The most beautiful game of Football has a global fan following running into millions and the global football economy is valued at over US$ 35 billion involving key stakeholders such as fans, players, football clubs, broadcasters, sponsors, agents, talent scouts, regulators etc. Therefore SinoTech Group thought it would be interesting to explore the social capital of the various clubs as determined by the social search platform, Buzz Equity (www.buzzequity.com)

1. SinoTech
Group
/
Social
Visibility
E-­‐Book
/
July
2012
Social Capital
of Football
Clubs
www.sinotechgroup.com.cn / info@sinotechgroup.com.cn Copyright © 2012 SinoTech Group China Ltd.

2. Social Visibility E-Book / July 2012
Social Capital of Football Clubs
INFLUENCE OF CHINESE SOCIAL MEDIA
ON THE SPORTS INDUSTRY
Social media has a tremendous influence on the sports industry and how
fans connect with sports news and their favourite clubs and athletes. The
government ban and censorship of Western social media websites, also
known as the “Great Firewall of China”, created the opportunity for Chinese
citizens to create their own mimics of Western social media platforms in
China. The increasing use of social media networks in China is creating
online communities for Chinese fans to connect with each other and to have
access to instant and continuous flow of information related to the sports
market. Fans seek to belong to the global sports networks and to have a
personal engagement with their favourite teams, clubs and athletes. Sina
Weibo and Tencent Weibo, both popular micro blogging website in China,
have approximately 300 million users.
…an impressive 91% of Chinese survey respondents said they have visited a
social media website in the last six month, in comparison to 67% in USA and only
30% in Japan. BestFreeOnline & Yahoo
No doubt, as clones of Western social media websites, such as Youku for
YouTube and Sina Wibo for Twitter, China will be a captive market that can
help brands build loyal customers and increase their market share. However,
language and cultural differences, the variability of this large population and
government regulations create limitations and serve as barriers to market
entry. So what exactly is the best strategy to capture this growing market?
… currently there are 513 million Internet users in China, growth from 23 million
users in 2000. As social media gains popularity China will remain a large and
profitable market to capture.
www.sinotechgroup.com.cn / info@sinotechgroup.com.cn [2]
Copyright © 2012 SinoTech Group China Ltd.

3. Social Visibility E-Book / July 2012
Social Capital of Football Clubs
ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL CAPITAL OF
FOOTBALL CLUBS IN CHINA
It is not a surprise for fans to read live commentaries on social media and
search for re-plays online while watching the live streaming of their favourite
team playing on the TV. Even in the crowds of events fans are using their
mobile applications to interact with each other and to share their thoughts
about the game. Some fans take it upon themselves to record footage of the
games and instantly post them online or to make live commentaries on
Weibo for their friends to see.
Capturing the social media market creates another venue in addition to ticket
sales and sponsorship for profit generation and customer relationship building.
Clubs can offer exclusive content, discounts, contests and pre-sales to fans
through social media communities and entice them to buy merchandise and
event tickets. In order to capture the market you should be constantly
interacting with the fans on their social media communities and develop
social hubs for online discussion and information sharing. Manchester
United, Barcelona and Liverpool football club are all investing their
resources into the growing social media communities in China, with 196
thousand fans on Sina Weibo, 1.1 million followers on Tencent Weibo and
223 thousand fans on Sina Wibo, respectively.
In order to gain a better understanding of the correlation between the global
fan base of Western football clubs and their social capital, we conducted an
analysis between the Buzz Equity score and 13 football clubs ranked based
on fan base.
www.sinotechgroup.com.cn / info@sinotechgroup.com.cn [3]
Copyright © 2012 SinoTech Group China Ltd.

