Manchester United "is akin to religion", the club's sporting director has claimed.

Richard Arnold said that in terms of social media engagement the premier league football club is bigger than any celebrity including names such as Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift and Barack Obama. He also said the club was on a par with religion.

"The level we are engaging at, to put it in context, is akin to religion," Arnold told the Web Summit 2016, in Lisbon, according to the Daily Mail.

"John Lennon was famously quoted as saying The Beatles were 'bigger than Jesus'.

"Whilst we wouldn't want to be disrespectful in that way, what you are seeing from a measurement point of view is that the level of engagement and fervour we get is on par with the world's major religions and those are the only things at the same level as Manchester United in terms of that interaction and engagement."

United's Facebook page has more than 71 million likes and upwards of 9 million followers on Twitter.

Despite not performing on the field in recent seasons, Arnold insisted the club had no rivals when it came to online engagement.

"We are on a different scale to other clubs in our league," he said. "We are also the biggest in the world at what we do across any sport and any team.

"Sport is one of the most engaging things in the world. Within that we are the most engaged."

He claimed the club had more than 650 million followers worldwide, saying "that's like two Americas that love the same team".

He added: "We just had our billionth interaction on Facebook.

"That's incredibly valuable because it allows us to gauge what fans like and allows us to adjust our behaviour going forward."