Savage’s ‘fake’ army of Twitter followers
THERE have been unsubstantiated claims on social media that three well-known football broadcasters allegedly have more than a million fake Twitter followers between them.
Robbie Savage, a pundit for the BBC and BT Sport who will be with 5 Live at the World Cup, is said to have an extraordinary 694,641 fakes among his 1.7m followers, according to Twitter Audit. The website is independent from Twitter and offers free or paid-for scans of users’ followers.
BT Sport football presenter Jake Humphrey is reported to have 318,207 fakes out of his 927,000 followers. And BBC Breakfast and Football Focus anchor Dan Walker, who is also part of the Beeb’s 2018 World Cup team, reportedly has 127,069 fakes among his 505,000 followers.
Spokeswomen for BBC and BT Sport said the three broadcasters had personal Twitter accounts that were nothing to do with the TV networks.
But the trio all highlight their TV jobs on their accounts and regularly comment about them. Plus their large following would have helped to attract outside commercial work.
The Twitter Audit probe comes after Paul Hollywood, judge on The Great British Bake Off, deleted his Twitter account after a New York
Times investigation found his name on a list of customers of little known US company Devumi, which sells Twitter followers.
There is no evidence that any of the three football figures have ever bought followers and all deny ever doing so either personally or through their representatives.
ENGLAND manager Gareth Southgate, who surprisingly has allowed his World Cup players carte blanche to go on long-haul holidays, may not have any worries about Harry Kane playing golf in Bermuda. But can he say the same about Dele Alli (right) taking a private jet somewhere on Monday?
THE BBC pundit line-up for the World Cup, which includes stellar trio Alan Shearer, Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard, looks marginally stronger than the ITV top three of Gary Neville, Roy Keane and Ryan Giggs, which suffers from being too Manchester United-centric.
Plus BBC host Gary Lineker, provided he doesn’t lose the plot with his crass political comments on social media, can add his views to the mix.
However, some serious John Motson- style global football homework is needed as the Beeb quartet were surprisingly flummoxed when Gabby Logan, asking the questions at the BBC launch yesterday, asked for some players who will emerge in Russia. Two that were given — Kylian Mbappe and Leroy Sane — are not exactly unknowns.
RIO FERDINAND is such an accomplished media operator that he would have known exactly what he was doing in shamelessly plugging Michael Keane for Gareth Southgate’s World Cup squad at the BBC launch when the Everton defender is represented by Ferdinand’s own New Era Global Sports Agency.