December 20 – Real Madrid have launched a new Facebook subscription service costing $2.77 as the club seeks monetise their giant following of a 110 million on the social media platform.
November 14 – Manchester City’s Portuguese midfielder Bernardo Silva has been suspended for one match – the key Premier League clash with Chelsea – over a tweet he sent to team-mate Benjamin Mendy, and fined £50,000.
October 30 – Sky Sports Football earns more than $1 million a month from YouTube while the top football club earner on the social media video platform, Liverpool, earns over $650,000, according to new estimates.
September 16 – With the Champions League group stages kicking off this week, UEFA has released a 1 billion interaction social media stat that makes shows the European club showpiece outperformed all other major events in 2019 by more than 30%.
August 27 – Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said he was “lost for words” after yet another vitriolic case of racial abuse on social media towards a player missing a penalty, this time directed against Marcus Rashford who fluffed a second-half spotkick as United suffered a shock 2-1 home defeat to Crystal Palace on Saturday.
August 21 – Former England international Phil Neville has called for the football community to “send a powerful message” and boycott social media for six months in response to the rise in racist abuse of players.
August 20 – Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba has become the third player in a week to be the subject of racist abuse on social media in England after missing a penalty.
July 31 – Portugal and Juventus star Cristiano Ronaldo is sport’s top earner on social media, according to new analysis by analytics firm HopperHQ.
July 25 – Facebook has released a set of stats following CAF’s AFCON 2019 championship in Egypt that show more than 10 million people got involved on the social media platform. The official tournament Facebook page had more than 3.6 million likes.
July 23 – Barcelona are the latest European club to launch on the Chinese video-sharing platform TikTok. They join Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Dortmund and Liverpool as the biggest clubs on the social media channel, others are rapidly migrating the same way. LaLiga is also on the platform.
July 3 – Adidas UK were left hugely embarrassed when a social media gambit launching the new Arsenal kit backfired, leading to shirts being tweeted with racist and offensive slogans on the back.
By Paul Nicholson
April 4 – A survey of social media activity of international sports governing bodies has ranked FIFA as the best performing international federation (IF) across all platforms. The survey last year ranked FIFA in 10th place.
March 21 – Ex-Manchester United defender Patrice Evra has denied he is homophobic after Paris Saint-Germain condemned what they say were insulting remarks aimed at the club by the former France captain.
February 21 – Spanish clubs are pushing deeper into China via an expanded social media presence with the help if LaLiiga.
October 25 – Arsenal have launched a new chat tool, powered by artificial intelligence and operating across social media channels including Facebook Messenger, Slack, Sky and Telegram, that will give supporters easy access to the latest news, fixtures, results, videos, player stats and ticket information.