Modern football clubs are increasingly reminiscent of professional media companies. In addition to “faster, higher, stronger”, the commercial side is still important for the club. Sports, including football, are part of the entertainment industry, and a lot of money is spinning there. And the better the club works with the public, the more fans it has, the easier it is to monetize them, the more money the club has and the better the players playing there.
Which football teams are the most beloved, who are most watched, who have the largest audience of loyal fans? IN popularity rating of the best Russian football clubs in 2019 we have gathered the most beloved Russians teams that regularly participate in championships and most often appear on blue screens.
10. Ural
The list of the most popular football clubs in Russia is opened by one of the "patriarchs" whose yellow-black colors have appeared on the football field for more than 80 years. Fans of Ural are conservative people and try not to change their preferences. Indeed, for a real fan, changing his football team is worse than changing a beloved woman. So they continue to watch Ural matches in the Premier League, hoping for a miracle.
However, in the past few years, things have been going wrong with Ural, and the club can fly out of the standings of the Russian Championship 2018-2019.
9. Anji
Anzhi fans are unhappy - according to the results of the Russian football championship, Makhachkala residents are in danger of flying out of the tournament. The club is also experiencing financial difficulties, since Suleiman Kerimov, who had paid for Anji for a long time, preferred to step aside.
The club cannot hire new players - the RFU chamber forbade Anji to buy new players until they pay the money to the old ones. And the fans, although cursing at the poor results of the team in the current championship, however, they continue to look and believe in the best.
8. Ruby
Now the Kazan club has the sixth place in the Russian Premier League, but the path to the European League is closed to him. By the decision of the UEFA investigative chamber, it was decided to exclude Rubin from the standings for violating the rules of fair play.
The situation with Rubin is not brilliant - because of the scarcity of funding, he continues to lose players. At the beginning of March, five people had already left the “dragons”, and the club’s management was going to cut the salary for the rest. How this will affect the popularity of the club - time will tell.
7. Rostov
Many football teams post cuts from their “test matches” on YouTube, earning popularity among fans, but not Rostov. Severe Rostovites prefer to keep their strategic and tactical developments secret.
At the moment, “Rostov” is in sixth place in the total number of points in the Championship of Russia.
6. Dynamo
Alas, for many years things have been going brilliantly for the “blue and white” ones, but the fans are a devoted audience. Moreover, the history of Dynamo’s victories is impressive: it’s practically the only club before the perestroika that took part in all the championships of the country and won a huge number of titles. It was for Moscow Dynamo that the best goalkeeper of all time once played - Lev Yashin.
But since the mid-90s, Dynamo’s luck has changed, and the last victory (the Cup of Russia) was won by the “blue-blue” in 1995, and only ten years later they dropped out of the Premier League. How long will the fans bask in the light of the dying star and how many will remain in another ten years?
5. Krasnodar
Although Krasnodar is one of the newcomers to Russian football clubs (it began to exist only 11 years ago), fans love and appreciate it. Especially after the new team managed to win the Russian Cup in 2013 - 2014.
Before the winter break, Krasnodar went right behind the current leader, Zenit, only one point behind. However, then a series of failures began: “Krasnodar” not only flew out of the Europa League, losing to “Valencia”, but also lost 11 games in a row.
However, the “bulls” are not discouraged, because, as the club president said, the main thing for them is an effective game, and not the result. At the moment, in the standings of the championship of Russia “Krasnodar” is “head to head” with “Locomotive”, taking fourth place.
4. Locomotive
The top four leading sports clubs in Russia in popularity in 2019 are opened by Lokomotiv. His matches, like Spartak, Zenit and CSKA are usually watched by about 5 million viewers across the country.
And after Lokomotiv’s leadership in the Russian championship last year, when the club managed to win first place for the third time, despite losing several high-profile players, its audience increased by several percent.
3. CSKA
It is paradoxical that the age structure of fans of CSKA, one of the oldest football clubs in the country, leading its pedigree with pre-revolutionary Russia, is the youngest. Most often, matches of this team are watched by young men under 25 years old, and according to the results of polls in this age segment, CSKA’s popularity surpasses even the first place in the rating. The reason, perhaps, is that the childhood of the main audience fell on the “golden” era of the club, when the “army men” won victory after victory in the early 2000s. To this it is worth adding a change in the direction of the club's development: since last year, its leadership has headed for the younger generation, having invited many young players to the team.
As for world fame, then the picture is less favorable. In early 2019, the Spanish agency Deportes & Finanzaz analyzed the number of comments, links and reviews on the pages of football clubs on Twitter and compiled a list of the most popular clubs among fans. In the rating of 100 teams (where, in addition to CSKA, only one more Russian team was included), the club took 73rd place.
2. Zenith
Although football clubs in Russia are funded by the state, but it prefers to keep its subjects on poor rations. Therefore, the leading Russian clubs begin to glance at their Western colleagues and try to learn from their experience. Zenit was one of the first (together with Spartak and Lokomotiv) to start working directly with fans through social networks popular with Russian users.
Perhaps, it was thanks to this “Zenith” that it was possible to increase the number of its viewers by one and a half times - from 1.1 million to 1.6 million people. And in the world ranking from Deportes & Finanzaz, Zenit is in 44th place, ahead of CSKA by 29 positions.
There are no more Russian teams in the ranking. And the results of the current Russian Football Championship in 2019 only confirm the primacy of Zenit in the Spanish rating. So far, he leads the standings, exceeding the result of CSKA by 5 points.
By the way, at one time in the team of “Zenith” was a football player with the strongest blow in the history of football.
1. Spartak
The first place in the number of loyal fans, and therefore in popularity among Russian football clubs, is occupied by the famous Spartak. This is the most titled of domestic clubs.
Every fifth spectator of the Russian Premier League watches matches with Spartak. However, if we compare the current popularity with the number of fans of Russian football at the beginning of this century, then the picture looms more sad. Then the matches of the Premier League were watched by one and a half times more spectators, and the number of Spartak fans exceeded 2.5 million. Now they are half a million less.
Nevertheless, Spartak is still the leading football club in popularity in Russia. This even shows the number of watching practice matches on YouTube. There, the audience of a single sparring from Spartak is almost equal to the total number of watched entries from other clubs in the Premier League. And this is despite the fact that the results of the current Russian Football Championship for Spartak are disappointing - it takes fifth place in the total number of points.
