The top 5 leagues in Europe, have just completed for season 2015 – 2016 and some clubs became trendy while others went out of date.

The “Big Five” leagues: English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie A, German Bundesliga and French Ligue 1 have just completed for season 2015 – 2016. During this season, we witnessed many historical and even more remarkable facts, especially at the top 5 positions of each league.

• Leicester did the impossible.
• Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid fought till the end for La Liga’s title.
• Juventus achieved an epic come-back.
• Bayern München and Paris St. Germain established their domestic dominance.
• Many clubs established themselves in higher position than in previous seasons.

All the above facts and many more have notably affected these clubs’ popularity through the season. High popularity is very important for any club. It is their most important bargaining chip to attract and convince

• a sponsor to sign a deal,
• an investor to become shareholder,
• a football player to sign a contract,
• press and broadcasters to purchase the rights and even
• an undecided fan to support the club.

With an average of 3,5 billion searches per day, Google, can certainly indicate the popularity of a term such as a football club. Google Trends make it possible to create “popularity graphs”, analyze them, point out trends and partially explain them.

In this way, we will try to explain how each club’s popularity changed in Google searches through the season 2015 – 2016 and which factors and events caused these variations.

The graphs were created with Google Trends for Google searches with the following characteristics:

• Worldwide Google (Web) searches
• From July 2015 to May 2016
• Only football (soccer) related searches

Each graph shows the popularity of the top 5 clubs in their domestic league table during the season 2015 – 2016 and it is based on the total Google searches about football worldwide during this season. The examined leagues are English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie A, German Bundesliga and French Ligue 1.

• By hovering your mouse cursor over the graph, it is possible to examine the “trending value” of each club through certain periods of time. This value can be between 0 and 100 and this is relative to the highest value on the graph. This means that value 0 occurs when there were not enough searches for a club worth to be mentioned and value 100 is the highest met value of the whole season. In simple terms, the higher the value, the more trendy and popular a club was in a certain period of time compared to the other top 4 clubs of the same league.
• A line trending downward means that a club’s relative popularity is decreasing. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the total number of searches for that club is decreasing. It just means its popularity is decreasing compared to the other top 4 clubs.
• Average: Shows the average “trending value” of each club as explained above.
• You can find more detailed explanation here.

This year’s Premier League was one the most unpredictable and surprising leagues of the latest years, not only in England but globally. It makes sense that the data of the graph are also “irregular”.
The champions, Leicester, show a slow but quite steady rise in Google searches through the season. They had their peak at the end of the season when they wrote their fairytale’s happy end. Spurs and Manchester City show the same behavior as well.  Arsenal and Manchester United show a different behavior with many ups and downs.

Highlights:

• They are certainly far more popular than they were at the beginning of the season. But is Leicester the new black? Are they here to stay? We will learn more about it during the next months…
• This was a strange season for Arsenal and this is captured in the graph as well.
• Despite the best performance of the club during the recent seasons, Tottenham seems not to be as popular as the other top 4 clubs. There are two ways to improve this: They have to improve even more their marketing and branding efforts worldwide or they have to win the Premier League next season!
• Manchester City is still less popular than Arsenal and Manchester United despite the millions of euro spent during last seasons. Their participation in UEFA Champions League’s semi-finals helped them improve their popularity significantly. The new manager, Pep Guardiola, will increase it even more.
• Manchester United remains one of the most popular clubs in the world because of their excellence in marketing and branding efforts and some successes on the field during the recent seasons. But they are the club with the highest “decreasing” behavior and this is something that they will need to worry about. The only way to change it, is even more successes on the field. Their huge peak during the week May 15-21 2016 is a result of the “bomb” incident.

In La Liga, the graph’s behavior is more normal compared to Premier League. The top 5 clubs’ popularity mainly increases over time.

Highlights:

• The “popularity gap” between the two giants, Barcelona and Real Madrid, and the rest of the clubs is chaotic.
• “El Clásico” is a global attractive event (21/11/2015 & 02/04/2016).
• Atlético Madrid struggles to cope with Barcelona’s and Real Madrid’s reach and their behavior in the graph is closer to the other clubs. They are definitely more popular than they were some years ago and by fighting for UEFA Champions League and La Liga titles till the end, they are definitely on the right way to become even more.
• Villarreal’s and Athletic Bilbao’s achievements did not really help them to become more popular in Google searches.

