About Real Madrid's Global Reach
During a special panel dedicated to the Madrid team at the Soccerex football fair, which concludes today in Aventura, north of Miami, Hopkinson highlighted the global reach of the Concha Espina team as a result of its sporting successes in recent years.
"That popularity around the world has given us a very powerful fan base in all countries," he said.
With concrete numbers, he pointed out that Real Madrid has 224 million followers on major social networks and is the top team in La Liga.
Hopkinson did not reveal Barcelona's data, the team with which he highlighted they have a "great rivalry", second in the world and that compels them to be "better".
In this table of the top teams in each league, following them in the ranking would be Manchester United, as the team that, with 126 million followers, would lead the Premier League list; Juventus from Turin (81), Bayern Munich (73), and Paris Saint-Germain (71).
Beyond football, Indian cricket would appear, with 50 million followers; the Los Angeles Lakers, with 39 and leader of the NBA, the Patriots American football team (16), and the Yankees (15) from Major League Baseball.
Hopkinson highlighted that Real Madrid is the third basketball team with the most followers in the world, followed by the aforementioned Lakers and the Chicago Bulls, which would place them ahead of other NBA giants.
This dominance means that the advertising campaigns in which Real Madrid participates have a much greater reach than those of other rivals or sports disciplines, he said.
In addition to social networks, technology is also allowing them to reach regional markets in a differentiated way. He gave the example of broadcasting four television signals of matches at the Santiago Bernabeu: for the Spanish and Latin American market, the US, China, and the Middle East.
This virtual signal, he explained, allows them to display segmented advertising around the playing field in different languages, for different products or brands.
About the reach in emerging social networks, such as TikTok, an application specialized in creating and sharing short videos that has become popular in recent months among the younger audience.
"Our strategy is to be everywhere," he said on his Soccerex panel, a summit where hundreds of soccer-related companies and experts make contacts and showcase the latest market trends, and Efe is a collaborating media outlet.
And the Real Madrid digital department, composed of around fifty people, is keeping up with the latest trends to increase the fan base and improve the club's connection with its fans.