Which Premier League Team Has the Most Fake Followers on Social Media?

Have you ever wondered which Premier League team has the most fake followers on social media? SportsLens have crunched the numbers to find out which side has the most inflated following.

• SportsLens have collected follower data for each Premier League team
• Using analytics tools Twitter Audit and Modash, the data reveals fake accounts on both Twitter and Instagram

It is no secret that large swathes of social media are polluted with fake accounts and suspicious users. Spend a little money, and you can begin to build what, on the surface, looks like a fairly substantial following.

‘Bots,’ or fake followers, can manipulate engagement metrics and create false impressions of relevance, so sifting out the percentage of real followers is worthwhile.

Our data set reveals an interesting mix of conclusions – the most notable being clubs at the lower end of the table have a far lower percentage fake of followers, despite having a smaller following.

Which Premier League Team Has the Most Fake Followers on Instagram?

NOTE: Modash’s Instagram metric is presented as a percentage. The table above includes those followers who are deemed definite ‘fakes and bots’ (see further down for the definition). The table also includes the total percentage of followers deemed ‘suspicious.’

Granted, the larger the following across social media, the more fake followers you are likely to attract.

That is certainly the case when isolating, what according to Modash, are confirmed fake followers. Manchester City have the third largest following on Instagram among Premier League teams, but 15.20% are deemed to be bots.

Last season’s treble winners have had to work harder than some of the perceived ‘historic’ clubs on this list, with their jump in global popularity coinciding with their illustrious post-2009 takeover period.

Whether they have decided to invest in a few for more extra followers is another question, however.

They are followed closely by Chelsea, Tottenham and Manchester United – who are all among the most followed sports teams in the world on social media – but boast a fake follower percentage of over 14%.

At the other end of the spectrum, it is interesting to note that the likes of Nottingham Forest and Luton have the lowest fake follower percentage. Although it is unclear whether this determines if a fanbase is true and proper, it is certainly an interesting conclusion.

The pattern of clubs lower down the table isn’t 100% consistent all the way through the data set, however. Interestingly, newly-promoted Burnley have the highest percentage of suspicious followers according to Modash, who define that bracket of users as ‘someone who follows over 1,500 accounts and could be fake.’

Which Premier League Team Has the Most Fake Followers on Twitter?

When categorising X users (formerly Twitter), we have split the data into two parts.

Down the left-hand side you will find the total number of users deemed either ‘fake’ or ‘low quality’ according to Twitter Audit. Low quality users are typically those who have a suspicious amount of followers in comparison to how active they are.

As for the right-hand column, this isolates the actual percentage of overall followers who are classified as fake.

As the data indicates, the larger clubs inevitably have a higher actual number of fake or low quality users, but bots only make up around 5% or less of their overall following.

Conversely, when taking Bournemouth for example, their fake follower percentage is as high as 11.5%. With an actual following of just under 700,000, this is alarmingly high.

One interesting anomaly exists from our Twitter research, however. Luton, as you would expect have the lowest following on Twitter in the Premier League, and as such have the lowest proportion of fake or low quality users.

However, it is interesting that they sit just behind the league’s biggest clubs in terms of having the lowest percentage of actual fake followers, in relation to their overall fanbase.

This aligns with their ‘total suspicious followers’ percentage on Instagram, where they boast the second-lowest behind Manchester United.

Which Premier League Team Has the Most Fake Followers on Social Media?

Combing the fake follower percentages from Twitter and Instagram, the table below outlines which team has the highest totals across both platforms.