The Athletic | Football engagement report
@TheAthleticFC - 1.3M followers on X
Measured over 621 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on October 26, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 376 interactions against 1.3M followers, an engagement rate of 0.029%. Posts are seen about 55K times each, and 0.683% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 4.31% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 29.9 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on almost every day in the window. Most posts go out around 20:00 UTC, and Sunday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 621 posts sampled, 80% carry an image or video and 74% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 27K interactions, about 71x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #mufc, #nufc, #avfc.
Measured over 621 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on October 26, 2026. Recurring tags: #mufc, #nufc, #avfc.
Where this sits in the catalog
At 0.029%, The Athletic | Football sits above the 25th percentile of the 205,261 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the below the median band, which runs 0.024% to 0.143%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.004% |
| 25th percentile | 0.024% |
| 50th percentile | 0.143% |
| 75th percentile | 0.678% |
| 90th percentile | 2.55% |
| 99th percentile | 82.4% |
This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built
Posting timing
This account posts most often around 20:00 UTC, and Sunday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
| Hour (UTC) | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC | -1% | 89K |
| 01:00 UTC | -2% | 90K |
| 02:00 UTC | -3% | 88K |
| 03:00 UTC | -4% | 94K |
| 04:00 UTC | -5% | 76K |
| 05:00 UTC | -4% | 75K |
| 06:00 UTC | -5% | 86K |
| 07:00 UTC | -5% | 93K |
| 08:00 UTC | -4% | 108K |
| 09:00 UTC | -4% | 124K |
| 10:00 UTC | -3% | 129K |
| 11:00 UTC | -3% | 141K |
| 12:00 UTC | -3% | 154K |
| 13:00 UTC | -3% | 167K |
| 14:00 UTC | -4% | 173K |
| 15:00 UTC | -2% | 176K |
| 16:00 UTC | -3% | 171K |
| 17:00 UTC | -3% | 159K |
| 18:00 UTC | -2% | 149K |
| 19:00 UTC | -2% | 141K |
| 20:00 UTC | -1% | 131K |
| 21:00 UTC | 0% | 116K |
| 22:00 UTC | -2% | 100K |
| 23:00 UTC | -1% | 90K |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +5% | 393K |
| Monday | +1% | 483K |
| Tuesday | -2% | 520K |
| Wednesday | -3% | 472K |
| Thursday | -2% | 430K |
| Friday | -3% | 447K |
| Saturday | +2% | 393K |
Formats this account uses
Its own posting mix on the left, and what each of those formats does across every account we track on the right. Only formats where the effect clears our publish test appear here, so an empty row is a format we could not measure rather than one that does nothing.
| Format | This account | Catalog effect | 95% interval | Accounts behind it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image or video | 80% of posts | +111% | +108% to +115% | 34K |
| Outbound link | 74% of posts | -41% | -42% to -40% | 32K |
| Typical length | - | +15% | +14% to +16% | 32K |
- 80% of this account's sampled posts carry an image or video. Across the catalog, posts with an image or video run 111% above the same accounts' other posts.
- 74% of its posts carry a link off X. Across the catalog, posts with an outbound link run 41% below the same accounts' other posts, so a large share of this account's output sits in the weakest bucket we measure.
- Its average post runs 413 characters, which falls in the over 280 characters band. Across the catalog, posts over 280 characters run 15% above the same accounts' other posts.
These are catalog-wide differences applied to this account's own posting mix, not a measurement of how each format performs for this account specifically. We keep one median per account, not one per format per account, so the second thing is not something this data can tell you.
