I’m going through my data to make sure I can easily find everything by league and city. Back on January 3, I collected data for the Perth Heat community on bebo and found 27 people who were interested in the team. If you are an Australian and don’t know who the Perth Heat are, that is understandable. The Perth based team competes in the Claxton Shield, Australia’s premiere baseball competition. The competition is a successor to the defunct Australian Baseball League.
Of the 27 people, 15 are female (56%), 11 are male (41%) and 1 does not list a gender (3%). This 50% female is unique on bebo, with the only other teams looked at so far having that percentage are the female New South Wales Swifts and Central Pulse. I don’t know enough about baseball in Australia to know why this is so. I might speculate that the bebo fans may be women related to or involved with men playing on the team. For Australian rules football in the United States, where the game is not a major one, a lot of the attendees and people interested in teams like the Chicago United, many of the fans are female and connected to the team in some way. That could account for it. It may also be something like American expats could be more female and looking for a local team to cheer for that reminds them of home.
The average age of the 19 fans who list their age is 26.5, median age is 27 and mode age is 29. Fans of the team aren’t that old and look a bit older than some other communities on bebo.
The Perth Heat have an international fanbase on bebo and Twitter:
Perth Heat on Bebo and Twitter
| Barbagallo Perth Heat | Barbagallo Perth Heat | |
|---|---|---|
| Country | bebo | |
| Australia | 7 | 32 |
| Ecuador | 0 | 12 |
| Ireland | 4 | 4 |
| Netherlands | 0 | 4 |
| New Zealand | 8 | 0 |
| United Kingdom | 2 | 0 |
| United States | 0 | 36 |
| Total | 21 | 88 |
| % Australia | 33% | 36% |
| % Ecuador | 0% | 14% |
| % Ireland | 19% | 5% |
| % Netherlands | 0% | 5% |
| % New Zealand | 38% | 0% |
| % United Kingdom | 10% | 0% |
| % United States | 0% | 41% |
When I originally did the Twitter table, I thought shenanigans were at play because of the large number of international fans. Given the bebo data, that Twitter data does not look as questionable.
On bebo,7 Australians identify their state of residence. (Or it can be easily figured out based on the city they live in.) Six are in Western Australia and one is in Tasmania. The Tasmanian is a bit surprising but otherwise, a regional team has a regional audience. Seems pretty logical.
Of all the networks looked at so far, the largest fanbase for this team is on Facebook with 800, then Twitter with 35 and bebo with 27. The other services like blogger, LiveJournal and its clones have no other fans. Bebo’s community is thus the smallest of the existing communities, but also the one with the most easily accessible demographic data.