By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Turkish Airlines EuroLeague has been constantly changing over the years including major changes in organization and format. The elite European competition has seen a rise in popularity and is expanding constantly but how popular has it been exactly?
The Runrepeat team on the head with Dimitrije Curcic took up the challenge and conducted research about the Euroleague teams popularity in the ongoing 2018-19 campaign. They took into consideration the attendance in the home arena, and the number of followers on three major social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).
Also, keep in mind that EuroLeague regulations state that the 11 clubs with the long-term ‘A’ license must play in arenas with a minimum capacity of 10,000 seats while the rest of the clubs have to provide at least 5,000.
Here is what they found out:
Having a bigger arena is certainly nice but how many of those seats are actually taken on a nightly basis? The absolute leaders in that category are Zalgiris Kaunas and Maccabi Tel Aviv with 95% followed by Buducnost (87%) which returned to the competition after 15 years. Fenerbahce with 80% and Khimki with 76% are also in the top five.
The Runrepeat team also compared the hometown population with the average attendance the teams get and once again Zalgiris leads the way with 5% of Kaunas population filling the arena. Baskonia, the 2019 EuroLeague Final Four host, is right behind with 4.5% of Vitoria coming to the games.
Not every fan can make it to the arena and not every fan comes from the club’s hometown. So, how are the teams fairing on social media? Well, the undeniable winner here is Real Madrid. The ‘Royal club’ has accumulated 18.3 million followers on the three major social platforms and it’s not even close. Their archrival Barcelona follows with 3.3 million while Fenerbahce reached 2.7 million followers.
When compared to the hometown population, things stand a little bit different but still, Real Madrid leads the way with 287% of its hometown population. Next up, Zalgiris’ followers reach 127% of Kaunas population while Baskonia with 71% and Barcelona with 68% follow.