Flamengo has the world's biggest club fan baseAssociated Press
Updated: February 27, 2008, 2:00 AM EST 19 comments RSS digg blog email print SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - Brazil's Flamengo has the biggest club fan base in the world, ahead of Mexican teams Chivas and America, a Brazilian magazine reported on Tuesday.
The five-time Brazilian champion has 32.6 million fans, according to the Web site of Mundo Estranho magazine.
Chivas has 30.8 million supporters, and America 26.4 million.
The magazine's report was based on individual surveys in Britain and 10 other countries: Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, France and the Netherlands.
The surveys were conducted by respected polling institutes in each of the countries and most analyzed figures from the past two years. Only Portugal had older numbers, from 2003.
The surveys did not take into consideration multinational fans, "like Chinese people who support Manchester United," the magazine said.
Brazil's Corinthians was fourth on the list with 23 million fans, followed by Argentina's Boca Juniors (16.4 million), Italy's Juventus (16.3 million), Brazil's Sao Paulo (15.3 million) and Italy's AC Milan (13.4 million).
Spain's Real Madrid and Argentina's River Plate came next with 13.2 million supporters each.