Manchester City, big team small club?

Over the last few weeks, media sources have played on Manchester City’s lack of fans within the Etihad stadium. This has transpired to looking into where the club sits in relation to its European counterparts.
With attendances it almost impossible to decipher how many actual fans were in the stadium, due to a number of clubs (especially Arsenal) publishing how many tickets were sold instead of how many fans actually attended.
Football is changing, as is TV, so perhaps a good place to start is social media. With instant highlights at a touch of a button and great interaction between fans and clubs, it’s a great way to promote matches, merchandise and players. Manchester City has 6.59million followers on twitter but how does this compare? English top clubs – Manchester United have 18.7million, Liverpool 10.9million, Arsenal 14million, Tottenham 3.18million, Chelsea 12.4million. European Elite – Barcelona have 29million, Real Madrid 10.1million, PSG 6.62million, Bayern Munchen 4.53million. It would be fair to say that City doesn’t look out of place with these numbers however the gap between them and arch-rivals United is possibly a feet that will not be matched.
Sheikh Mansour took over Manchester City in September 2008 and in just over ten years the growth on the pitch has been something remarkable. So, the global fanbase is still growing? Yes, Manchester City are still yet to win the Champions League a competition which is seen to highlight Europe’s best but in turn, implies the world’s best club team. Providing Sheikh Mansour and Pep are still at City it’s surely only a matter of time before City earn this crown. This will no doubt raise the clubs fanbase abroad.
Manchester City fans won’t thank us for highlighting the gap between themselves and United but as a club the reds are streets ahead. United have big fan bases in Brazil, America, Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Thailand. Asia is a huge market for English football and we have seen this with a number of premier league stars choosing to play in the Chinese Super League for purely financial reasons. So the market is there otherwise why are clubs investing so much in these players?
With this considered is it a coincidence that Manchester United have a huge fan base in Asia and that Sheikh Mansour, a member of the royal family in Abu Dhabi, has purchased City? Absolutely not. The majority of Asian countries with fans of United won’t have witnessed many games in person if any, the introduction of Sheikh Mansour means these fans may be persuaded to swap alliances. The team have travelled to the UAE on a number of occasions and their PR is increasing.  They have also increased their number of pre-season tours to America a country where Liverpool and United have been on regular occasions.

All of this is evidence that Manchester City are playing catch up and certainly know the countries in which they want to tap into. We have them favourites to win the champions league this season and if they do that we anticipate that the country/continent that City travel to for their preseason tour next season will see a huge rise in their fan base. This alongside whatever big name signings are imminent in the summer is a combination for growth and success.

Do we think City can overtake United? We don’t believe that it is in City’s hands in fact we believe it depends when United can get out of their slump. In the meantime, the gap will surely shorten between the two clubs but can City overtake Manchester United? Only time will tell.