Ozzie Sport

There are only two fans of the team on bebo, so this almost doesn’t deserve a post of its own.  Nonetheless, it gets one.  The Fitzroy Lions were one of the original teams in the Victoria Football League.  In 1996, they merged with the Brisbane Bears to become the Brisbane Lions.  Through a series of events, the Fitzroy Football Club replaced their mascot, the Lion, merged with the University Reds and became known as the Fitzroy Reds and now play in the Victorian Amateur Football Association.  That history explains why the Fitzroy Lions have a message board dedicated to them on Yahoo!Groups that dates back 2000. Of the two fans on bebo, only one lists profile information: Male, 45 and from Perth, Western Australia.

As their incarnation as the Fitzroy Reds, they lack fans listing them as an interest on bebo, all LiveJournal clones, blogger. There are no Yahoo!Groups dedicated to the team.  The only place where they have a some one listing them as an interest on LiveJournal.  That person has not updated in 213 weeks and is from Melbourne.

People appear uninterested in defunct teams or small, amateur teams of which the Fitzroy Lions are both.

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I’m slowly trying to get through bebo, like I went through blogger.  I didn’t do these communities earlier because on the whole, bebo communities are bigger.  (I’m putting off LiveJournal even longer because they are about the same size as bebo and each individual profile needs to be viewed get year of birth and location.)  This posts looks at the people who list the Canberra Raiders as an interest on bebo.  The Raiders are National Rugby League team that were founded in 1982. On bebo, 83 people list the team as an interest.

Of these 83,  11 are female (13%), 51 are male (61%) and 21  do not list a gender (25%).   44 list their age.  They have an average age of 23.38, median age of 21 and mode of 19.  This is about 10 years younger than their counterparts on blogger where 5 people list their age for a 34 and median age of 32.5.  (This supports and argument made earlier that there may be age related factors for where a team’s fans congregate.)

46 of the 83 list their place of residence.  Most Raiders fans are Australian, with 42 from the country.  In addition, there are 3 fans from New Zealand and 1 from the United Kingdom. 41 of the 42 Australians list a location where their state of residence can be figured out.  20 are from New South Wales, 10 are from the ACT where the Raiders are based, 9 are from Queensland, 1 is from Victoria and 1 is from Western Australia. The 10 people from the ACT are the largest total following of any team on any network that I have examined so far.  The second closest total is 5 for the Cronulla Sharks on LiveJournal.  Of the 20 from New South Wales, several are from towns outside Sydney where they might do not have an NRL team.  They include one person each from  Batemans Bay, Dubbo, Gilgandra, Harden, Tullibigeal and Stockton, and two from Tumut.  That representation inside New South Wales lends a bit more of a regional feel than if just the ACT is looked at though that much (17 total if Stockon, north of Sydney, is ignored).  The problem with the ACT is the population tends to sometimes view itself as more transient than in other parts of the country.  This could imply that the team should have a wider fan base as people take their love of the team with them when they leave… or more narrow as people who are fans only become fans and only maintain their fannishness for a team while they live in the ACT.  It is hard to tell.

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In 1999, the Western Suburbs Magpies and Balmain Tigers merged to become the Wests Tigers in the NRL.   The Western Suburbs Magpies are still around under that name for a number of rugby competitions outside that the NRL.   There is a small fan community dedicated to the team on bebo, with five people listing them as an interest.

Of these five, only two list their ages: 21 and 25. That puts their median and average age at 23.  As the NRL team is defunct, these fans would have been rather young to have developed loyalties to the team that would make them hold them all these years younger.  It feels like a safer assumption that these fans are ones who follow the New South Wales Cup team.

Or not.  There are three people who list their location.  Of these, two are from New South Wales, Australia and one is from Auckland, New Zealand.  The presence of the Kiwi is hard to explain if most of these fans are ones who are cheering for the club’s teams in regional rugby competitions.

