Supporters of Sporting CP
Sporting Clube de Portugal (Sporting CP) is a Portuguese sports club based in Lisbon and founded in 1906. Sporting CP have won 21 championships, 18 Taça de Portugal, 4 Taça da Liga, 9 Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira, 4 Campeonato de Portugal and 1 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in men's football, and through its athletics department was responsible, respectively, in 1984 and 1976, for Portugal's first Olympic gold and Olympic silver medals ever, as well as for other titles in other men's and women's sports, disciplines and competitions throughout its history. Being a multi-sports club, Sporting CP has described itself as Portugal's "biggest sporting powerhouse" (a maior potência desportiva nacional) due to the number of titles won by its teams and athletes in several sports and sport disciplines, including in the Olympic Games, where they do not represent the club.
The supporters of the club, who are called Sportinguistas, have played an important part in the club's growth during its 118-year existence. One of those cases was the raising of money for the construction of the club's first indoor arena in 1976 and the João Rocha Pavilion in 2016, when supporters donated money to pay the building works. The club has about 150,000 affiliated members (called sócios) and research studies have suggested it has a number of fans ranging from 1,100,000 to 2,700,000 in Portugal alone – which makes it the second or third most supported sports club in Portugal, depending on the study. Like the other two Portuguese Big Three sports clubs, Sporting CP has also a sizable number of foreign fans in other Portuguese-speaking countries beyond Portugal itself and supporters among the Portuguese expatriate community.
Since shortly after the foundation of the sports club in 1906, Sporting CP and its supporters have established official centres (núcleos), branches (filiais) or delegations (delegações) of the club across Portugal and abroad.
Organised autonomous groups of supporters (claques) also exist. Sporting has 4 ultras groups: Juventude Leonina, founded in 1976, Torcida Verde, founded in 1984, Directivo Ultras XXI, founded in 2002 and Brigada Ultras Sporting, founded in 2004.