They are two of the biggest football clubs in the world and dominate the timesheets like no other.
Barcelona and Real Madrid are by far the most successful Spanish teams in terms of trophies won: Madrid has 101, Barcelona has 99. Athletic Bilbao, third, has only 35. They have huge fans and many of the players in the world tournament and El Clasico attracts millions of eyes from all over the world.
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On Sunday, they will face each other for another piece of silver in the final of the Spanish Super Cup in Saudi Arabia, the 256th edition of the Clasico. This led The Athletic to investigate the most debatable question imaginable for both fan teams: which is the bigger club?
In 2020, we set out to do the same with England’s clubs and concluded that Manchester United was the biggest in the country when measured against metrics including crowds, global fanbase and trophies. We have reproduced those parameters here, with some changes to reflect the unique context in which Barcelona and Madrid operate. We will award a point per category (apart from some, where there is more than one point on offer) and the club with the highest total will be named the biggest.
It is not intended to be clinical in any way; It’s a kind of laugh that shouldn’t be taken too seriously. There are also many points that need to be measured. Please don’t hate us too much for the conclusion we’ve reached, but of course you can protect the honour of either club or let us know where we went wrong in the comments. We’re big, we can face it.
Come on. . .
Barcelona and Madrid are two institutions, but like any club, they are also explained through their fans.
This category is confusing due to the fact that both groups are undergoing extensive renovations to their stadiums. Barcelona’s iconic Camp Nou stadium is being demolished and remodeled into a 105,000-seat stadium, while Madrid is putting the finishing touches on the new, state-of-the-art Santiago Bernabeu. , which is expected to charge them at least €1. 4 billion.
Barcelona play their matches at the Lluis Companys Olympic Stadium while the works at the Camp Nou are being carried out. Many season ticket holders have opted not to attend matches there, but as the season is not over yet, we have to take an average attendance of more than the last five non-Covid affected seasons and divide it by the maximum capacity of each stadium to see how much of their pitch, each team has a tendency to fill up.
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Madrid has played with a small number of fans at various times in recent seasons as it renovated the 84,744-seat Bernabeu. This is contributing to the sharp drop in attendance between 2018-19 and 2019-20. The stadium is expected to be officially inaugurated between the end of May and the beginning of June this year, after several setbacks.
Barcelona plan to return to the Camp Nou in November 2024 at two-thirds capacity. They experienced falling crowds for two seasons before Xavi’s team drew in an impressive 83,498 fans on average in their title-winning 2022-23 campaign — their first La Liga win in four years. That gives them the edge over Madrid, with 67.4 per cent of the Camp Nou filled over those five seasons compared to 63.9 per cent for their rivals.
We’ve included a few other categories to reflect the all-time attendance – the highest numbers ever recorded at any of the clubs. In April 1956, Madrid attracted 129,690 fans to the Bernabéu for the first leg of the European Cup semi-final against AC Milan. Barcelona’s all-time record: 120,000 registered in the first leg of the European Cup quarter-finals against Juventus in March 1986.
Result: one point for Barcelona for average attendance as a percentage of maximum capacity, one point for Real Madrid for attendance ever recorded.
It’s hard to measure the fan base of a club, say two of this size, that has millions of followers around the world.
To reflect this distribution, as it should be, we’ve chosen to divide it into 3 categories: social media platforms, Spanish-language fanbase, and global fanbase. Our 2020 study of English clubs used fans on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to measure the clubs’ social media footprint. , however, we included TikTok given the platform’s expansion since then.
We also wanted to show just how popular these teams are in Spain. The tradition of penas — official fan groups who often have specific bars where they meet and sometimes have an area of the stadium reserved for them — is unique to Spanish football. According to lists on both clubs’ websites, there are more than 3,000 Barcelona and Madrid penas across the country.
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These teams have also spread throughout the world. Barcelona has official clubs in Kosovo, Kuwait and seven in Cuba, while Madrid has two teams in Nepal alone. There are 12 clubs in Barcelona in the United States and 17 in Madrid.
Madrid are the most sensible on all those indicators, with 39. 2 million more fans on social media, almost 1,000 more Spanish supporters’ clubs and 55 more teams around the world. All of these figures are accurate at the beginning of January.
The result: two numbers for Real Madrid: one for social media and one for fans in Spain and around the world
They are the two most successful clubs in Spain in terms of trophies won, but they sought to differentiate between Champions League titles and less illustrious honours such as the Copa de Ciudades de Feria.
That’s why we’ve set up a question system, awarding 10 for each Champions League title, up to 3 for the Club World Cup, the Spanish Super Cup and the European Super Cup. We don’t have to come with trophies that no longer exist, such as the regional tournaments prior to the creation of La Liga and the Intercontinental Cup.
Madrid’s impressive record in the Champions League and La Liga (they are the festival record holders with 14 and 35 titles respectively) puts them above Barcelona, but that’s another story from the last 20 seasons. . .
Result: Real Madrid A
As well as historical success, we wanted to reflect these teams’ recent titles. We settled on trophies won in the past 20 seasons (going back to and including 2004-05), weighted using the scoring system outlined in the previous section.
Despite Madrid’s five Champions League trophies in that span (adding 4 in five years between 2014 and 2018), Barcelona have the advantage thanks to their performances in La Liga and the Copa del Rey. They have won five more league titles than Madrid in that period. time and 4 more Spanish Cups. By contrast, Madrid’s victory in last year’s Copa del Rey was only its third in 30 years.
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Result: One point to Barcelona
Barcelona and Madrid finish first and second in La Liga, with Valencia (2001-02 and 2003-04) and Atletico Madrid (2013-14 and 2020-21) being the only other champions of the 21st century.