4. Social Visibility E-Book / July 2012
Social Capital of Football Clubs
SOCIAL CAPITAL OF FOOTBALL CLUBS
COMPARED TO CLUB SIZE
1. Manchester United 57
2. Barcelona 55
3. Real Madrid 69
Real Madrid
has the
4. Chelsea 52 highest
Buzz Equity
5. Arsenal 53 score.
6. AC Milan 56
7. Liverpool 51
Inter Milan
8. Inter Milan 50 has the
lowest Buzz
9. Bayer Munich 60 Equity
score.
10. Juventus 52
11. Manchester City 52
12. Tottenham 57
13. Newcastle 52
45 50 55 60 65 70
As seen above, the social visibility of the football clubs increases as the
global fan base of the clubs increases. Therefore, there is a positive
correlation because the ranks of the football club and the Buzz Equity score
used to analyse the relationship. The more resources the football club
invests into interacting with and building their fan base the more social
visibility they have. The larger the fan base the more “buzz” is generated
online about the football club and the more interaction fans have online with
the team. Therefore, in order for a team to increase its visibility on social
media platforms they must build their online global fan base. China provides
the opportunity for clubs to increase their global fan community by capturing
the admiration of fans in China and by becoming involved in the Chinese
social media platforms.
www.sinotechgroup.com.cn / info@sinotechgroup.com.cn [4]
Copyright © 2012 SinoTech Group China Ltd.

5. Social Visibility E-Book / July 2012
Social Capital of Football Clubs
SENTIMENT OF FOOTBALL CLUBS
COMPARED TO CLUB SIZE
500
Negative Mentions Neutral Mentions Positive Mentions
450 Real Madrid
400
received the
most positive
350 mentions.
300
250
200
150 AC Milan
100
received the
most negative
50 mentions
0
As seen in the chart above, Real Madrid has the highest buzz equity score
because it also has the highest amount of positive mentions on social media
out of all the clubs and the least amount of neutral and negative comments.
While in comparison Inter Milan has the lowest buzz equity score the least
amount of positive mentions. In addition, Real Madrid has won a record 32
La Liga and a record 9 European Cup/UEFA Champions League trophies in
2011 and gained a lot of popularity and support from its fans for the current
year. Real Madrid has been named the most popular club on social media
according to FameCount.com. Real Madrid also has Cristiano Ronaldo who
is an athlete with the most followers and over 31 million Facebook fans.
Real Madrid is an example of a club that heavily invests in its social media.
The club has 4,187,136 followers on Twitter and 29,690,972 million
Facebook fans. With such a large social media investment Real Madrid
remains at the top of our social capital charts as well. In comparison Inter
Milan only has 39,127 followers on twitter and 78,718 Facebook fans.
www.sinotechgroup.com.cn / info@sinotechgroup.com.cn [5]
Copyright © 2012 SinoTech Group China Ltd.

6. Social Visibility E-Book / July 2012
Social Capital of Football Clubs
S T R E N G T H , PA S S I O N & R E A C H O F
FOOTBALL CLUBS COMPARED TO CLUB
SIZE.
80 Strength (%) Passion (%) Reach (%) Real Madrid
received the
70
most
60 positive
mentions.
50
Percentage
40
30 AC Milan
received the
20 most
negative
10 mentions
0
Strength is another social visibility measurement tool that can be used to
evaluate the likelihood that the brand is discussed online and the frequency
of comments about your brand. As shown above the likelihood of the brand
being mentioned online increases as the fan base of the club increases.
Therefore, this suggests that fans are eager to engage with their favourite
teams and athletes online and like to discuss information about their football
club with other fans. Passion, which is the likelihood that people are talking
about your brand and will do so repeatedly, also increases as the fan base
increases. Reach, which is the range of influence, also increases because
there are more fans to discuss information about the brand online. Therefore,
the larger the fan base the more continuous involvement each fan will have
with the team. Loyal fans are the key to the success of a club because they
often share positive information online, act as unofficial brand ambassadors
and engage in beneficial word-of-mouth advertising.
www.sinotechgroup.com.cn / info@sinotechgroup.com.cn [6]
Copyright © 2012 SinoTech Group China Ltd.

