Revealed: Premier league footballers with the biggest increase in searches

With Cristiano Ronaldo becoming the first person to reach 400 million followers on Instagram, and Lionel Messi the third most followed with 306 million, there is no doubt that footballers attract fans of attention on the internet.

Interested in this, Livefootballtickets.com sought to find out which Premier League stars and clubs saw the biggest increase in online popularity over the past year. To do this, the experts analysed monthly UK Google searches for the most valuable players and clubs from 2020 to 2021 using the online search tool SEMrush. 

Premier League football players with the biggest increase in searches  

Rank

 

Premier League player

Percentage growth from January 2021- December 2021

Premier League club

 

    1

 

Raphaël Varane

536.8%

 

Manchester United

2

Romelu Lukaku

233.9%

Chelsea

=2

Bernardo Silva

233.9%

Manchester City

3

Jack Grealish

82.4%

Manchester City

4

Mohamed Salah

81.8%

Liverpool

5

João Cancelo

50.0%

Manchester City

6

Mason Mount

48.9%

Chelsea

7

Diogo Jota

22.3% 

Liverpool

  =7

Raheem Sterling

22.3%

Manchester City

8

Phil Foden

22.2%

Manchester City

9

Rodri

22.1%

Arsenal

Please find the full data set here.

Topping the table is Raphael Varane with a whopping 536.8% increase in online interest - the only Manchester United player to make the table. Varane has a market value of 35% less than the most valuable PL player, Harry Kane. Despite that, the French player reached an impressive 40,500 searches in August 2021, possibly because of fans being interested in his signing to The Red Devils from Real Madrid.

In second place is Romelu Lukaku with a percentage growth of an impressive 233.9% within the last year, which is 185% more than fellow Chelseateam-mate, Mason Mount, in sixth place with a 48.9% increase. Lukaku’s popularity peaked in August 2021 with 301,100 Google searches, which may have been a result of one of the biggest transfers of Summer 2021 when he left Inter Milan to join The Blues.

Joining Lukaku in second place is Portuguese star Bernardo Silva with a 233.9% increase in popularity, which is 183.9% more than fellowManchester City team-mate João Cancelo, who takes fifth place with a respectable 50% increase in popularity online.

Jack Grealish places third with an 82.4% increase in online interest within the last year, which is 60.1% more than Manchester City and England team-mate Raheem Sterling in seventh place (22.3% increase). Despite having the third-highest increase in online interest, Grealish takes the crown for search volumes in 2021 with an average monthly total of 722,500 online searches.

Premier League clubs with the most online searches

Rank

Premier League club

Average Number of searches

1

Arsenal 

3,864,286

2

Liverpool

3,372,857

3

Manchester United

2,825,000

4

Chelsea

2,575,214

5

Aston Villa

1,333,571

6

Everton

1,199,714

7

Leicester City

641,286

8

Manchester City

318,679

9

Tottenham Hotspur

164,429

10

West Ham United

62,936

Arsenal clinches the top spot with 3,864,386 average monthly UK searches—14% more than Liverpool in second place with an average of 3,372,857 searches per month. Despite that, Liverpool is the team with the biggest increase in searches throughout 2021 (82.5% increase over the year).

In third place is Manchester United with an average of 2,825,000 monthly UK searches—88.7% more than rivals Manchester City in eighth place (318,679 average searches). 

Methodology

  1. Livefootballtickets.com were keen to discover which Premier League players and clubs had the biggest increase in online interest in 2021.

  2. The footballers listed in the dataset were sourced from Transfermarket.co.uk’s list of the most valuable Premier League football players on 07/01/2021. The resulting sample consists of the top 27 most valuable players, and most popular clubs. This was used as a suitable seed list for the study.

  3. Utilising SEMrush, Livefootballtickets.com were able to uncover the average monthly search volumes in the UK from January 2021 to December 2021 of each player and club contained within the sample.

  4. Following the collection of data, the percentage increase in searches for each player from January to December 2021 was then calculated.

  5. The average number of UK search volumes were used for the clubs, in order to find out which club has the most online interest.

  6. Subsequently, all data was amalgamated and ranked in descending order, thus uncovering the Premier League players with the biggest online interest and the clubs with most search volumes over the year.

  7. All data was obtained by Livefootballtickets.com on 07/01/22, as is accurate as of then.

Credit: www.livefootballtickets.com