Chelsea Shirts Outsell Arsenal Shirts As Manchester United Top Charts

Chelsea have successfully managed to pip Arsenal to more trophies in recent years, so perhaps it is not a surprise that the west London club have been revealed to have sold more shirts than their London rivals in the last five years. 

The Blues have won five trophies - including the Champions League - since 2011 while, in the same period, Arsenal have secured two FA Cup titles which is likely to have affected, in part, the number of shirts sold by each club since that time.

 New research by Dr. Peter Rohlmann, which has been published by Sporting Intelligence, shows that Chelsea sold an average of 899,000 shirts per year between the period 2011/12 to 2015/16 - fifth in the world - while Arsenal sold 835,000 per year - seventh overall.

Manchester City's success in the Premier League in recent years has also been reflected by increasing shirt sales, with the club selling an average of 342,000 jerseys every year (13th in the world) while Tottenham come in 15th place with shirt sales of 268,000 during the five-year period.

Premier League clubs to sell 5m+ replica shirts in 2016-17 (By @AlexMiller73) https://t.co/QKguHMJYHu pic.twitter.com/nAcCy0FVA0

— sportingintelligence (@sportingintel) October 16, 2016

However, all of these clubs are trumped by Manchester United who top the table for shirt sales in the last five years with a figure of 1.75m per year - 1m more than second-placed Real Madrid (1.65m per year). Barcelona (1.278m) and Bayern Munich (1.2m) complete the top five in third and fourth place respectively.

Speaking about the research, Dr Rohlmann said: "Generally, the sales of replica shirts have increased at a constant growth rate.

 "Football jerseys are more popular than ever and their attractive designs increasingly mean fans want to wear them away from match days."