7. Social Visibility E-Book / July 2012
Social Capital of Football Clubs
SOCIAL CAPACITY MEASUREMENT TOOL
The Buzz Equity platform (www.buzzequity.com) evaluated how aware
people are of each football team and the perception and attitude people
have towards each club. Buzz Equity conducts a search of over 50+ social
media platforms around the world to create a comprehensive view about the
digital presence of each football club based on its reach, strength, passion
and sentiment. The Buzz Equity platform makes sense of everything people
are saying about each football club online evaluates “the buzz” and creates
an effective standardized marketing measurement.
With the right tools, consistency and continuous exposure China presents a
great opportunity for teams and athletes to gain global fans and to create
online fan communities.
Overall, the social capital and the passion and strength of the clubs brand
increase as the global fan base increases as well. The Chinese social media
usage is growing with a rapid pace, but the entrance to this growing market
still remains very complex and relatively new.
Word of mouth still remains the most influential form of advertising, and
social media provides a platform for word of mouth trends to bloom. The two
steps towards successful market entry are crafting a concrete strategy
based on thorough market analysis and to have reliable and analytical
measurements such as the Buzz Equity score.
Buzz Equity is a product of SinoTech Group.
www.sinotechgroup.com.cn / info@sinotechgroup.com.cn [7]
Copyright © 2012 SinoTech Group China Ltd.

8. Social Visibility E-Book / July 2012
Social Capital of Football Clubs
METHODOLOGY
All data and information used within the reports were aggregated
without any dialog or conversation with the respective football clubs. The
reports are built exclusively based on publicly available data derived from
the Buzz Equity platform, which is a free social search engine, developed by
SinoTech Group and can be found at http://www.buzzequity.com. A sample
size of 4415 mentions was analyzed on June 26th, 2012. The top 13 football
clubs were analyzed based on their fan base ranking from
www.china.org.cn. This report serves to illustrate the level of engagement
that currently exists on social networks for the football clubs evaluated.
Supporting data was gathered from Facebook, Twitter and ranking websites.
ANALYSIS DATA
Fan base
Rank
around Buzz
based Strength Passion Reach Positive Neutral Negative Total
Club the world Equity
on fan (%) (%) (%) Mentions Mentions Mentions Mentions
(in Score
base
millions)
13. Newcastle 6 13 52 37 11 56 147 137 77 361
12. Tottenham 11 12 57 25 22 50 146 144 58 348
11. Manchester City 18 11 52 32 9 56 117 114 60 291
10. Juventus 20 10 52 29 20 50 100 218 55 373
9. Bayer Munich 24 9 60 5 10 72 119 82 34 235
8. Inter Milan 49 8 50 28 11 60 90 169 54 313
7. Liverpool 71 7 51 42 17 55 126 183 79 388
6. AC Milan 99 6 56 43 25 74 104 126 56 286
5. Arsenal 113 5 53 32 27 59 123 146 73 342
4. Chelsea 135 4 52 43 10 53 146 176 73 395
3. Real Madrid 174 3 69 37 19 63 259 27 36 322
2. Barcelona 270 2 55 34 19 58 157 202 75 434
1. Manchester United 354 1 57 34 29 65 130 133 64 327
Sources
http://www.buzzequity.com
http://www.china.org.cn/top10/2011-10/19/content_23663971_4.htm
http://sg.sports.yahoo.com/news/rise-social-media-china-user-091147549.html
http://www.feelinsport.com/china-social-media/
http://blog.freestyleinteractive.co.uk/2012/05/social-media-in-china-data-facts-info/
http://www.realmadrid.com/cs/Satellite/en/1330062843284/noticia/Noticia/Leader_in_social_media.htm
www.sinotechgroup.com.cn / info@sinotechgroup.com.cn [8]
Copyright © 2012 SinoTech Group China Ltd.