List of Russian football clubs by the number of fans

According to championat.com , in the 2017/18 season, the number of RFPL fans was about 8.5 - 8.7 million residents of the Russian Federation. This assessment includes those fans who periodically monitor the progress of the national championship during the season and watch his matches or reviews using any of the available methods. At the same time, the audience of the Premier League is 6.5% of the population over ten years of age, which is significantly lower than the average for UEFA countries (19%), as well as the indicators of such football federations as England , Spain , Italy , the Netherlands (30%). For comparison, at the peak of interest in the Russian championship in 2008, the Premier League audience was about 12% of the population. ^[1] .

Note. The popularity rating of clubs is based on monitoring the audience of fans of Russia aged 10 or more over the period 2001-2017. “Formed by the results of a comprehensive, systematic analysis of data from various regional and federal surveys and media measurements, statistics of Internet resources and other specialized studies and reports characterizing the number, activity and club likes of domestic football fans).”

Moreover, in neutral regions (in regions of Russia where there are no RPL clubs), the popularity of the teams as of the 2017/18 season was: ^[1]

Yandex in 2017 published a study of requests for football matches, in which it determined which Russian clubs residents of different cities are interested in. The only FNL club in the 2016/17 season that can be compared with the Premier League teams in terms of the number of fans is Dynamo. Dynamo games were more interested in users than matches of Terek and Tomi. ^{[2] [3]}

Note. The rating was compiled according to Yandex search data, July 2016 — April 2017. The rating compilers used requests for football matches containing the names of two teams: they took all such requests given on the day of each match of the Russian championship, as well as within two days before and after him. The matches of the European Cups and the Cup of Russia were not taken into account.

One of the tools for estimating the number of fans is the analysis of social networks in which clubs are represented. In this case, both the methods of simple recounting of subscribers in all official accounts on social networks are used, as well as more complex methods that take into account the activity of subscribers on the community page in a social network. According to studies by championat.com, Sport Express , Sport Day by Day and RIAB, Weekend Agency, Sellout Sport System, clubs have the following dynamics in social networks by the total number of subscribers (table sorted according to Sellout agency Sport System for 2019 as the most relevant):

Notes. None of the studies presented assesses the intersection of the audiences of each club in various social networks.

In the ranking for 2012, based on the publication of championat.com, the total number of subscribers in three social networks is presented: VKontakte , Facebook , Twitter .

The methodology of the Sport Express publication from 2014 has the following features: the above statistics take into account only official communities and pages of the Premier League clubs on VKontakte , Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram . The statistics took into account: “VKontakte” - the number of subscribers; Facebook - the number of people who like the page; Twitter - the number of readers, Instagram - the number of readers (numbers are rounded). The number of subscribers in all of the listed social networks is summarized.

The methodology of the Sport-Express publication from 2015 has the following features: the above statistics take into account only official communities and pages of the Premier League clubs on VKontakte , Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube (data for February 24 - 25, 2015); the number of subscribers in all of the listed social networks is summed up.

The methodology of the publication “Sport day after day” from 2017 involves calculating the total number of subscribers of RFPL participating clubs on VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram at the time of publication (December 3, 2017).

The Russian Bloggers Research Agency (RIAB) compiled a rating based on the activity of subscribers of the official RFPL club communities of the 2017–2018 season on five social networks (VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube). The study was conducted from June 1 to August 21, 2017 (the first seven rounds of the championship). The table shows the number of subscribers of each club that fell into the study. The popularity rating from the same agency is not given in the current article, since the methodology for its calculation is not described.

In a March 14, 2018 Weekend Agency study, only 9 clubs were mentioned. The number of subscribers is fixed for four social networks: VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

The Sellout Sport System 2019 ranking includes data on the number of subscribers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and VKontakte at the end of the RPL 2018–2019 season (May 13, 2019).

VTsIOM

VTsIOM conducts regular surveys of Russian residents interested in football. So in 2012, according to the data, the leader in popularity among Russian fans was St. Petersburg Zenit (26% of respondents), followed by Moscow Spartak (14%) and CSKA (13%), then Lokomotiv (6 %), Dynamo and Anji (5% each) ^[12] . In 2016, according to a survey conducted by VTsIOM, Zenit again became the most popular club in Russia (13% of respondents), 8% for Spartak and CSKA ^[13] . According to the results of VTsIOM polls, a general decrease in the number of club fans has been noticeable since 2010.

Note. VTsIOM polls are conducted on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Sport + Markt

According to the Cologne company Sport + Markt , based on surveys conducted in Europe (including Russia), there are three Russian teams in the ranking of the most popular clubs in Europe: ^[15]

Note. The survey methodology in 2007 was as follows. By telephone, 9600 randomly interviewed residents of 16 European countries (600 in each country) who called themselves fans were randomly interviewed. All respondents answered the question of which two clubs they support - in their own country and in some other European one.

In Russia, the survey was conducted in Moscow, St. Petersburg and another two or three major cities. Then club preferences (in% of the number of respondents) were multiplied by the number of football fans. So the number of fans in Russia Sport + Markt assumed equal to 52 million people.

Nielsen

According to the 2011 Nielsen company, the ranking of the most popular clubs in Russia (including foreign clubs) is as follows: ^{[15] [16]}

Note. The study was conducted in 38 major cities of Russia in 7 federal districts. As part of the study, 19 thousand people aged 14–55 years were interviewed ^[16] .

In an interview in January 2017, Nielsen Sport managing director in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Jan Lehman and Nielsen Russia commercial director Oleg Martyanov, reported the following data on the popularity of Russian clubs: Zenit has the largest number of fans in Russia (more than 30% of the total number of fans ), Spartak and CSKA have 19% and 17% respectively ^[17] .

• Who is really rooting for in Russia. Only numbers (unspecified) . www.championat.com (August 12, 2017). Date accessed August 10, 2019.
• 56% of the Premier League audience cheer for Spartak, Zenit and CSKA. How the club sympathies of the Czech Republic fans will be distributed in the 2015/16 season and how they will watch the championship matches. (Russian) . www.championat.com (July 23, 2015). Date accessed August 11, 2019.