Study: New Liverpool signings increase their social media following by an average of 557% when joining the club
The transfer windows aren’t like how they used to be. Back in the day, we’d all be watching on Sky Sports News for the latest information about the players' ins and outs and relying on roughly three journalists from the show to get us some reliable information.
These days we’ve got social media, and there’s only one man to follow on social media when it comes to transfers: Fabrizio Romano. The Godfather of football transfers if you will. This man is all you need when it comes to being kept in the loop within the football world. Whenever he gets some new information, he tweets it to the public; whether that’s at 3am or for a lower league team, he lives and breathes transfers.
Fabrizio has come a long way in the past few years and has officially taken over Twitter. If you’ve been on the site in the past month, you’ll have seen him. In fact, he’s getting so popular that he’s more followed than most clubs on the social media website. If you were to whack him in the list of most followed football clubs, he’d find himself as the 13th most followed!
Club/person | Twitter follower count |
---|---|
Real Madrid | 42,652,378 |
Barcelona | 42,032,416 |
Man Utd | 31,376,734 |
Liverpool | 21,131,248 |
Chelsea | 21,048,666 |
Arsenal | 19,337,964 |
Man City | 12,714,789 |
PSG | 12,240,859 |
Galatasaray | 11,402,762 |
Juventus | 9,872,329 |
Fenerbahçe | 9,269,594 |
Flamengo | 9,203,607 |
Fabrizio Romano | 8,821,258 |
AC Milan | 8,359,885 |
Tottenham Hotspur | 7,471,262 |
Corinthians | 7,060,071 |
When a transfer is 100% done and he knows it, he’ll tweet ‘Here we go’. After that, Twitter goes wild. For example, his Ronaldo to Manchester United tweet reached 600,000 likes alone. He’s actually become so reliable that Saúl Ñíguez was reportedly checking his tweets at midnight to make sure that his loan deal to Chelsea went through.
All of this got us thinking about his social media presence and how it’s completely changing the journalism game. But how influential is Mr Romano? Well, in the midst of this rather tame transfer window, we’ve checked out the figures to see just how powerful Fabrizio’s social media presence is and how it’s affecting the people around him. As well as that, we’re interested in which clubs people follow on social media the most.
When it comes to a player being linked to a club, the Premier League fanbase flies over to their social media profiles, spamming them with ‘Come to XXX’. But which clubs' fanbase are showing the most engagement on social media? A prime example is the growth of Darwin Nunez's social media profile. As you’ll see in more detail below, the Uruguayan managed to gain 189,666 followers in the week Fabrizio Romano tweeted his transfer confirmation to Liverpool. In other cases we’ve seen Marquinhos, albeit a smaller profile signing, who saw an increase of 39,204 followers when Fabrizio confirmed his transfer to Arsenal.
We’ve split this study into three parts
- Followers gained after signing for a new club
- Followers gained when Fabrizio first tweeted about a rumour
- Followers gained following Fabrizio tweeting 'here we go'
Followers gained after signing for their new club
Player | Club signed for | Instagram follower growth since signing | Percentage increase |
Calvin Ramsay | Liverpool | 97,800 | 608.95% |
Darwin Nunez | Liverpool | 967,710 | 547.00% |
Brenden Aaronson | Leeds | 48,750 | 60.50% |
Yves Bissouma | Spurs | 46,740 | 29.60% |
Marquinhos | Arsenal | 46,020 | 21.99% |
Diego Carlos | Aston Villa | 30,240 | 15.40% |
Gavin Bazunu | Southampton | 5,670 | 8.70% |
Nayef Aguerd | West Ham | 64,200 | 8.06% |
Erling Haaland | Man City | 931,110 | 1.90% |
Ivan Perisic | Spurs | 20,058 | 1.30% |
Followers gained after Fabrizio Romano first tweet about them
Player | Current Club | Club linked with | Followers gained at the end of that week |
Jurrien Timber | Ajax | Man Utd | 17,774 |
Frenkie De Jong | Barcelona | Man Utd | 27,590 |
Marquinhos | Sao Paolo | Arsenal | 3944 |
Darwin Nunez | Benfica | Liverpool | 189,666 |
Antony | Ajax | Man Utd | 107,730 |
Gabriel Jesus | Man City | Arsenal | 357,240 |
Raphinha | Leeds | Arsenal | 94,500 |
Calvin Ramsay | Aberdeen | Liverpool | 14,301 |
Djed Spence | Nottingham Forest | Spurs | 32,250 |
Dean Henderson | Man Utd | Nottingham Forest | -1580 |
Nick Pope | Burnley | Newcastle | 6,900 |
Followers gained after Fabrizio tweeted 'Here we go'
Player | Club | Club joined | Followers gained after 'Here we go' |
Marquinhos | Sao Paolo | Arsenal | 39,204 |
Darwin Nunez | Benfica | Liverpool | 189,666 |
Calvin Ramsay | Aberdeen | Liverpool | 91,020 |
Nayef Aguerd | Nice | West Ham | 48,750 |
Erling Haaland | Dortmund | Man City | 254,200 |
Ivan Perisic | Inter | Spurs | 20,058 |