How Creators Power the Premier League's Global Reach (HBBIP #97)

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As at least a few of my readers will know, we’ve recently passed a momentous day on the global sports calendar. That’s right: the Premier League season kicked off (get it?) on August 15, with 38 matchweeks set to run through late May. 

So many great fixtures! (That is evidently what they call not only the games, but also the schedule as a whole? I’m new to this.) So much incredible drama! (Nothing thrills me like a final score of 1-1! I love ties—it’s like everybody loses!)

Can you feel through your screen how excited and knowledgeable I am about all this?

Okay, I admit it: in case you couldn’t tell, this is new territory for me. But one of the coolest things about writing a newsletter on the creator economy, apart from all the free stuff I get (❤️LSKD❤️), is the wide range of topics I’m able to cover. From furniture to fashion to fighting, this newsletter roams wherever sales tells me to go the winds of creator marketing take me. And this week, those winds have taken me to football.

Not, like, football football. The kind I know anything about, and actually watch, and enjoy. Not the kind I’ve written about before. No, I mean the other kind of football. The kind where you use your feet.

You know—soccer.

Apologies to my European readers: this HBBIP edition (or, uh, ‘fixture’) is intended in good faith, so that’ll be the last time I just toss out the s-word like that. It’s football from here on out. And definitely not ‘footie,’ because ew.

Regardless of my typically American combination of snark and ignorance, the Premier League season represents not only a major force within the global sports scene, but a galvanizing platform for creator marketing. Thus, it’s my duty as a writer to at least make a game (get it?) effort to analyze the role that creator marketing is playing in driving digital awareness and engagement for one of the world’s premier (get it?) athletic leagues.

So that’s what I’m going to do. Come along with me, and see if we can both learn a thing or two. Also, further apologies: the most common Premier League final score is 1-0, not 1-1. Alright. Thrilling. Let’s dive in.

The Top Brand Sports League of All Time (of the Week): the Premier League

So here’s something cool that I learned just now: thanks to that whole ‘relegation’ thing, the Premier League is a Theseus’ Ship of different clubs. Though 20 clubs compete in any given season, 51 clubs have vied for glory since the league’s modern inception in 1992. Surely that means it’s anyone’s game, with a crazy amount of parity?

Well, no. Just seven of those clubs have won the league since 1992. Just two clubs—Manchester City and Liverpool—have won the league over the past eight seasons. As an NBA fan, I thought things were bad during that four-year stretch where it was just LeBron versus the Warriors, but yikes. 

I mean, if you’re a fan of, say, the Wolverhampton Wanderers—which you should be, because that’s an extremely cool name—why even bother? What level of masochistic delusion do you have to sink to just to keep going year after year? Anyway, be sure to check back in October for HBBIP’s NBA preview, where I’ll explain why the Knicks are for sure winning it all this season.

This stratification between the league’s haves and have-nots plays out in each club’s digital profile. Looking at the data, it’s pretty clear even to a novice like me which clubs are popular. However, that popularity doesn’t necessarily overlap with which clubs are winners. (To be clear, this is a Manchester United joke.)

Given the breadth of Premier League teams out there, and the fact that neither you nor I have all day, I think it’s fair to stick to the top quartile of Premier League clubs by our metrics, no? Apologies to any Leeds United or Fulham fans who read this newsletter—I’ll get you next time.

Going by the numbers, five clubs stand out from the pack:

• Manchester United
• Manchester City
• Liverpool
• Chelsea
• Tottenham Hotspur

Those clubs align quite well—perfectly, in fact—with the ‘Big Six’ lineup of historically popular clubs, with only Arsenal being excluded. Apologies to my colleague Zach Donnenfield, our resident stateside football enthusiast and dedicated Arsenal fan: your club consistently ranks in sixth place by the metrics, just missing the cut-off for this newsletter. Hopefully you’re used to runner-up finishes by now.

This has been a lot of text without any numerical analysis—or, more importantly, graphs. Let’s get into that now.

First, let’s get a sense of how many creators are talking about top Premier League clubs. We’ll start in the U.K., since believe it or not that’s where all of these clubs exist:

Top PL Creator Count (UK): 2022 - 2024

It pays to be the reigning champs: there are more U.K. creators talking about Liverpool than any other Premier League club. But does that translate into awareness metrics like impressions and engagements?

Top EPL Impressions (UK): 2022 - 2024

Not necessarily! While Liverpool had the edge back in 2022, the Manchester clubs surged ahead in 2023, with Manchester City ranking No. 1 in 2023 and Manchester United claiming the crown in 2024. Meanwhile, as in life, Chelsea and Spurs are just happy to be there.

Top PL Engagements (UK): 2022 - 2024

We see a similar pattern in the U.K. when it comes to engagements. Two things are worth noting here: 

1. On the whole, clubs’ engagements have risen consistently over this time period, indicating that digital content—typically fueled by creators—has helped raise these clubs’ profiles.
2. Arsenal makes an appearance, running neck-and-neck for fifth place! See, Zach? All is not lost!