The popularity graph of the top 5 clubs in Serie A is also quite normal.

Highlights:

• Juventus is one step ahead of the rest of the top 4 clubs. Their participation in UEFA Champions League certainly helped.
• Extremely stable and similar behavior by Napoli, Roma, Inter and Fiorentina. This could be a result of their fans’ loyalty or a sign of loss of interest in Serie A, from the “non-fans” of these clubs, relatively early in the season.

Bundesliga’s top 5 clubs show normal behavior in their graph as well.

Highlights:

• Like Juventus, Bayern München is one step ahead of the other top 4 clubs. Their participation in UEFA Champions League certainly helped.
• Borussia Dortmund is one step behind of Bayern München but many steps ahead of the other top 3 clubs. Their epic clash versus Liverpool Fc for the Europa League quarter-finals (second leg, 14/04/2016) definitely improved their popularity a lot.
• The behavior of Bayer Leverkusen, Borussia Mönchengladbach and Schalke is stable and similar to Serie A.

Finally, Ligue 1 also shows normal behavior.

Highlights:

• It is Paris St. Germain and then chaos. In this occasion, the millions of euro spent by the club’s owners seem to have done their job regarding the club’s popularity. Also the club’s participation in UEFA Champions League quarter-finals helped.
• Lyon, Monaco, Nice and Lille are hidden in the shadow of Paris St. Germain.

Popularity and final position

By checking the average “trending values” for each club in the graphs, there is a slight correlation between a club’s popularity and its final position in the league table and vice versa. But it is very interesting that in Premier League this correlation does not exist. It is mostly inversed. This fact confirms and explains why Premier League is the most popular, unpredictable and competitive league not only in the UK but worldwide. In other words, the most popular league is the most unpredictable.

Popularity gaps

In all the “Big Five“ leagues, there are “popularity gaps” between the traditional top and each season’s high-flying clubs. This is normal because it needs more than a successful season to become popular globally and to be a part of the elite clubs. It is easy to reach at the top, but it is hard to stay there. In order to achieve this, football clubs must increase their loyal fanbase by improving their performance on the field and their marketing and branding efforts continuously. Finally, the club’s buzz will always be influenced by their football players’ prestige, the popularity of their domestic league and many more factors.

Marketing & branding vs. success on the field

Marketing & branding efforts can improve a club’s reach and awareness significantly. But successes on the field will always be crucial for maintaining and enhancing these efforts and achievements.

Popularity and budget

Leicester defied this myth in style. Generally, we noticed that Paris St. Germain has become more popular than ever but Manchester City still struggles to reach Manchester United’s and Arsenal’s popularity. In other words, it is certain that the budget can increase a club’s popularity in many ways but this is not enough. It has to be combined with excellence in marketing and branding efforts and with successes on the field.

Popularity and participation in European Competitions

A club’s participation in European competitions seems to be critical in the graphs concerning a club’s popularity. It increases the popularity directly but most of the times temporarily.

Worldwide popularity

This research concerns worldwide web searches. If it was about each country separately (example: the popularity of Bundesliga’s clubs in web searches only in Germany) the results would be quite different.

Google Trends graphs

There are many graphs you can create with Google Trends and many data you can analyze and extract valuable information from. There are also even more ways to apply this information in more complicated researches.

Season 2015 – 2016 belongs to history. As every year there were over-performers and underachievers. For now, we are looking forward to UEFA Euro 2016 and COPA America Centenario 2016 and we are getting prepared for the next season which is expected to be equally or even more fantastic and full of brand new data “waiting” to be exploited in order to become information and then knowledge with high value.

The above conclusions are personal based on my analysis. It is certain that there is even more value in these graphs and many other graphs that can be created and analyzed.

I would love to hear your thoughts and conclusions about these graphs as well. You are welcome to share them with me through social media, my contact form or the comment form below.