New Delhi, Dec 17 (IANS): A SEMrush study shows that football fans' love for UEFA teams and players influences online activity. Global football supporters of the beautiful game arent passive; they actively search for their favourite players and teams. Among the fans, Real Madrid, followed by Liverpool and Juventus were the three most searched for football clubs from June till October 2019.
Real Madrid, undoubtedly the worlds' wealthiest club, enjoys a mythical aura in the eyes of Indians. Its forward Eden Hazard was searched an average over 1.9 million times from June till October 2019; he was the fifth most searched for UEFA footballer globally.
The top three footballers searched for were Neymar De Silva of Paris Saint-Germain, Lionel Messi of Barcelona and Christiano Ronaldo of Juventus. From June till October 2019, users searched for each an average of 15.5, 6.9, and 5 million times respectively. There was less disparity in the number of searches for the top three teams than in the number of searches for the three most searched players.
Indians searched an average of 21.7, 20.9 and 17 times for Real Madrid, Liverpool and Juventus respectively. The preference of Indian fans is tilted in favour of forwards; globally, each of the five most searched for players are forwards.
Currently, in the middle of the UEFA season, millions of fans are searching for their favourite players and teams. Across the length and breadth of global football fans, merchandise carrying the symbols of Real Madrid, Liverpool, Juventus, Barcelona, PSG, Galatasaray, Inter, Chelsea, Tottenham and Ajax, the ten most searched for clubs, will not be short of buyers. Similarly, jerseys with the names of the ten most searched players: Neymar, Messi, Ronaldo, Griezman, Hazard, Icardi, Dybala, Mbappe, Falcao and Lukaku will be in demand.
SEMrush also found that sentiments in India towards UEFA are hugely positive. Following a Twitter analysis, it discovered over 47.4 per cent of sentiments expressed about UEFA on Twitter is positive, and over 37.8 per cent is neutral.