Ozzie Sport

Sometimes, I make charts and I think they are just that pretty that I want to share. (mmm. Tasty data!) This is one of those charts and it offers an interesting comparison between two clubs, the league they are in and the national team for that sport. The clubs are the Canberra United, the Melbourne Victory, the W-League and the Matildas. The team pages generally get 1/2 to 1/5 the traffic of the league page. The league and national team both got about the same traffic. Then the Australian women win the AFC and the traffic to their page shoots right up. After that, the traffic to the national team page was about double that of the league that a lot of those players are drawn from. Club pages and league didn’t necessarily see a bump as a result though.  The implications for this are fascinating.  It could suggest that national team interest and support does not translate down to the local level.   Soccer seems to have pushed this idea: National team success in the US should help foster interest in the MLS and WPS, and it doesn’t always seem to be the case.  (Yes, not the same country, the Women’s World Cup isn’t going on, etc.  Still, interesting…)

Stats for this chart were gathered using stats.grok.se/ .

Related Posts:

• An interview with the CEO of the Canberra United
• Friendster and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport
• Blogger and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport
• BlackPlanet and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport

The second round came to an end and the third round is about to start.  My initial thinking was that as the tournament went on, you’d see more checkins at games.  My assumptions were that ticket prices would go up for later rounds, leading to a more affluent, social media connected audience attending these game.  I also assumed that the stadiums would be at capacity, where early first round games would not be. My assumption was South Africa would have the highest average checkins for all team, because of the home country advantage.  I also figured most of the teams left in would be big name team, which would have a wider audience than their own national base. I also thought that Foursquare would always beat Gowalla by a lot. I don’t quite know what I based these assumption on; it just felt like what I thought obvious patterns should be.

Some of these assumptions appeared to be a bit true.  Some of them not.  Appearing in the second round did not mean that a team climbed the ladder of total checkins.  Witness Japan, Paraguay, South Korea, Slovakia, Brazil and Germany who are averaging less than 50 checkins a game on Foursquare at the end of round 2.  Some of these are popular teams and they are all team who played in the second round.  Chile, Brazil, South Korea all appeared in the bottom 16 teams on Gowalla at the end of the second round.  South Africa wasn’t anywhere close to the top on Gowalla.  It should probably hold on to the top spot on Foursquare.  (Mexico has passed it though for total checkins.)  Patterns that I thought would emerge haven’t.

Anyway, on with the data…

Foursquare

Gowalla

Related Posts:

• World Cup, end of the first round: Foursquare and gowalla checkin totals
• World Cup, day 8: Foursquare and gowalla checkin totals
• World Cup, day 7: Gowalla checkin totals
• World Cup, day 7: Foursquare checkin totals