MUMBAI: Manchester United is the world?s most popular club with 659 million global followers.

Kantar, which carried out a survey, found that football remains the world?s most popular sport, with 1.6 billion followers globally, reinforcing the results of a recent Fifa survey. For the survey, Kantar gathered 54,000 respondents from 39 countries.

The club?s commercial director Richard Arnold commented on the long-term strategy that has made Manchester United the number one club in the world?s number one sport: "Manchester United has built on a tradition of iconic players, iconic teams and iconic achievements -- Beckham, Busby, Benfica ?68. Now our games are broadcast to 1.15 billion households globally, to an audience of over four billion a year."

Since 2007, Manchester United has rolled out new approaches to reach fans. The connections to the club has grown exponentially: from the increase in TV viewership from two to four billion last season, to the demand from millions of media subscribers in 72 countries through media partnerships and to the way the footage of Wayne?s overhead kick echoed around the world on social media.

"With the DHL Champions Trophy tour we have seen that passion from our community of followers face to face in 38 cities across the globe, and there does not seem to be a beach or street in the world where you do not see the Aon and Nike shirt. This survey shows that our family of followers is going from strength to strength," Arnold said.

Manchester United has 71 million followers in Americas, 90 million in Europe 73 million in Middle East and Africa, 325 million in Asia-Pacific an 108 million in China.

The number of Manchester United followers globally has grown by 98 per cent since the previous survey in 2007. Manchester United?s family of followers is larger than the combined population of the US, Brazil and Mexico.