The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook

UPDATE: There is a a newer post on this topic here: The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook: 2010 Season

The role of social media in professional sports is getting a lot of attention these days, unfortunately mostly in the form of teams and leagues trying to clamp down on it or players making mistakes with it.

Despite this, fans are passionately supporting and discussing their teams through a range of social media outlets, in particular Twitter and Facebook. Since we’re in the heart of football season, I thought I’d take a look at which NFL teams have the largest following on both sites.

In the table below the 32 NFL teams are ranked by the total number of followers/fans on their official Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. These figures obviously change quickly but this current snapshot is useful for comparison.

		Twitter followers	Facebook fans	Total
1	Pittsburgh Steelers	No official account	408,277	408,277
2	Chicago Bears	10,694	371,597	382,291
3	Minnesota Vikings	16,670	202,084	218,754
4	Indianapolis Colts	No official account	201,100	201,100
5	Green Bay Packers	11,220	185,577	196,797
6	New England Patriots	30,040	143,563	173,603
7	Philadelphia Eagles	No official account	170,114	170,114
8	Washington Redskins	No official account	170,114	170,114
9	San Diego Chargers	28,467	135,572	164,039
10	Miami Dolphins	17,124	145,687	162,811
11	Seattle Seahawks	9,759	111,772	121,531
12	San Francisco 49ers	18,099	81,950	100,049
13	Denver Broncos	11,411	83,465	94,876
14	Cincinnati Bengals	13,838	68,854	82,692
15	Oakland Raiders	19,045	60,586	79,631
16	Baltimore Ravens	9,738	57,373	67,111
17	Kansas City Chiefs	9,950	55,862	65,812
18	New York Jets	15,822	48,290	64,112
19	Buffalo Bills	9,303	54,057	63,360
20	Cleveland Browns	7,657	40,320	47,977
21	Atlanta Falcons	11,956	35,835	47,791
22	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	4,694	39,468	44,162
23	Detroit Lions	2,633	41,218	43,851
24	Tennessee Titans	11,531	31,664	43,195
25	Houston Texans	3,047	31,797	34,844
26	Jacksonville Jaguars	3,570	30,003	33,573
27	Arizona Cardinals	No official account	32,836	32,836
28	St. Louis Rams	3,166	16,053	19,219
29	Dallas Cowboys	9,826	No official page	9,826
30	Carolina Panthers	5,208	No official page	5,208
31	New Orleans Saints	No official account	No official page	N/A
32	New York Giants	No official account	No official page	N/A

Interestingly, despite no official presence on Twitter the Pittsburgh Steelers have the largest reach thanks to their large number of Facebook fans. I was also surprised that the Dallas Cowboys do not have an official Facebook page as they would certainly attract a significant number of fans.

I had expected all the teams to have more followers on Twitter. The San Diego Chargers lead the league with only 28K followers. (UPDATE: Thanks to Mike Blewitt for noticing that it is actually the New England Patriots that have the most Twitter followers at 30K+).

The New Orleans Saints and New York Giants are currently at the bottom of the social media heap with no official presence on either Twitter or Facebook. However an unofficial Saints page is very popular on Facebook with 163,760 fans.

Capturing data on only “official” accounts and pages was actually somewhat difficult (I welcome corrections if I’ve missed any). Twitter is a wild west for NFL teams right now – there are far more unofficial accounts, and even those that that claim to be official aren’t always actually so. Twitter should consider extending its “verified accounts” to team sites as well. On Facebook the official team pages are easier to identify, but they often face competition from other pages created by fans or local media. For several teams the unofficial pages have significantly more fans.

So the main takeaway is that NFL teams need to take better control of their social media presence and come up with more a cohesive engagement strategy. NFL fans are among the most passionate, so there is a great opportunity to leverage their loyalty and enthusiasm and further extend the relationships.