We charted Barcelona and Madrid’s league finishes through the 91 La Liga seasons since its establishment in 1928-29 (the league was suspended from 1936-1939 during the Spanish Civil War) and then took an average for each side. Madrid finished a decimal point above their Catalan rivals (an average position of 2.7 compared to 2.8).
Since 2004, no team has finished in the top three, illustrating the duopoly at the top of Spanish football.
Result: Real Madrid A
The Champions League is Europe’s premier club competition, so we wanted to give it special prominence — with a point on offer for most appearances and most times won.
It is no surprise to see Madrid so far out ahead as record holders (14 titles) and record appearance makers (43) in the European Cup/Champions League. They have played and won the most matches (482 and 291) and are the only team to have scored more than 1,000 goals in the competition (1,063).
Despite this, Barcelona’s five trophies compare favorably to their 27 appearances in the tournament. They won it 3 times in six years, from 2006 to 2011, but hadn’t made it to the knockout stages for 3 years until this season.
Result: One point for Real Madrid for maximum wins and maximum appearances
In 2020, we measured the quality of English club players based on the England internationals they had provided, as well as the number of representatives they had at the 2018 World Cup. But many of Barcelona and Madrid’s most productive players were born outdoors. Spain, so judging those clubs by the Spanish internationals they produced didn’t seem fair.
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We’ve replaced that measure with Ballon d’Or winners: no player at the club has won the award more times than Barcelona and Madrid’s joint record of 12. This is largely due to Messi and Ronaldo’s dominance in the 21st century, so we limited ourselves to individual players who had won the Ballon d’Or on both sides.
But the World Cup remains the pinnacle for many players and a decent gauge of player quality, so we combined this figure with the number of players each side sent to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and took an average.
Madrid have provided eight Ballon d’Or winners (Di Stefano, Raymond Kopa, Luis Figo, Ronaldo Nazario, Fabio Cannavaro, Cristiano Ronaldo, Luka Modric and Karim Benzema) to Barcelona’s six (the Spanish Luis Suarez, Cruyff, Hristo Stoichkov, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and Messi). But the Catalan club sent 17 players to Qatar — the most of any club — which gives them a narrow win.
Result: A for Barcelona
Barcelona and Madrid are only a success on the pitch: they are advertising heavyweights. Although the former’s monetary woes are well documented, the latter remain two of Europe’s most lucrative clubs.
Deloitte’s Football Money League ranks the world’s highest-generation football clubs by measuring a club’s commercial, broadcast and matchday revenue. We took an average figure for each team over the last five years of the report.
Madrid finished second in the last edition, with a turnover of €713. 8 million, while Barcelona went from fourth to seventh position despite a turnover of €638. 2 million. Barcelona has used a variety of monetary “levers”, promoting long-term profit flows. for advance payments – during the last two years to sign or sign players despite their precarious circumstances.
On the other hand, the renovation of the Bernabéu does not seem to have had much of an effect on Madrid, whose income only fell below 700 million euros in two years in 2020 and 2021. But little separates the groups over the last few years. years. more than five years since the Deloitte report.
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Result: Real Madrid A
The two Spaniards have a unique force of attraction when it comes to transfers. Being able to attract the world’s biggest stars remains a source of immense pride for fans.
To measure this, we count each team’s appearances on the list of the 50 most expensive transfers, according to the Transfermarkt website. It’s not surprising to see Madrid come out with the utmost sensibility given their history of ‘galactic’ signings, but the difference is as pronounced as one might think.
Madrid feature seven times in the list (Eden Hazard, Jude Bellingham, Gareth Bale, Cristiano Ronaldo, Aurelien Tchouameni, Zinedine Zidane and James Rodriguez). Meanwhile, six of Barcelona’s signings make the top 50 — although not all have been successful (Phillippe Coutinho, Ousmane Dembele, Antoine Griezmann, Neymar, Frenkie de Jong and Luis Suarez).
Result: Real Madrid A
This is a category in which there is no comparison. Despite being compared to the men’s groups of Barcelona and Madrid, fans of both clubs are proud of their women’s groups, although Madrid has only had one since 2020.
The Barcelona women are currently the defending champions of the Champions League and make up the majority of those who won Spain’s first Women’s World Cup last summer. Barcelona has won every game against Madrid and beat them 5-0 in their last meeting in November. .
We have used a similar scoring formula to the previous sections on “important titles”; In reality, it is not mandatory given the disparity between teams.
The most obvious way of settling this debate. Barcelona and Madrid’s men’s teams have met 255 times in all competitions, with 103 wins for Madrid and 100 for Barcelona. Madrid have scored 426 goals in Clasicos compared to 416 for Barcelona.
Carlo Ancelotti’s side won the last game at Montjuic in October thanks to two goals from Bellingham, but last year’s Clasico sealed the league well for Barcelona: a 2-1 win with a late goal from Franck Kessie.
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Xavi spoke of last season’s Spanish Super Cup win over Madrid as a turning point for his team. He hopes that this final can deliver that after a torrid first part of the season.
Result: Real Madrid A
So the effects are there and. . . Real Madrid is bigger than Barcelona. Well, at least by our measurements.
Again, we must emphasize that this is far from scientific. Barcelona enthusiasts would say that they have a more productive academy than Madrid’s and greater social success – two things we haven’t explored in this article.
Either way, the two clubs will be battling it out for the Super Cup and much more when they meet on Sunday. As with El Clasico, it’s much more than just a game when it comes to those teams.
(Main photos: Getty Images)