The Top 10 NBA teams with the most fake Twitter followers

Anyone who’s ever used Twitter before knows it has its fair share of fake accounts. In fact, according to estimates, nearly one in six Twitter accounts are fake. That also applies to each NBA team and their millions of followers.

That obviously leads to questions about just how many of those followers are fake. Better yet, which teams have the most fake followers? Thanks to the folks at gambling.com who used a tool developed by SparkToro, we have an answer to that specific question. Therefore, let’s take a look at the top 10 teams with the most fake Twitter followers.

10 NBA teams with the most fake Twitter followers:10-5

10. Raptors-1,053,508

9. Thunder 1,168,215

8. Rockets-1,255,483

7. Cavs-1,371,559

6. Spurs-1,465,471

The Raptors are well known for their fan base, but according to this data, they have been overrepresented on Twitter by more than 40%. Meanwhile, the Thunder had two MVPs and several deep playoff runs during the Twitter era, so it makes sense that one of the smallest markets in the NBA would have a million fake followers.

On the other hand, despite being considered a small market, Houston is the third-largest city in the country. One would think that they wouldn’t be in the top 10 for fake followers, yet they have 1.2 million of them. Go figure. The Cleveland Cavaliers are ranked sixth with nearly 1.4 million bot accounts, most of which are likely relics from the LeBron James era. Hopefully, now that the Cavs are back on track, they’ll be able to gain more followers, this time real ones.

As a Spurs fan, this one hurt but was not entirely surprising. While Spurs fans are surprisingly active on social media, they are one of just eight teams that have more than one million false accounts on Twitter.

It seems that the number of bot accounts does correspond with the popularity of each team, which is probably the reason why the Pistons have the lowest number of fake accounts. Anecdotally, at least, this list does confirm that the Spurs have one of the larger fan bases among NBA teams.

10 NBA teams with the most fake Twitter followers: The top-five

5. Celtics-1,645,427

4. Heat-1,892,912

3. Bulls-1,954,738

2. Warriors-3,629,863

1. Lakers-4,858,395

Kicking off the top five is the Boston Celtics, which is one of the most successful franchises in North American sports. That said, it is somewhat surprising to see them on this list based on that aforementioned success.

Next is their rival, the Miami Heat, who probably owe a lot of their 1.9 million false followers to their “Heatles” days but have managed to stay relevant since then. That time in the spotlight clearly grew their fan base, as well as the number of imitators. The Chicago Bulls have a devoted fan base that has seen its fair share of ups and downs. Despite Bulls Nation always being there, they have nearly two million fake accounts following them on Twitter.

The Golden State Warriors come in second on this list with an eye-popping 3.6 million fake followers on Twitter. Considering that they have a little over 8 million followers, they technically have the highest percentage of false accounts among NBA teams, proving that they are indeed light-years ahead of the competition on that front too.

Still, even if all of their false followers were deleted, they’d still rank as the second-most followed NBA team by a wide margin. That at least proves that they are among the most popular teams in the league.

If you ever thought that there were a bunch of obnoxious Lakers fans on Twitter, there probably are. However, 1.4 million of them are forgeries. That’s not to say that the Lakers don’t have arguably the largest fan base in the NBA; it’s just that there are much fewer of them than it seems. With so many fake followers, it inflates the number of Laker fans that are using the app and thus their influence.

All in all, it’s clear that there are plenty of fake NBA accounts, and that can skew the online conversation. Fortunately, it seems that Twitter’s new owner is committed to cleaning up those fake accounts, assuming he doesn’t drive all the real people off the app first.