MLS Social Media Table

Many wonder what’s going on in my head…most wonder if anything is going on, here’s a place to find out.

MLS Social Media Table

13 November 2011 One Comment

The other day I started to have a “chicken and egg” discussion with myself—yeah, I know. Anyway, is it because teams are good that they have the most fans or are the teams good because they have the most fans and, therefore, are able to make the most money to spend on players?

Obviously, this is a silly thing to test with MLS teams, but I did it any way. I went to each team’s website and then checked their YouTube, Twitter and Facebook pages to see who had the most fans. One would assume the best teams would have the most followers, right? Or would the teams in the largest metro areas have the most followers? Or…..

Now, I had started to interpret these numbers…a common response for a grad student. However, I think I’d rather just put the numbers up and see what everyone else makes of them.

I will share one observation though; I couldn’t believe the number of bad links to social media there are on MLS team’s home page. They appear to be due to the team changing their social media name and not updating the link on their website. I’ll let you figure out which teams had the bad links. Also, I didn’t do anything with LA’s LinkedIn page or Philly’s FourSquare or GetGlue pages though I think Philly may be onto something with them. I’d love to get a sticker for checking in at the HDC for a game.

I pulled these numbers within an hour on Friday afternoon, November 11.

First up, YouTube.

	Team
1	RB New York	18,941
2	LA Galaxy	2,131
3	Vancouver Whitecaps	1,139
4	Portland Timbers	855
5	Seattle Sounders	735
6	FC Dallas	602
7	Real Salt Lake	635
8	DC United	602
9	Sporting KC	494
10	Chivas USA	478
11	NE Revolution	422
12	Philly Union	395
13	Chicago Fire	390
14	Columbus Crew	362
15	Houston Dynamo	362
16	Colorado Rapids	317
17	Toronto FC	252
18	SJ Earthquakes	1

Now Twitter.

	Team
1	LA Galaxy	61,639
2	DC United	36,008
3	Seattle Sounders	32,608
4	RB New York	28,104
5	Philly Union	21,960
6	Sporting KC	21,351
7	Portland Timbers	20,036
8	Chicago Fire	19,763
9	Columbus Crew	17,112
10	Vancouver Whitecaps	16,858
11	Houston Dynamo	16,852
12	Toronto FC	14,882
13	NE Revolution	14,378
14	Chivas USA	13,865
15	Real Salt Lake	12,127
16	FC Dallas	11,336
17	Colorado Rapids	9,287
18	SJ Earthquakes	7,814

And the biggie, Facebook.

	Teams
1	LA Galaxy	238,968
2	Seattle Sounders	230,667
3	RB New York	129,924
4	Philly Union	85,699
5	Real Salt Lake	80,025
6	Chicago Fire	79,177
7	Portland Timbers	72,678
8	NE Revolution	57,306
9	DC United	55,006
10	Toronto FC	52,785
11	Sporting KC	47,341
12	Houston Dynamo	41,781
13	FC Dallas	37,144
14	SJ Earthquakes	27,948
15	Vancouver Whitecaps	23,688
16	Columbus Crew	21,963
17	Colorado Rapids	16,716
18	Chivas USA	16,716

Add then add them all up and what do you get:

	Team
1	LA Galaxy	302,738
2	Seattle Sounders	264,010
3	RB New York	176,969
4	Philly Union	108,024
5	Chicago Fire	99,330
6	Portland Timbers	93,569
7	Real Salt Lake	92,787
8	DC United	91,616
9	NE Revolution	72,106
10	Sporting KC	69,186
11	Toronto FC	67,919
12	Houston Dynamo	58,995
13	FC Dallas	48,676
14	Vancouver Whitecaps	41,685
15	Columbus Crew	39,437
16	SJ Earthquakes	35,763
17	Chivas USA	31,059
18	Colorado Rapids	28,684

A couple of quick notes:

Sporting KC’s Twitter number is a combination of both their English and Spanish Account.
Dallas’ Facebook number is a combination of both their English and Spanish accounts.
How can the team located in the town where all three of the social media companies are headquartered be so low?

So there you have it. The final MLS Social Media Table for 2011 season. What does everyone think?

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