All five list their gender, with three identifying as male and two identifying as female.  The proportion of females is rather high compared to some teams looked at in earlier posts.  I’m not sure why this would be the case with this defunct NRL team.

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The Sydney based Balmain Tigers were part of the National Rugby League and their predecessor, the New South Wales Rugby League.  The team folded in 1999, when they merged with the Western Suburbs Magpies to form the Wests Tigers.  According to Roy Morgan Research, the Wests Tigers are the sixth most popular NRL team in Australia.  This could go a long way towards explaining the comparably large size of the Balmain Tigers fandom on bebo, when compared to other defunct teams such as Gold Coast Chargers, Gold Coast Giants, Gold Coast Seagulls, Illawarra Steelers, Newcastle Rebels, Newtown Jets, North Sydney Bears, Perth Reds, St. George Dragons, Western Reds, and Western Suburbs Magpies.

The number of people listing the Balmain Tigers as an interest on bebo is 11.  The only defunct team with more is St. George Dragons, which has the problem of picking up the current merged name for the St. George Dragons and Illawarra Steelers.  The Newtown Jets as close with 10 people.

The community listing the team as an interest on bebo is mostly male at 64%, with 7 people identifying as male, 3 as female and 1 not identifying.   For Sydney based teams where there are more than 10 fans, Sydney FC and the West Tigers both have a large male audience with 78 and 70% respectively.  (No other Sydney based team so far has more than 10 fans where gender data is available.)   For NRL teams with 10 or more people listing a team as an interest where I have data (see older posts), with the exception of the West Tigers, the other teams all have smaller male audiences: Brisbane Broncos on bebo with 40% male (and 30% unidentified), and Brisbane Broncos on blogger with 58% male.

Only seven of the eleven list their location so that their state and country can be identified.  Of these seven, all are from New South Wales and Australia.

Balmain Tigers fans are older than other NRL and Sydney based teams for which I have data.  Their average age, amongst the five who list their age, is 40.4 with a median age of 43.   For the both categories, the next closest community in age is the Parramatta Eels one on blogger, with an average age of 35.8 and five people listing their age.

The defunct Balmain Tigers have their fans who refuse to give up on their loyalty. Based on bebo, we can guess that they are older, male and local to where the team played.  If there were international fans of a team 10 years gone, those international fans aren’t as interested in expressing their interest in the team.  These patterns make some sense, especially if you factor in the potential for their to be rugby and NRL historians in there.  New South Wales is a base for the sport and the NRL with its major population center.  If there were other fans outside the original core, they would probably be based there.

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Adelaide United are a team in the A-League and are based in Adelaide, South Australia.  There are 75 people who list Adelaide United as an interest on bebo.   This puts them at about the middle of the pack for number of fans, if they had been in the AFL.  One of the rather unique characteristics of this community compared to some of the other sites we’ve looked at is that group membership is far larger than the number of people listing the team as an interest.

On bebo, 43 or 57% of the fans do not list a gender.   Of the rest, 26 or 35% identify as male and 6 or 8% identify as female.  The huge number of people who do not list gender make it hard to compare to other A-League teams where we have gender related data.   Only the Wellington Phoenix community on blogger comes close with unknown gender, and that’s with 33% with gender not listed.  For Adelaide based teams where we have data, the Adelaide Thunderbirds have 50% with gender unlisted but the community size is two.

There are 18 people who list their age.   Of these, the average age is 20.1, median age is 19 and mode is 20.  This makes them younger than the Adelaide United, Melbourne Victory, Newcastle Jets, Perth Glory, Sydney FC, Wellington Phoenix communities on blogger.  The team closest in age to them is the Melbourne Victory community on blogger, with an average age of 22.8 based on a population of seven.   The next closet community is the Adelaide United community on blogger, at 26 and a population of two.  That’s a difference of almost six years.  (Some of this likely attributed to the fact that bebo tends to skew to a younger audience than blogger.)   The Adelaide team based community is a bit younger than United, but some of this is because the population size is one: Adelaide Thunderbirds on blogger has one fan who is 18 years old and Port Adelaide Power on blogger has one fan who is 15.

