Which professional soccer team has the most subscribers on YouTube? If you read the title of this post you already know, but it makes sense, right? When you consider the star power FC Barcelona has had over the past 10 to 15 years and their on-field success during the rise of social media, it’s no surprise their channel is the most-subscribed-to team channel in soccer.
FC Barcelona’s YouTube channel recently surpassed 10 million subscribers, so we decided to do a quick dive into the channel and how it compares to others in sports.
Sports channels with the most YouTube subscribers
Let’s begin with the obvious question: if FC Barcelona’s channel has the most subscribers of any soccer team, where do they stack up in all of sports? A global brand with Lionel Messi surely has the most subscribers in all of sports, right? Wrong, and you might be surprised by who leads the pack.
WWE has a whopping 66 million subscribers on YouTube with over 49 billion (yes, with a “b”) video views. Behind WWE is Dude Perfect, the trick shot kings, with over 53 million subscribers and 11.5 billion video views. FC Barcelona isn’t even the most-subscribed-to soccer-themed channel on YouTube. That award goes to the F2 Freestylers who have over 12 million subscribers. Here’s the top five:
- WWE – 66.1 million subs (48.8 billion video views)
- Dude Perfect – 53.4 million subs (11.6 billion views)
- NBA – 14.9 million subs (7.3 billion views)
- F2 Freestylers – 12.4 million subs (2.6 billion views)
- FC Barcelona – 10.2 million subs (1.4 billion views)
Diving into FC Barcelona’s YouTube content
Okay, so FC Barcelona is among the top five sports channels with most subscribers, but what is their content like? Every video probably features Messi, the global superstar, right? Surprisingly, only 30 percent of FCB’s ten most-watched videos directly feature Messi. Their most-watched video is a live stream of the 2016 Final Torneo MIC, a youth tournament, with 24.6 million views. Also among the top ten are another youth tournament stream, team unveils, and Neymar seeing his wax replica.
- Final Torneo MIC 2016 vs. Real Madrid – youth tournament (24.6 million)
- Neymar Jr. comes face-to-face with wax replica (14.3 million)
- Ronaldinho makes a surprise visit (12.9 million)
- First team unveil for the 2019/20 season (10.9 million)
- LaLiga Promises 2016 – youth tournament (10.6 million)
- 7 second challenge Barça-Liverpool | Luis Suarez & Philippe Coutinho (10.3 million)
- Messi & Luis Suárez: Everything Changes (7.8 million)
- Messi & Ronaldinho: Un regalo de 10 (7.4 million)
- Tic-tac-toe: Messi, Pique & Neymar vs. Iniesta, Sergio & Denis (7.3 million)
- Barça Emojis: Gerard Piqué (5.9 million)
Looking at their ten most-watched videos a few things stand out. First of all, the youth tournament streams being among the most-watched is a testament to FCB being more than a club, as their mantra states. What else? Star power drives views, but that doesn’t mean teams can’t get creative with content. There’s diversity in videos here with emoji reactions, trivia challenges, among others.
FCB has uploaded over 8,700 videos, which equates to roughly 1.6 million views per video. Their channel has almost 56 million views in the past 30 days. They’ve added 360,000 new subscribers in the past 30 days. So, what does all this mean?
FCB has a distinct advantage that only a small percentage of worldwide clubs have: a history of star power and trophies. Those ingredients have produced arguably the world’s most well-known sporting brand, which certainly drives a lot of traffic and attention to their social channels, YouTube included. Still, FCB has more than 4 million subscribers than the next highest soccer team, Real Madrid (5.99 million subs).
Soccer teams with the most YouTube subscribers
Since I mentioned it, here’s a quick list of the ten most-subscribed-to soccer teams on the platform.
- FC Barcelona – 10.2 million subs
- Real Madrid – 6.0 million subs
- Liverpool FC – 5.1 million subs
- Manchester United – 3.3 million subs
- Juventus – 2.9 million subs
- Manchester City – 2.7 million subs
- PSG – 3.6 million subs
- Chelsea FC – 2.2 million subs
- Arsenal FC – 2.0 million subs
- Bayern Munich – 1.8 million subs
Categories: Social Media