Adapting to an international audience
Traditionally, companies/teams/brands communicate on their Twitter account in the language native to where the brand is located. While exploring Twitter, I found that some teams had additional accounts where they tweeted in other languages. FC Barcelona and Real Madrid both have accounts in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Japan. FC Barcelona also has accounts in Catalan (their native language), Portuguese, Indonesian, and Turkish. This makes being a supporter of FC Barcelona effortlessly possible for people who speak any of the 9 mentioned languages. I then looked at the profiles of teams in MLS. All of the teams, for the exception of Impact de Montréal, only tweeted in English. Montréal only uses one Twitter account, but tweets in French and English. Unsurprisingly, the teams which tweet in multiple languages have a larger following. I question if these teams did not make their team/brand as accessible to international fans, if those fans would be forced to watch teams in their home country (and in their native language). Would they would still find another way around the language barrier, rather than support their native teams?