A City United? We let the data decide

At Skyrise we’re all about the who, the where, the when, and the why.

So as half our team decamp to Wembley this weekend for an all-Manchester FA Cup Final, we thought we’d take a look at who the site audiences of the two clubs are.

Analysing both manutd.com and mancity.com visitors over a 12-month period reveals some surprising similarities… and some equally surprising differences.

Manchester United vs Manchester City is one of the most famous rivalries in football, and arguably the most anticipated FA Cup Final in years.

It divides the city, not to mention the Skyrise office. Fans are generally insulting to the other side. City view themselves as the true team of Manchester, while United are proud of their heritage and big club status. 

But what is the truth about the two fanbases? Do they differ or are they similar?

We ran an analysis of Man United and Man City fans in our platform of geospatial data gathered from anonymised and aggregated data from UK based mobile network providers, to uncover the facts of what the similarities (and differences) were.

There were far more visitors to the Man United page than to Man City’s. 84% more in the analysis period, with 2.23M v 1.12M.

Manchester City fans are more likely to come from Manchester

Both fans have a UK-wide fan base, but it appears that Man City fans are more concentrated in the areas of Greater Manchester than Man United fans. 13.9% of the City site users live in Manchester while for Man United it’s just 10.3%.

A clear geographical divide

When analysing the geo-spread of where fans live, you can almost draw a line through Manchester. City fans invariably live on the East, while United are to the West. We can see a few outliers, but you can see it is a clear split.

By generating a priority score, the platform analysed which postal sectors have the highest concentration of fans compared to their rivals. This identified the following areas of Manchester as the most likely places for each fanbase to live.

City United. They have a lot in common

Despite all the backhanded compliments and the nuances, it's worth noting there is more that bonds these two fan bases than divides them.

This is backed up through contextual analysis of the two audiences.

By understanding where the different fan bases go, and through analysis of weblog behaviour, the platform builds a rich data-driven understanding of interests and brand affiliations.

When comparing both sets of fans the results are generally similar.

They enjoy non-sport-related interests like entertainment and fashion, and both are interested in more sports than just football.

Sports betting indexes are high for both sets of fans, and while there are some slight variables in their supermarket of choice, there are many things that do bond them.

When the fans meet at Wembley this weekend, it will be Manchester divided. We can’t help settle the age-old arguments definitively, but we hope these data-driven answers shed some light on debate along the way.