Tuesday, June 10, 2014

The World Cup of Player Fandom


You've probably seen the New York Times' maps of the Basketball Nation and the Baseball Nation. These maps show the support of US baseball and basketball teams based on their number of Facebook fans.

Now Facebook has got in on the act itself by releasing the 2014 World Cup Fan Map. This map shows the number of fans around the world for ten of the best players appearing in this year's World Cup.

Ronaldo leads the way with an incredible 84 million fans on Facebook across the world. Poor old Messi's star really seems to have dimmed over the last season. He comes in second with approaching 60 million fans.

The map reveals some interesting nuggets of information. For example English football fans aren't very fond of players who play outside the English Premier League. Even in Manchester, where he once played, Ronaldo seems to have far less fans than in the rest of the world.

Özil's fanbase is a strange one. He seems to have registered hardly at all in the Americas but appears very popular in North Africa (and in a very small part of north London).

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