Comments on: Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom

By: LauraH

LauraH — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 08:04:43 +0000

Have never tried AppData. The thing with some social networking sites is there are often more than one way of measuring things. For LiveJournal, you can do community membership or interest listings. I've done interest listing because there aren't communities comparable to Twilight. Facebook, you can use app data, fan page membership or interests. I've just been using interests because I can get that easily from http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ and I don't have to worry about competing applications or fanpages. (And getting data out of fanpages isn't easy as I understand it. You need the owner to give it to you. I could be wrong about that though.)

http://www.fanhistory.com/img/2/29/NRL_on_Faceb... is the updated stats I have for Facebook with the full NRL listings. I haven't gotten Twitter data yet because I haven't gone to look at that and I like to run the country demographics from the one Twitter tool at the same time. 17,020 is what I got for the Melbourne Storm from the Facebook ad listing. I have the Eels at 21,400 and the Roosters at 10,660.

By: Adelaide Dupont

Adelaide Dupont — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 07:33:54 +0000

There are 2 Melbourne teams in netball. Or rather there were until very recently. They were the Phoenix and the Kestrels.

The team is now the Melbourne Vixens, and the netball is interesting, because there is a New Zealand team, like there is in soccer (Wellington).

Perhaps female teams aren't that big, but what about softball?

I would be very curious about rapleaf too.

(For Australia demographics in general, Roy Morgan is your friend. They generally do have publicly accessible information. So is the Australian Bureau of Statistics, especially for activities of recreational and sports).

Netball is a lot bigger, especially at the participatory level. It would be one of the most frequent sports played by women. Especially for state and country.

By: LauraH

LauraH — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 07:25:38 +0000

I would assume that they have a fair number of fans who aren't members who are fans who just tune in for games on television, etc. But yeah, the Facebook numbers were a bit surprising at over 40,000. When I was in Australia, I was told that the AFL wasn't as strong in New South Wales and Queensland, that the NRL dominated. Online, that isn't the impression that I'm left with at all.

I haven't really looked for Claxton Shield related teams beyond the Perth Heat. They cropped up when I was looking for sports teams from Perth for Facebook and on Twitter. I'm kind of just randomly pulling things from all over so not all teams from all leagues are getting represented as I compile data.

What I did kind of find surprising, and it wasn't but should have been included, was the netball teams. Outside of the netball teams on that list, none had any other people listing those teams as interests on Facebook. (I haven't looked at those teams on other networks.) I was under the impression that netball was a lot bigger. I'm just wondering if this is because possibly female sports teams aren't as big in Australia? The US professional women's leagues needed a lot of institutional support and being resurrected from the ashes. And our markets tend to be much bigger. Chicago metro has about 8 million people and the Chicago Sky appear to be barely holding on.)

As more teams are added and more networks are added, it will be interesting to see how things shake out. There are a lot of teams missing. (While I'm waiting for Yahoo!Groups to behave, I'm trying to get the LJ clone and Facebook data for NRL teams.)

Babbling. It is just interesting to look at. It also makes me curious about companies like http://www.rapleaf.com/ doing demographic research about fans... because they are giving demographic information for sites that isn't publicly accessible. (LiveJournal does NOT give gender. Lots of Facebook data is locked out unless you are the admin of a fan page or are friends with some one.)

By: Adelaide Dupont

Adelaide Dupont — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 07:25:25 +0000

And with Carlton-Collingwood, it doesn't seem to matter where those teams are on the ladder, whereas with the rugby teams, it does, except for the Brisbane Broncos, who are going to get a large audience anyway.

(And a third of the rugby teams does include the Melbourne Storm). Roughly how many Facebook followers and Twitter followers? I was able to find out the former, or at least surmise. 19,862 Facebook followers for the Storm site. Which is between the Eels and the Wests Tigers.

And AppData is telling me some interesting things.

By: Adelaide Dupont

Adelaide Dupont — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 07:12:32 +0000

Wow, that's actually a lot of Carlton/Collingwood supporters on Facebook, and probably a 10th of their memberships in real life (assuming they were all taken out this year).

And Perth Heat is probably one of the most popular baseball teams in Australia, at least as far as the Claxton Shield era. (I didn't see the Victoria Aces mentioned).

Ice hockey does have a minor popularity/interest in Australia. It has done that since at least 1996. I suspected The Mighty Ducks and its sequels.