Survey: Zenit voted most popular club in Russia; ManU, Barcelona, Chelsea share 5th place

One of the world’s leading sociological research companies, Nielsen, provided Sports.ru with the results of the largest ever study concerning the preferences of the Russian football fans (19,000 people surveyed in 38 cities, 500 in each), performed on the request by Zenit St. Petersburg.

According to this research, Zenit also turned out to be the most popular club in Russia, supported to any degree by 27 percent of the country’s fans. Meanwhile, 16 percent support Spartak Moscow, while CSKA Moscow have 13 percent, Rubin Kazan have 5 percent, and Lokomotiv Moscow and Dynamo Moscow have 4 percent each. The last two clubs share the fifth place in the popularity ranking with the top foreign teams – Manchester United, Barcelona, and Chelsea.

In absolute figures, according to Nielsen’s calculations extrapolated to Russia’s total population, Zenit have 12.6 million supporters, Spartak have 8.2 million, and CSKA have 6.7 million.

Such impressive figures were achieved by Zenit not so much from their native city of St. Petersburg, but rather from the large Russian cities having no Premier League team. In particular, Zenit have the highest popularity rating in Saratov, Ufa, Yekaterinburg, Omsk, and Krasnoyarsk. Still, in Volgograd Rotor are the most popular team, despite spending the last decade in lower divisons (currently in the Second Division, Russia’s third football tier).