For those not in the know, there's an application on the on-line networking site Facebook.com that allows users to list their favorite teams for any team in any league for almost any pro sport. Keep in mind Facebook is moslty Americans and mostly college-aged users. For Major League Soccer, the numbers look like this... Los Angeles Galaxy (3267 Fans) Toronto FC (3081 Fans) D.C. United (1813 Fans) Chicago Fire (1268 Fans) Columbus Crew (1198 Fans) New England Revolution (1136 Fans) Red Bull New York (936 Fans) Houston Dynamo (777 Fans) Kansas City Wizards (690 Fans) F.C. Dallas (386 Fans) Colorado Rapids (295 Fans) Real Salt Lake (115 Fans) Club Deportivo Chivas USA (95 Fans) For comparison against teams outside of MLS... Manchester United (15,395 Fans) (#10 overall in all sports) AC Milan (4470 Fans) Celtic (2206 Fans) Vancouver Whitecaps (173 Fans) Guadalajara (511 Fans) Bayern Munich (2223 Fans) United States Men's National Team (7265 Fans) I thought it was interesting to see how MLS teams compare with each other and with teams across the globe. I think the numbers are similar to what I would have expected, but I was positively suprised by the Columbus Crew's numbers and disappointed with Chivas USA's. Any thoughts?
I'm among the 295 Rapids supporters. I've also got USMNT, Fulham and El Nacional de Quito listed. The application isn't very well-made in my opinion-- I can't get the link that is supposed to show you other supporters of your team to work.
I think the Crew's surprising support on Facebook is probably explained by the fact that most facebook users are college-aged (as you mentioned). Ohio State is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, university in the United States. No other MLS team is that close to such a major university. Any way to find out how many of the Crew fans are at OSU?
It's called Total Sports Fan. Theres another application called Love Football. Dynamo only have 520 fans on it but USMNT has over 8000.
" disappointed with Chivas USA's" My thoughts: Mostly mexican, hardly with any English, even hardly with computers at home. But mostly good working family people who spend part of their already low income to pay for some tickets, and actually supporting a team in MLS instead of those whom just type a name of a team in a website, because it looks cool, and probably never showed up to a game.
Not as many as one would think. I know it sounds like a good idea to market heavily to a bunch of college age students who are probably avid sports fans that may like soccer, and are not far from the stadium and are intelligent enough to follow the entire league and not just the team, but the Columbus FO has a better marketing plan than that. Beckham 4 packs! You would be surprised to see how little marketing Columbus does to OSU. I know it may make sense though.
I have had this application for a while. I hung out on the message board part of the application and defended soccer for a while but there was so much hatred I gave up. I have: Sao Paulo FC, Inter Milan, Tottenham, DC United, USMNT, and Brazil as my soccer teams (at the top) along with my favorites from the other sports.
I'm reading through the boards as I type this and I have to say that the ignorance there amuses me. Rome would be creaming his pants if he saw these posts. I'm tempted to go in and defend the sport but I don't need the stress.