BLOG | by Matt Mills

Do Manchester United fans really all live in the South East? United v Liverpool – The tale of the tape

We took a look at our YouGov FootballIndex to examine the make-up of the fanbases of two of the UK’s most famous clubs and fiercest rivals – Manchester United and Liverpool. Here’s a quick peak at what we found.

Age

Overall, Liverpool have currently got the bigger fanbase in the UK. But younger Brits are more likely to be United fans than Liverpool fans, perhaps as a result of Liverpool operating in the shadow of United when it came to silverware until recently.

Liverpool fans have a tendency to be middle-aged – between 35 and 49 years-old – while United fans tend towards being younger – although the variance between the age segments is very small for the Red Devils (United).

Gender

As you may expect given that males tend to watch more football than females, both clubs are more likely to be supported by men than women. But the variance is relatively small in both cases. For Liverpool, the male/female divide is 57/43 and for United it’s almost identical – 59/41. Both are very close to average for all the clubs we track in YouGov FootballIndex (57/43).

Do Manchester United fans all come from outside Manchester?

Finally, we looked at the old chestnut of what proportion of United fans hail from outside of the region. As you can see from the chart below, for both Liverpool and United the majority of fans come from the North West.

But which club has the biggest ratio of non-North West fans? More than a quarter (29%) of Liverpool fans fit that bill, while for United fans, it’s 28%. So it’s actually neck and neck on that front. And to settle it once and for all (or at least for now), who has more fans in London and the South East? It’s Liverpool again (6.2% v 4.9%).

Look out for more data from our YouGov FootballIndex tool during the close-season. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter to see our updates first.