England and Manchester United captain Wayne Rooney leads the way in the Home Nations football league table for social media followers.

The ranking has been compiled by Britain’s leading independent specialist sports PR and communications consultancy, Macesport, who manage the sponsorship activation for Vauxhall, the lead sponsor of Home Nations football.

It has been reported that Rooney has become the first UK athlete to pass 10 million followers on Twitter but it has not been widely acknowledged that he also tops the Home Nations football Facebook chart with 24.7 million fans.

The former Everton striker, who is fourth on the all-time England scoring chart with 41 goals, has amassed over 35 million fans across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Wales and Real Madrid star Gareth Bale is second in the overall ranking with almost 30 million social media fans.

Bale does list highest in the Instagram table by some distance, having built up a following of over 3.1 million on the online mobile photo sharing, video-sharing and social networking service.

The complete list includes 20 international players, who total 102.3 million fans.

Macesport, the sports PR company behind the first-ever Google+ Hangout with the four Home Nations managers and the launch of exclusive video Vauxhall Player Diaries across the Home Nations’ national teams, believe that the figures speak volumes about the impact of social media in modern day sport.

Macesport managing director Paul Mace said: “These figures demonstrate the huge influence and engagement footballers exert across all strands of social media and across the whole of society.

“In the coming years, we would expect to see these figures to continue to demonstrate substantial growth.

“Footballers – and sports athletes in general – are realising the huge potential which exists in social media for them to communicate directly in a fun and entertaining way.”

For full listings go to www.macesport.com