.9m | 35.5m | 35.6m | 23.8m | 33.6m |
The stand out figures here really are that despite the success of City and Liverpool in recent years, it is Manchester United and Chelsea who have seen the biggest increase primarily down to Twitter, so perhaps a Western or UK influence. Facebook on the other hand, it is City and Spurs who have excelled with the rise in support by comparison the growth of legacy clubs such as Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United as pretty pathetic.
| Manchester United | Manchester City | Percentage | |
| 2015 Totals | 68.1m | 20.3m | 29.80% |
| 2024 Totals | 201.4m | 134.5m | 66.80% |
So City have closed the gap enormously on Manchester United in this period.
| Liverpool | Manchester City | Percentage | |
| 2015 Totals | 28.7m | 20.3m | 70.07% |
| 2024 Totals | 126.2m | 134.5m | 106.57% |
City have surpassed Liverpool during this period which parallels the Gaurdiola/Klopp period, and are now a bigger club world wide. This should not be surprising when you look at the trophies won:
| Champions League | Premier League | FA Cup | League Cup | Total Trophies | |
| Klopp | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Guardiola | 1 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 12 |
