Who are the most popular and successful teams in EuroLeague?

The 2023-24 EuroLeague season is right around the corner and fans are excited as ever to cheer on their teams as this season shapes up to be one of the most competitive in the competition’s history. Speaking of fans, it’s what the EuroLeague is known for. The passionate fanbases give teams a greater advantage at home, and for many, it is the past success that fuels that fandom. 

So who are the most popular and successful teams in EuroLeague? We decided to assess this with a combination of cumulative social followings and historical club success. It was not the most scientific system, but the logic is generally fair. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook followers were added up for social following. From there, platform followings were averaged and then multiplied for a team's championships in a certain competition. 

For example, Facebook followings were the largest across the 18 teams at 20,720,000. The average for each team was 1,151,111. This was brought down to a round number of 500,000 and each continental title a team won — EuroLeague, EuroCup, and FIBA Basketball Champions League — was then multiplied by 500,000 to add to a team's cumulative following. Domestic titles were worth 250,000 followers, and Domestic cups, including pre-season cups, were worth 100,000. 

To reiterate, this system is not incredibly scientific and certainly has its flaws. Zalgiris for example was very difficult to assess in regards to domestic trophies due to their history in the former Soviet League. 

For brevity, we’re only going to go in-depth on the top 5 teams following this experiment but we will share the counts for the remaining teams at the end. You may be surprised at who the top five are, and who didn’t make the cut. Let’s begin.