I looked at the most popular teams on Facebook for the AFL. Now it is time for the NRL. The following is based on the official Facebook pages that are linked on a team’s official site. If a team is not listed, it is because they did not provide a link to their official Facebook page or provided a bad link. This data was gathered on April 6, 2010.
Queensland Maroons – Queensland Maroons(Fan): 76,807
Brisbane Lions – Brisbane Broncos(Fan): 45,327
Gold Coast Titans – Gold Coast Titans(Fan): 18,032
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles – Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles(Fan): 14,895
Wests Tigers – Wests Tigers – Official National Rugby League Club(Fan): 14,078
Newcastle Knights – Newcastle Knights (Fan): 12,766
Sydney Roosters – The Official Sydney Roosters Page(Fan): 12,204
Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks – Cronulla Sharks(Fan): 9,502
Melbourne Storm – Storm Man(User): 3,203
Canberra Raiders – Canberra Raiders(User): 2,583
North Queensland Cowboys – North Queensland Toyota Cowboys(Fan): 2,428
New South Wales Blues – New South Wales Rugby League(Fan): 886
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The NRL could really learn a lesson from the AFL for Facebook. Having looked through most of the official sites to try to find official Facebook pages, I’ve made the following observations:
- The South Sydney Rabbitohs site links to the Facebook page for the Canberra Raiders.
- The St. George Illawarra Dragons and New Zealand Warriors sites links to Facebook.com, not to their fanpages.
- Several teams do not have Facebook fanpages.
- The Melbourne Storm and Canberra Raiders have user pages with limited public profiles.
- The Melbourne Storm user profile is for the team’s mascot.
These patterns suggest that the NRL is behind the ball with their use of social networking. Social networking is important tool for building a fanbase, selling merchandise, etc. There is a correlation between attendance at matches and the size of a team’s online social networking fan base. I’m not certain what factors lead to this and the variables could be totally independent but either way, they need to improve their fan engagement.
(The links were found on the NRL hosted team sites. These are not official team sites but are official NRL league pages.)
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