The community is overwhelming based in Australia, with 21 of the 75 people listing their country being from the country. No other countries are represented.   This contrasts a bit with the Adelaide United community on blogger, where one person is from China.   This Australian community is also overwhelming from the state that the team plays in, with 19 of the 20 people listing a state being from South Australia.  The other one is from Western Australia.   Of the South Australians, a few are from outside Adelaide with one person each from Barmera, Hallett Cove, and Roseworthy.  This pattern of loyalties for a team being very regional, to the state, is one that exists across the A-League where I have data from blogger.  This may be partially a result of the league not having aged enough for people to take their loyalties with them as they move, or a lack of stars moving from team to team with fans taking their player loyalty with them.

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I’ve finished tallying the number of fans by team for blogger.  The following chart is sorted by most popular teams first, least popular teams last.

Australian Sports Fandom on Blogger

What I didn’t find all that surprising was the dominance of AFL teams at the top.   They have eight of the twelve spots for teams with double digit fans on their service.   Of the remaining four spots, two are for the A-League and two are for the NRL.  The presence of the A-League feels a bit surprising as I didn’t think that soccer was that popular in Australia, at least compared to the NRL.  I do recall a fair amount of advertising for the A-League and they are beginning to build more soccer purpose built stadiums in Australia.

For the 28 teams with 1 to 9 fans, all are from the NRL, AFL or A-League with the exception of the Melbourne Phoenix  who played in the Commonwealth Bank Trophy.  I am a bit surprised that some of the more popular netball teams on Facebook, Twitter and bebo didn’t make the list for blogger.   I’m not surprised that other leagues didn’t make the list as most of these leagues are for secondary sports.

There are 227 total listings for people who list a team as an interest.  (There may be duplicates, where a person lists more than one team as an interest.)  Of the population, 144 or 63% identify themselves as male, 63 or 28% identify themselves as female and 20 or 9% do not identify a gender.  This feels in line with how sports fandom tends to be depicted when looked at by gender: Male dominant but with a growing female demographic.

Of the 227, only 154 listed their birthdate and had their astrological sign displayed.   The distribution amongst various astrological signs is pretty even with the smallest representation at 7 or 5% for Taurus and the largest at 17 or 11% for Pisces.   The distribution for specific teams is much less even, but much of this can be attributed to the small sample size.

142 of he 227 list their age when problematic ages, like 253, are removed.  The oldest fans are those for the Richmond Tigers, who average 41.6 years.  This community is small though, with only three people listing their age.  The Parramatta Eels have the oldest average age for a team with five or more people who list their age.  Their average age is 35.8.   The NRL and AFL are evenly distributed for teams with the oldest fans.  Penrith Panthers has the youngest average fan age at 18, but the population size is only one.  For a team with five or more people listing them as an interest, the Melbourne Victory win with an average age of  22.8.

167 fans list an Australian state of residence.  (There may be more Australian in this sample but they don’t necessarily list their state.)   The most popular state for sports fans on blogger listing an Australian team as an interest in New South Wales, with 62 people.  Victoria is second with 43.   Queensland is third with 28.  Western Australia is fourth with 15.  South Australia is fifth with 11.  The ACT has 5, Tasmania has 2 and the Northern Territory has 1.  In the ACT, the most popular team is the Brisbane Lions with 2 fans.  In New South Wales, Syndey FC is the most popular team with 16 fans.  The Roosters are the second most popular with 7 fans, which is a pretty big difference between the most popular and second most popular teams.  The Collingwood Magpies are the most popular team in the Northern Territory with 1 fan.  The Brisbane Lions are the most popular team in Queensland with 7 fans.  The Broncos are the second most popular with 4 fans.  The Adelaide Crows are the most popular team in South Australia with 8 fans.  The only other team listed as an interest by people listing the state as their place of residence were Adelaide United of the A-League.  No NRL team interested people from that state.  From Tasmania, 1 person listed the Geelong Cats as an interest and 1 person listed the Richmond Tigers as an interest.  In Victoria, the Collingwood Magpies were the most popular team with 12 people listing them as an interest.  The second most popular team with 7 fans was Melbourne Victory.  In Western Australia, there are two most popular teams: Fremantle Dockers and Perth Glory with 5 fans each. There is no second most popular team.  The other five people from the state evenly distribute their interest with one fan for five teams.  I don’t feel well enough informed at this point to know if this reflects on existing regional sports fandom patterns.

