Archive for March 13th, 2010

Popularity of Australian sports leagues across various social networks

Posted by Laura on Saturday, 13 March, 2010

I’ve been checking the number of people who list a team as an interest across a number of social networks.  Yesterday, for networks where I had information on 215 teams I have on my list, I added together the number of people who listed a team as an interest in various leagues.  I got the following table.

League Total DW DJ JF IJ Blurty Inksome CrazyLife LiveJournal Blogger Facebook Twitter Gaia Online
AFL 266883 7 3 4 13 7 1 5 613 168 239480 26582 1
AFL Canberra 2 1 1
A-League 73559 90 44 69060 4363 2
ANZ Championship 2200 5 860 1335
Australia Athletics 83 83
Basketball Australia 326 326
Brisbane Netball Association 21 21
Claxton Shield 1615 1580 35
Commonwealth Bank Trophy 3 2 1
First class cricket 34573 1 1 3 29 22400 12140
Gridiron Australia Nationals 66 66
NBL 7899 1 1 1 30 5 4220 3641
Netball Australia 1651 1580 71
Netball New South Wales 22 22
NRL 180242 7 7 2 8 411 78 167585 12138 6
NSW Premier League 316 1 4 311
Plenty Valley Netball Association 20 20
Rugby League/State of Origin 61519 1 1 18 61320 179
Super 14 49838 1 1 1 85 5 37460 12284 1
VFL 208 3 1 204
Victorian Amateur Football Association 1 1
WNBL 38 9 29
Women’s Flat Track Derby Association 760 760

Interesting to see what networks have what populations.  The WNBL is only really an interest on 2 networks while the AFL is present on every network.  These networks all have different population sizes so total numbers is really apple to oranges in some ways.  I then decided to rank the leagues by how popular they were on each network.  The most popular league ranks 1, the next most popular league ranks 2.  If there is a tie, they share the same rank.  The results of that are in the following table:

League Blogger Blurty Crazy
Life
Dreamwidth Dead
Journal
Facebook Gaia Online Inksome Insane
Journal
Journal
Fen
Inksome Live
Journal
Twitter Average
rank
Total people
AFL 1 2 1 1 2 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1.30 266884
NRL 2 1 1 1 2 1 2 2 4 1.77 180242
First class cricket 3 2 6 1 1 6 3 3.14 34574
A-League 3 3 2 3 5 3.2 73559
Super 14 4 3 3 3 5 3 4 2 3.37 49838
NBL 4 3 3 3 7 5 6 4.42 7899
Rugby League/State of Origin 3 4 2 7 11 5.4 61519
NSW Premier League 3 10 9 7.33 316
AFL Canberra 2 13 7.5 2
Basketball Australia 8 8 326
ANZ Championship 10 9 7 8.66 2200
Commonwealth Bank Trophy 6 12 9 3
VFL 6 11 10 9 208
Netball Australia 8 13 10.5 1651
Women’s Flat Track Derby Association 11 11 760
WNBL 8 16 12 38
Claxton Shield 9 15 12 1615
Australia Athletics 12 12 83
Victorian Amateur Football Association 13 13 1
Gridiron Australia Nationals 14 14 66
Netball New South Wales 17 17 22
Brisbane Netball Association 18 18 21
Plenty Valley Netball Association 19 19 20

This table is a bit more interesting.  Across most networks, the AFL is the most popular league.  The NRL is the second most popular league.  First class cricket, compromising state cricket teams, is the third most popular.  The A-League and Super 14 are close behind.  When you get down near the bottom, patterns become interesting.  The WNBL is not as popular as Women’s Flat Track Derby Association.  This is largely a result of the large number of fans on Facebook.  AFL Canberra is also more popular than the VFL.  This is because of the high rank on JournalFen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attendance_figures_at_domestic_professional_sports_leagues lists the attendance by league for six Australian sports leagues in 2009.  I cannot find a better list of attendance data for Australian sports league, especially the minor leagues.  That makes the rest of this analysis a bit problematic but moving forward anyway… This data is then put into the following table:

League Average rank Total people Total attendance 2009 Average attendance 2009
AFL 1.30 266884 6370350 36195
NRL 1.77 180242 3084481 16065
Super 14 3.2 49838 2021376 21504
A-League 3.37 73559 1166966 12966
NBL 3.14 7899 644976 3665
First class cricket 4.42 34574 308590 18153

For total number of people attending during the course of a season, it certainly seems to track with the average league rank on the social networks in this sample.  Total people and total attendance seems to track some too.  I ran the correlation to confirm these observations:

Total attendance 2009 Average attendance 2009
Average rank -0.892632665 -0.511836009
Total people 0.949552518 0.769754845

Total attendance does correlate meaningfully.  Average attendance isn’t as meaningful but the correlation is still relatively strong.  There is a relationship there.

I’ve found that similar relationships exist with American baseball teams.  The issue of course is: Cause and effect.  Does high fan attendance lead to more fans listing their teams as an interest on social media? Or does becoming interested in a team on social media sites lead people to attending games?  It feels like the first but I have no evidence either way.

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