A Vfl Wolfsburg clash with Bayern Munich this Saturday morning at 2:30AM China time will begin what is sure to be a gripping Bundesliga 2014/15 season. Last season ended with the champions, Bayern Munich, 19 points clear of runners up Borussia Dortmund, but that’s not the only interesting thing to note at the top of last seasons table: five of the top six teams are online, and are joined by Werder Bremen and SV Hamburg. Mailman took a look at how these teams, and their players, were doing on Sina Weibo.
Unsurprisingly, the most popular players were from the top 2 clubs. Philipp Lahm was the most mentioned player in the last 30 days, having been discussed over 327,000 times (largely in response to captaining his side to victory at the World Cup). Dortmund’s star player Marco Reus was also heavily mentioned, with much of the discussion fuelled around transfer rumours and best wishes for recovering from injury.
The Bundesliga clubs’ popularity is flourishing despite the lack of players on Weibo, with Robert Lewandowski the only footballer with an official account. This relatively hinders the clubs’ growth in comparison to the Premier League, who have some of their biggest stars signed up to the platform, namely Wayne Rooney, Agüero, and Arsenal’s Germany duo Özil and Podolski.
With player activity being a large factors for fuelling club and league presence, it will be interesting to see how the season plays out online, and how the growth of the clubs as well as the league itself continues to develop.
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