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The New South Wales Swifts were originally the Sydney Swifts and part of the Commonwealth Bank Trophy.  When the event change and became the ANZ Championship and became more of a state versus state netball competition, the team’s name change.  The team names are used interchangably here depending on the original usage.

The team has been discussed in an earlier post about the size of the ANZ Championship community on Twitter.  This post will look into the specific community dedicated to the New South Wales Swifts on LiveJournal, bebo and Yahoo!Groups.

There is one group dedicated to the Sydney Swifts on Yahoo!Groups.  It was created on May 16, 2001 and currently has 50 members.  The group has been neglected and been the subject of spam starting in 2005.  Prior to that, discussion on the list had ended in March 2002 (with the admin having deleted three spam e-mails in November 2003).  There were 84 legitimate posts to the list in this period.  Graphing it, the posting volume looks like:

This posting pattern is similar to that of the some of the less active AFL teams on Yahoo!Groups.  I joined the list to find out membership demographic information.  Only eleven of the current members joined when there was active posting to the list.  Ten people joined in the period with no posting, and the other 29 joined during periods of active spamming.   Of the 50, only four listed their demographic information.  When the list was active, the person who listed their age has 21, female and Australian.  After the period of active spam, the three people listing demographic information were all male and older.  Of the two who listed their country of residence, neither listed Australia.    (For the totals on Yahoo!Groups on my chart, this will listed at 50, despite the the fact that  only 21 or so are probably legitimately interested in the team.  At the moment, I do not have the time and ability to join every team related mailing list to determine who is and is not a legitimate poster based on join date.)

On LiveJournal, there are two people who list the Sydney Swifts as an interest and zero who list the New South Wales Swifts as an interest.  Of the two, one updated a week ago, is 22 and from New South Wales.  The other has not updated in 162 weeks and does not list a country of residence.

There are four people who list the Sydney Swifts as an interest on bebo and zero who list the New South Wales Swifts as an interest.  Only one lists their age, 20.  The other three list their location and all are based i New South Wales.

The community on Twitter is the largest, with 90 people following the official team account.  Facebook, surprisingly, has no one listing the team as an interest.  Yahoo!Groups probably legitimately had the second largest following with 21 if we only count back in the day.  The fact that bebo and LiveJournal both have bigger interest than Facebook is also surprising.

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This post looks at the size of the Wests Tigers community on blogger.  The Wests Tigers are a Sydney based National Rugby League team.  The team is relatively new, having been founded in 2000 as a merger of the Balmain Tigers and the Western Suburbs Magpies.

So far, the only other NRL team on blogger that has been looked at is the Brisbane Broncos.  That team has 12 people who listed them as an interest.  In comparison, the Wests Tigers have ten people who list them as an interest.  That they are so close is a bit surprising as Roy Morgan Research indicates that the fanbase for the Wests Tigers is substantially smaller than that of the Broncos.

Of the ten West Tigers fans, seven are from Australia, one from New Zealand, one from the United Kingdom and one who does not identify their country of origin.  Compared to other NRL teams, the percentage of Australians is low: 100% of Brisbane Broncos fans on blogger and Dreamwidth are all Australian, 100% of Melbourne Storm fans on LiveJournal are Australians, 85.7% of Canterbury Bulldogs fans on LiveJournal are Australian, 81.1% of Broncos fans on LiveJournal are Australian.  Of the networks and teams sampled, only the Broncos community on bebo has a smaller percentage, 71.1%, of Australians.

