The derby between AC Milan and Inter is no longer something that takes place solely on the field, as brand exposure and global popularity are big in the eyes of both ownerships.
La Gazzetta dello Sport have compared the online presence of Milan and Inter, starting with the social media following. The Rossoneri have 70 million followers on the most popular channels while the Nerazzurri are chasing behind at 65 million.
Milan lead on Twitter (8.5m followers against 3m for their city rivals), but find themselves chasing on Facebook (31m followers for the blue side, 27m for the red half).
The Diavolo are clearly ahead on Instagram, the most popular social network used by footballers, thanks to almost 15m followers compared to around 10.5m for the Biscione.
These are remarkable numbers, but light years away from the 146m followers of Real Madrid for example, a global point of reference thanks to the successes in Spain and Europe in recent years.
Milan also has an online advantage over Inter on TikTok (13.4m followers against the Nerazzurri’s 11.6m), YouTube (with 1.44m subscribers to the club’s official channel compared to 1.2m for Inter).
On Twitch there is a clear gap thanks to Milan’s account being followed by over 106,000 users, compared to around 49,000 for Zhang’s club.
As a reflection of Chinese ownership, the Nerazzurri show better numbers in Asia, looking at widely used platforms such as WeChat and Weibo (a hybrid between Twitter and Facebook, in which they have about 5m followers, against the almost 3.6m for Cardinale’s club).
In China, there is also substantial parity between Douyin accounts – the Chinese version of TikTok – where Milan have around 870,000 followers and Inter are close behind at 810,000.
Best team in Italy❤🖤
These numbers with a bad social media team. Imagine how many people we could reach if they actually put any effort into it.