It’s official: Manchester United most popular club

(The Malaysian Insider) – HONG KONG, May 30 — Manchester United was named most popular club today in a survey that had 54,000 respondents from 39 countries. The survey was conducted by research agency Kantar.

In a release, Kantar shared its findings; among them that football remains the world’s most popular sport with an estimated 1.6 billion followers globally, reinforcing a similar survey run by FIFA.

Manchester United has approximately 659 million followers worldwide, said Kantar.

Richard Arnold, the Club’s Commercial Director was quoted in the release, saying:

“Manchester United resonates with followers all over the world, and it’s their passion and support that means year after year we can continue doing what matters most to everyone at the Club: playing attacking football and competing for trophies.

“This survey shows that our family of followers is going from strength to strength.”

Following are some interesting data shared by Kantar.

 Number of Manchester United followers (the full total is larger than the combined population of the USA, Brazil and Mexico):

71 million in Americas

90 million in Europe

173 million in Middle East and Africa

325 million in Asia-Pacific

108 million in China alone — almost half all China’s football followers