Of the Australians, three are from Queensland and three are from New South Wales.  This makes as these states are strong holds of Rugby League.  Added to that, Melbourne and Sydney have traditionally had a rivalry so you wouldn’t necessary expect a Victorian fan population.

The astrological sign data is really interesting and would be more interesting if it the samples were larger to see if some sort of statement could be made about a team’s fanbase.  That said, six people list their date of birth for Blogger to calculate their astrological sign.  Three are Leos, and with one person being a Cancer, Capricorn and Pisces.

Seven of the ten fans list their age, with two of these being obviously incorrect; a person cannot be 253 years old.   If those two are ignored, the average age of a Wests Tigers fan on blogger is 28.8 and a median age of 22.  This average makes the team’s fans older than some of the other NRL team fans on networks that I’ve looked at including Broncos fans on bebo and LiveJournal,  Canterbury Bulldogs fans on LiveJournal and Melbourne Storm fans on LiveJournal.  The only team and network with a higher average is the Broncos community on blogger.  The above average age compared to other fan populations may end up being a result of people self selecting networks based on age: the youngest fans prefer bebo, fans in their mid 20s prefer LiveJournal and older fans prefer blogging.  As we age or as a result of a generational gap, we might prefer going from shorter method of communicating to a longer one.

Seven people list their gender as male, two as female and one does not identify their gender.  This is higher percentage of male fans than  the Broncos on either bebo or blogger.

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If you’re new to this blog, the categorization and tagging scheme might be a bit confusing.  I’ve tried to be consistent so the following patterns should hole true:

• The primary team and network that are the focus of a post will be listed in that category: Melbourne Victory on Blogger is categorized as Melbourne Victory and Blogger.
• Teams, leagues and networks mentioned in a post will be tagged.  Because Melbourne Victory on Blogger mentions the Brisbane Bullets, the post is tagged with Brisbane Bullets.

If you have any questions about this scheme, please comment or e-mail me to ask.

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Based on the somewhat data I have so far from Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and its clones, blogger and bebo, the Melbourne Victory are one of the most popular teams in Australia.  They are only behind Collingwood Magpies, Carlton Blues, and the  Queensland Maroons.  A lot of this is attributed to the 46,620 people who list the team as an interest on Facebook and 1,432 people following the team on Twitter.

So far, only 28 teams have been looked at on blogger and here, the Victory fall in the middle of the pack with only 11 people listing them as an interest.  Most of the sampling on the network has involved the AFL and Queensland based teams.  Teams ahead of the Victory include Sydney Swans, Collingwood Magpies, West Coast Eagles, Adelaide Crows, Brisbane Broncos, Brisbane Lions, Geelong Cats, and the Western Bulldogs.

What does this small community look like?  Of the eleven, nine list their country of residence.   Of these nine, eight are Australians and one is likely an Australian who is currently traveling the United States.   Of the nine Australians, seven list their state of origin and they are all from Victoria, six listing Melbourne as their home and one listing St. Kilda as theirs.  This is a team that draws, at least on blogger, from where it is based and does not have a larger, national following.

Seven people list their age.  For mean, median and mode, age is the same: 22.  This is a relatively young fan community, especially when compared to a few of the AFL team communities on blogger.  The community is also a more likely to be male with 6 people identifying as male, 3 identifying as female and 2 not identifying.  Between the Adelaide Crows, Brisbane Broncos, Brisbane Bullets, Brisbane Lions, Carlton Blues, Collingwood Magpies, Essendon Bombers, Fremantle Dockers, Geelong Cats, Hawthorn Hawks, Melbourne Demons, and North Melbourne Kangaroos communities, only the Carlton Blues, Collingwood Magpies and Geelong Cats communities have a smaller female fanbase.

It will be interesting to see how this community eventually compares to other A-League teams on the network.

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