According to a recent study done by Shine Communications, Chelsea FC have the least passionate fans of all Premier League clubs on Twitter. The official CFC Twitter account has over 5.7 million followers, but apparently Blues fans are the least vocal.
There were a few factors looked at in this study, such as the number of followers of each club’s official account and the number of mentions/Tweets from supporters about their respective clubs on Twitter. From this, Shine Communications were able to somehow calculate how “passionate” fans of each side were. And, wouldn’t you know it, Chelsea fans are the least “passionate” of the lot, with the lowest number of Twitter activity per supporter.
Chelsea were handed a score of .12, and even seventeenth-placed Arsenal were ahead with .15. West Ham have the ninth most passionate supporters on Twitter with a .26 rating. I’m not sure how these scores work or how they were calculated exactly, but it doesn’t make much sense! In fact, it’s Burnley who has ultimately won it with a score of .47. The Clarets only have 117,000 followers on Twitter, so it makes sense to see how his statistic came about.
Although, in a separate study, Chelsea fans were tied for third place in the rankings for the happiest fans on Twitter! Hmm, interesting. Actually, who cares?
So, why was this study done? What are Shine trying to get out of this? What point are they trying to prove? Director of Shine Communications David Wiles had this to say: “The results highlight that winning games and trophy success doesn’t equate to social media contentment or engagement amongst fans, as in both cases some of the Premier League’s biggest clubs perform poorly. It’s the smaller, sometimes less successful clubs, whose fans have the strongest support, the most positivity and arguably the most realistic expectations.”
Never mind the Tweets, I think we can all agree that passion can’t be measured or calculated. Burnley can kiss their “Passionate Fans Cup”, but I think we’ll survive kissing our Premier League title, thank you very much!
