Who are the smallest "big club"?

I would give Olympique de Marseille a shout. The first (and only French) CL winner, that stadium, the fans, the history, the aura it still has ... but if you look at how their recent teams have looked and their results.

Marseille are too big. Thinking about it more carefully, the smallest is probably a club like Anderlecht or Dynamo Kiev.
 
Arsenal, Dortmund and Napoli.
 
Aren't your Knicks the biggest NBA franchise? While the Lakers are the most successful?

Or is it Golden State, based on value? I know that the Lakers aren't at the top either in terms of market value or franchise.

I honestly wouldn't know. And if I knew, and brought it up as a bragging point I'd be laughed out the shooting range or some other place where Yanks hang out
 
Schalke perhaps. top 15 in terms of value on those Forbes lists not so long ago. always among clubs with the most registered members, with almost 200 000 members. for what? they're close to being dissolved than winning anything ever again.
 
That's because basketball is an individual sport masking as a team sport and fans brag about hall of fame entries and stats. Americans are obsessed with individual stats and menial records like "this is the first time they've scored less than two touchdowns in the first 2Q on a Thursday night in over 2 years".
Yep, and great peril is removed from the sport. Complete failure is rare because of the franchise system and lack of relegation. I think they also have salary caps. It arguably doesn't matter if one team is bigger than the next really. In football it is different because being the bigger club can have an impact on various aspects of the game.
 
Oh, it is Tottenham, without any doubt.

Haven't won the Champions League/European Cup ever, and their last major trophy, which was the second and last of a whopping sum total of two major titles, was nearly 65 years ago!

How they've managed to regularly flood the press with the narrative that they are one of the "top six" sides in England is English football's greatest scandal of the century.
 
Schalke perhaps. top 15 in terms of value on those Forbes lists not so long ago. always among clubs with the most registered members, with almost 200 000 members. for what? they're close to being dissolved than winning anything ever again.
That’s a brilliant shout, HSV being another contender from Germany with a huge following, lots of history having won the lot, but being a laughing stock for close to a decade now.

The first one to come to mind though were Tottenham and Arsenal, further Benfica. At least – in comparison to Tottenham and a lesser extent Arsenal – they have enjoyed domestic success, though without being able to break their international curse.
 
I misunderstood the OP. I was replying to ""the smallest "supposedly" big club""
 
Liverpool for me, i was born in 1998 and growing up they was completely irrelevant, it was all about chelsea and arsenal back then from a united perspective. That feeling has never left me tbh, they never really seemed like a big club. They seem to have got alot of new fans post 2018 aswell who think they are some sort of powerhouse on the scale of madrid and united.
 
I'll never understand Europeans' obsessions with the size of a club

"The Lakers are the biggest NBA team/franchise"... like, so?

Seems obvious.

US sport has salary caps, there's only so much you can spend and the teams are relatively close in how much they do spend. Having a larger fan base, stadium or flogging more merchandise doesn't equate to being able to spend past the limit of the cap. All it does is make extra money for the owners.

European football doesn't have salary caps, teams can spend whatever they generate with no limits so being bigger/having more fans really matters. It's very important that a football club is big, it gives you a competetive advantage.

Due to the jeapordy of promotion/relegation clubs can grow or decline at much greater rate than they can with the US franchise system. Seeing as non-league is within the same eco-system as the Premier League there are huge differences between the teams that are ultimately all competing with each other that isn't present in the US.

There are some PL clubs who are big enough that it means they are very unlikely to ever be relegated with the current state of affairs so that's important to the fans. Fans of other PL teams might not be able to say that but might think the lowest they could ever drop to is the Championship or League One. That's still a nice safety net to have. Meanwhile Luton were in non-league at one point not too long ago, they wouldn't have been if they were a huge club. Oldham went from Premier League to non-league, not happening if they had a large worldwide fanbase or a bigger domestic one either.
 
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