Best tweets
- Oct 2, 202671x their median
It was a seemingly innocuous email, sent on a Wednesday morning in January 2017, that started everything. Arriving in the inbox of a senior official at Manchester City, it appeared to have been sent by an employee from European footballโs governing body, UEFA, and contained a link to a financial compliance report. The City official clicked the download button. That was all it took. It was not a genuine email from UEFA but a successful phishing attempt by Portuguese hacker and activist Rui Pinto. Cityโs servers were breached, allowing Pinto to retrieve thousands of emails and documents from the clubโs systems. This week, almost 10 years on from Pintoโs first email, the Premier League announced that an independent panel had found City guilty of all but one of the charges against them, as The Athletic first revealed last Friday. ๐ @jwhitey98: https://t.co/iZ74j9gKJE
- Sep 10, 202641x their median
'๐๐๐ฃ๐๐ง๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐จ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ค ๐๐๐ช๐๐ฉ ๐๐๐ง๐๐ฅ๐' It's been 18 years since Fenerbahce have played at this stage of the Champions League โย they are hosting Roma in their opening game of this season's league phase. https://t.co/Px3uoHObka
- Sep 30, 202640x their median
Manchester City reported ยฃ949.4m arriving from sponsors over nine years. The real number was ยฃ119.2m. Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), the clubโs owner, forked out the remaining ยฃ830.7m in what the commission described as a โdisguised funding schemeโ. City are alleged to have overstated their revenue by ยฃ854.5m over nine years. We knew it was going to be bad. But this bad? No, it is on a different scale to anything the Premier League has seen before. ๐@DTathletic ๐ https://t.co/PeBjfxVJgF
- Sep 18, 202639x their median
Real Madrid striker Kylian Mbappe has quit his long-term relationship with Nike to become theย face of Swiss company Onโs first expansion into football boots. On has also hired former France and Arsenal star Thierry Henry as the firmโs Director of Football. Henry has been secretly working in the role since 2025 and played a role in convincing Mbappe, 27, to join upon the expiration of his contract with Nike this summer. Full story from @AdamCrafton_ โฌ๏ธ https://t.co/K0rQO9B1Ru
- Sep 28, 202636x their median
Across the nine seasons they were accused of not providing accurate information, Manchester City spent ยฃ1.943billion on wages, over ยฃ100m more than any other English club. In 17 Abu Dhabi-controlled years to the end of 2024-25, their combined wage bill was ยฃ4.963bn. At Manchester United and Chelsea, the next-highest combined bills in England, the figure is around ยฃ600m lower. It is a staggering difference. Since 2009-10 (the first season the charges relate to), the Premier League has dished out more than ยฃ6bn in merit payments to 42 different clubs. City received ยฃ559.6m (9%). They have played in the Champions League every year from 2011-12 onwards, achieving qualification in eight of the nine years the charges spanned. Such qualification naturally means others missed out. On that particular measure, Tottenham Hotspur were worst hit, landing one spot outside of the Champions League on four occasions during that spell. Their Europa League earnings from those occasions totalled a combined ยฃ28.8million; City made ยฃ141m from the Champions League in the same seasons. It is not just those fighting for titles or European spots who may feel theyโve missed out. What of the beaten cup finalists? What of the clubs who might have avoided relegation if Cityโs results were scrubbed out? ๐ @CWeatherspoon_ https://t.co/dn2EFw7AUp
- Sep 6, 202633x their median
"Don't do that." Morgan Rogers was less than impressed with his England team-mate Declan Rice after he tripped him off the ball. The Chelsea man was the only one booked as referee Chris Kavanagh missed the incident. Rogers was substituted shortly after. ๐ https://t.co/DPypJQQLXz
- Oct 10, 202628x their median
It took Bruno Fernandes 23 minutes to complete his first pass against Tottenham Hotspur โ that's the longest he has ever had to wait to find a teammate in his Premier League career. (Stat: @ThomHarris_) https://t.co/InJLlpV06n https://t.co/WUyLXHUfgv
- Aug 27, 202626x their median
Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher has been the subject of a bankruptcy petition filed by His Majestyโs Revenue and Customs (HMRC) over an unpaid tax bill. More from @PJBuckingham https://t.co/vihbppB1YA
- Oct 11, 202623x their median
Manchester City supporters have been able to sneak their inflatable bananas into the away end at Anfield this afternoon. It has been a trend at City since the 1987-88 season when they had been relegated to the second tier. They had a striker called Imre Varadi, who was called Imre Banana by one fan. That led another fan to bring an inflatable banana with him to the next game and it was a trend that stuck throughout the rest of the 80s and the 90s. The travelling City fans are clearly trying to have a bit of fun in the face of discussion about a potential relegation back to the second tier, or lower. ๐ https://t.co/ES569iXPvc
- Sep 16, 202622x their median
Erling Haaland has been offside 25 times in four years of Premier League football. That is once every five games, 76 behind top-of-the-table Dominic Calvert-Lewin and fewer times per 90 minutes than full-backs Riccardo Calafiori, Andy Robertson and Pervis Estupinan. He was not caught offside once in five games at the World Cup. It is all the more remarkable given that, since 2022, only four other Premier League players have made more runs in behind opposition defences. He views this as a badge of honour, but how does he do it? ๐ @SamLee ๐ https://t.co/YAgh2c9NFD
Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.
Recurring topics
The most frequent hashtags in the sampled posts. They describe what this account writes about; they are not a performance signal, and the catalog-wide breakdown on the hub shows how little hashtag count moves.
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Reading these numbers
A typical post picks up 376 interactions against 1.3M followers, an engagement rate of 0.029%. Posts are seen about 55K times each, and 0.683% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 4.31% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 29.9 posts a day over the last 30 days, with activity on almost every day in the window. Most posts go out around 20:00 UTC, and Sunday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 621 posts sampled, 80% carry an image or video and 74% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 27K interactions, about 71x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #mufc, #nufc, #avfc.
- What is The Athletic | Football's engagement rate on X?
- The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) has an engagement rate of 0.029%, based on the median interactions across 621 original posts from the last 30 days against 1,277,540 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At 0.029%, The Athletic | Football sits above the 25th percentile of the 205,261 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
- Does @TheAthleticFC have real engagement?
- There is not yet enough sample to rank this account against others of its size.
- When does @TheAthleticFC post?
- Most posts go out around 20:00 UTC, and Sunday is its busiest day, at roughly 29.9 posts per day across the measured window.