If you are a Premier League fan, it is highly likely that you interact with your favourite club via at least one of their official social media pages.
While Facebook and Twitter remain hugely popular, Instagram has become the go-to platform for millions of football supporters in recent years.
Instagram’s mix of photographic and video content makes it the ideal place for fans to share content from their visits to Premier League stadiums.
With that in mind, the experts at Ticket-Compare conducted research to find out which Premier League stadium is the most Instagrammed.
They gathered data for the most popular hashtags for each stadium and ranked them based on the number of posts for each one. Here is what they found:
Given their status in English football, it is no surprise to see Liverpool and Manchester United stand head and shoulders above the rest in the Instagram stakes.
Anfield garnered a whopping 1.4 million posts on the social platform, while Old Trafford was just behind with 1.3m.
Understanding why they are so far ahead of their rivals is not easy, although the make-up of their respective fanbases could be a contributory factor.
Both clubs attract a large number of casual fans to home games, who may well be more inclined to share their ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ visit to a Premier League stadium.
However, a more likely explanation is that Man United and Liverpool have the biggest number of followers on Instagram, which inevitably leads to more content being posted there.
Chelsea take third place on the list with 591,000 posts, while Newcastle United (364,000) and Arsenal (267,000) round off the top five.
At the other end of the scale, Brighton & Hove Albion are the least Instagrammed club, with just 813 posts featuring on the platform.
While the survey is undoubtedly just a bit of fun, the results will hold plenty of resonance for the marketing teams connected to the clubs at the top of the list.
Studies have shown that 40 percent of 16-29-year-olds use social media to follow their team – highlighting its importance amongst the next generation of fans.
By contrast, social media engagement of fans aged 50-64 is much lower, although the reasons for this might not be as obvious as people may think.
Fans in this age group are often critical of clubs for not tailoring their content to an older demographic, which makes them less inclined to engage on social.
The disconnect may become even more prevalent over the coming years, with clubs increasingly targeting younger fans with their content.
This point is highlighted to perfection by the growth in popularity of TikTok, which is mainly geared towards a younger audience.
Man United already have 17.5m followers on the short-form social platform, and their numbers are growing at a rapid rate.