I was curious to see whether there’s much Premier League enthusiasm over in the U.S.—surely not as much as there will be after this newsletter, but still. How do the top clubs, and the scales for these metrics, differ between the source (the U.K.) and the emerging market?

Top PL Post Count (US): 2022 - 2024

Whereas in the U.K. we had a surprising result for creator count, with Liverpool garnering the most creators, in the U.S. our surprising result is reserved for post count, where we see Chelsea consistently leading the pack by a wide margin.

Top PL Impressions (US): 2022 - 2024

As in the U.K., Manchester United led the U.S. market in impressions. In fact, Manchester United did so by an even wider margin stateside. However, note the scale of those two markets: while Manchester United topped out near 4B impressions in the U.S. in 2024, the club barreled past 11B impressions in the U.K. that same year. Every other top club sees much larger totals in the U.K. as well—unsurprising, given that it’s the English Premier League and all.

Also notable, at least to me, was that the rate of impressions growth in the U.S. and the U.K. were roughly the same, with clubs generally seeing a 2x growth over the last three years.

Top PL Impressions (Global): 2022 - 2024

When you look at where impressions stand globally, what do you see? The two Manchester clubs duking it out as per usual, with United holding the edge; another general 2x-ing across these clubs; and a tremendous leap in overall scale, with some clubs approaching 30B global impressions in a given year. As in, more than three times the global population. It pains me to say this, but the NFL and NBA aren’t hitting those numbers

Turns out that football really is the world’s favorite sport. Who knew? Only, like, billions of people who aren’t me.

Now that we (I) have a better lay of the land, let’s turn toward the creator marketing side of the equation. How are creators helping to fuel these engagements and impressions? What are the signature moments, initiatives, and partnerships we’ve seen moving the needle for the Premier League’s top clubs?

While Premier League clubs have been developing social media strategies for a long time now—Burnley’s is particularly interesting—2025 has only heightened the complexity of the creator marketing ecosystem. Again, this is where my American superiority complex has to tip its cap to football: it truly is a global game. In assessing post-level results for Premier League clubs, I was struck by the international nature of the clubs’ engagements, and by the sophistication of the media/creator industrial complex that amplifies the Premier League’s presence on social.

For example, I learned who Fabrizio Romano is, which I kind of had to, given that he was the top EMV-driver for all five of the primary clubs I analyzed, and probably a good deal of the league at large. While journalist-creators like Romano occupy a lane of their own, we also have fan-journalist hybrids like Mark Goldbridge or Ben Black. Then there are creators who primarily dwell in contexts outside of the Premier League, but count football fandom among their various areas of focus.

Additionally, as I’ve commented on every other time I’ve written about sports and creator marketing, more and more athletes are stepping behind (or in front of) the phone camera, blurring the lines between professional sports and professional content creation. Many, including Marcus Rashford and Raheem Sterling and Mohamed Salah, bring attention to social causes, while others are known for engaging with fans, sharing behind-the-scenes content, or participating in the latest TikTok trend.

Between the media ecosystem, the athletes themselves, and support from some of social media’s hottest creators and brands, the Premier League is booming. With something so massive, it’s hard to conceive of it getting even bigger, but there is, in fact, room for growth.

Earlier, we took a look at global impressions, and how those are holding steady across different markets. But what about global engagements?

Top PL Engagements (Global): 2022 - 2024

These are pretty healthy figures over the past three years, but we can see some YoY declines within this set between 2023 and 2024. Plus, the overall growth in this category isn’t as explosive as we’ve seen for some other metrics. 

But what if—like I’ve been saying this whole time—we look at the United States?

Top PL Engagements (US): 2022 - 2024

On a much smaller scale, we’re seeing somewhat more continuous growth, and less drastic YoY declines. With the World Cup coming to the Americas in 2026, I expect an all-out blitz of football content to drum up enthusiasm in a promising new market. Or, you know, whatever they call a blitz in the other kind of football.

So there you have it, folks: I still don’t know exactly what an offside is, but I’ve learned some things about football, and I hope you have too. And to English readers, who presumably know all this stuff already, I hope I’ve done you proud. If you liked this newsletter, be sure to grab your government ID and check out some past editions from the archive.

In closing, football represents an incredible frontier for creator marketing, and one that I want to explore more fully as I familiarize myself with the game. Thank you to everyone here at CreatorIQ who helped me get up to speed, particularly Joel Morris, our Enterprise Account Executive EMEA and all-around football-knower. I hope that I’ve removed enough Manchester United jokes for your liking, Joel.

Oh, and go Wolves! Sure, you’re at +100000 to win the league, but if Leicester City did it, why not you? Just make sure to thank HBBIP when you’re on the podium. And maybe send me a kit.

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