Ozzie Sport

• Australian sport on Foursquare: Movers and shakers: Australian Tennis Open and Cricket Australia : bit.ly/gtEz8q #
• Any Canberran willing to put some one up during #rcc11 ? #
• Mapping most popular AFL team on Twitter by Australian electorate. NSW? Not expected results. #
• Is the lack of a larger Lions fanbase on twitter fault of team SM strategy or because fanbase is not on Twitter? #
• Twitter popularity of AFL teams by electorate : bit.ly/f6qZZU #afl #gosaints #essendon #gopies #collingwood #wce #gopower #auspol #
• I just ousted Peter C. as the mayor of University of Canberra on @foursquare! 4sq.com/aFKQTA #
• I just ousted J'Arne D. as the mayor of Big W (Gungahlin) on @foursquare! 4sq.com/cITwBo #
• #rcc11au (or RCC upside down to my euro friends) will be taking place later this week. Yay! #
• I just ousted Gavan O. as the mayor of Hog's Breath Cafe on @foursquare! 4sq.com/bYiD5u #
• Doing a dinner for #rcc11 at Sammys in Civic around 5 to 6pm. e-mail or text @purplepopple for details. #
• Noon talk about Open Space at @unicanberra in student center today. #
• Look! @markdilley in Canberra! twitpic.com/3trq7q #
• Canberra at dusk. twitpic.com/3tt6e4 #
• Lovely dinner before #rcc started. @markdilley @appropedia @purplepopple and Utha all went. Some one had pics. #
• Discussion about Open Space Technology prior to the start of #rcc : www.ustream.tv/recorded/12269815 #
• #rcc starts in a few hours a @unicanberra. So excited! #
• #rcc #rcc11 schedule is waiting. twitpic.com/3tz6t5 #
• If you want to try to skype in and see what we're up to, message purplepopple . #
• #rcc #rcc11 twitpic.com/3tzumt #
• #rcc11 #rcc planning the agenda twitpic.com/3tzuvz #
• #rcc #rcc11 twitpic.com/3tzv7o #
• #rcc mapping. twitpic.com/3u1sc2 #
• #rcc #rcc11 twitpic.com/3u1szt #
• #rcc category structure twitpic.com/3u1v1o #
• Interested in wikis? Some videos from #rcc have been uploaded to bit.ly/fD93R8 #
• Today's plans: Attend #rcc . Go to #wnbl game (where the Capitals shall take back first place!). Wiki & Sport: Life can't get better. #
• Bikers at Cream in Civic in Canberra. twitpic.com/3u9o5f #
• #rcc another view of the agenda twitpic.com/3uaqjp #
• #rcc agenda has changed twitpic.com/3uaqpl #
• #rcc lonely planet twitpic.com/3udkwz #
• Won a $40 gift certificate at #canberracapitals #wnbl game! Woot woot! Go me! #
• Did a long e-mail to #rcc11 the RCC planning list with my thoughts about how things are going. Happy. #
• Lunch at #rcc11 : twitpic.com/3up6hz twitpic.com/3up6l3 #
• twitpic.com/3uppa8 #rcc11 closing circle! #
• twitpic.com/3upvea #rcc11 talking about adelaide. #

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Related Posts:

• Australian and New Zealand sport relationships on Twitter
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) netball related Twitter accounts (March 23)
• Most popular female Australian (and NZ) sport related Twitter accounts (March 23)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (March 23)

In a recent post, I talked about what I saw as the importance of the GWS Giants in developing a local fanbase.  This post is another that explores the geography of Australian Football League fandom as a function of geography.

This post is based on data gathered using the following methodology:

1. Develop a list of  AFL related Twitter accounts and sort them by team.  Remove all AFL accounts that cannot be connected to a team.
2. Get a lot of the followers for all those sport related Twitter accounts.   (This process takes a while.  I can only use one Twitter API code set.  This limits the number of calls I can make to something like 150 or 350 per hour.  For each of those individual calls, I can get information on one page of a account’s followers.  Each page consists of about 20 followers.  This means the whole run took about a week and it started on January 18.)
3. Cross reference User inputted locations to actual Australian city locations .
4. Combine all followers by sportinto one file.  Remove duplicate entries so that if, for example Person X follows  @stkildafc, and @zacd_6 Person X gets counted once for Australian Rules, not two times.
5. Count the total number of followers by AFL team and by city.
6. Combine the total number of followers by sport with all the cities in the electorate the city is from.  For this analysis, that data can be found at Australian city location to electorates .  This list was created using the official list of Australian polling places by electorate.  The following cities were left off the totals: Brisbane, Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra.  These cities were left off because they would skew the results as people that say they are living in Melbourne are actually probably living in a different suburb.  (The CBD of these centers is very tiny.  There are probably more people claiming to live in Melbourne on Twitter than actually living in Melbourne CBD proper.)  If a town is included in multiple electorates, it is counted in all those electorates: Brunswick and Brunswick East  are counted for both Melbourne and Wills.

The complete totals for the results above are available at Australian Twitter Sports Electorates Report. The raw data is too large to easily upload.  If you would like access to it, please leave a comment.

Related Posts:

• Australian sport on ebay
• Most popular AFL teams across social media sites (February 14, 2011)
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Has there been a population shift for the AFL on Dreamwidth Studios since June?

Missed last week! Ooops! My bad.

Related Posts:

• Australian sport Foursquare checkins: December 15 – 19: A-League tops
• Australian and New Zealand sport relationships on Twitter
• Australian sport on ebay
• Australian sport Foursquare checkins: December 27 – January 2: A-League leads

• #gobears #dabears #gobears #dabears #gobears #dabears #gobears #dabears #gobears #dabears #gobears #dabears #gobears #
• Come play Trade Nations with me! My username is Purplepopple. bit.ly/aQQIY1?1816 #
• If you're in Canberra and can put up campers for #rcc11 please get in touch with @purplepopple or @leighblackall . Help appreciated! #
• It is rather annoying when your results are not what you expect. :/ And yet, they will be in my dissertation anyway. #
• Derryn Hinch: Journalist traffic versus Wikipedia traffic in response to St Kilda controversy : bit.ly/exUpXO #dickileaks #afl #
• Posted an updated version of my dissertation draft: bit.ly/dETKqH #digisportau #
• Writing goal for the day: Finish this edit on the Melbourne Storm chapter. #
• Spent two hours manually converting Twitter user locations to city/state/country. Brain fried. #
• I just ousted @robkeating as the mayor of KFC Gungahlin on @foursquare! 4sq.com/d36yzg #
• I dun wanna do work! I wanna be off task! Woe! #
• Does anyone have a good source for information political fan hierarchy? #
• Soccer Fox panelists: Casually tossing out mildly homophobic comments on air? Not cool. Germans silly but not gay. Get the difference. #
• University of Canberra twitpic.com/3rb84e #
• Caps locks of rage reading the comments: bit.ly/fDHOUz #illinois #
• I just ousted Geoff W. as the mayor of QBD, The Bookshop on @foursquare! 4sq.com/hJkY5h #
• I just ousted Richard C. as the mayor of John Knight Memorial Park on @foursquare! 4sq.com/dhZHti #
• A bird pooped on me. In this country, birds poop on me: two since I got here. What is wrong with me? What is wrong with this country? #
• Australian Open and ATP World Tour Foursquare checkins : bit.ly/ht3Ghl #AusOpen @AustralianOpen #
• Starting to write my dissertation conclusion today. woot woot! #
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) netball related Twitter accounts (January 20): bit.ly/fyROad #netball @NetballAust #
• Location of Australian and New Zealand Netball fans on Twitter : bit.ly/f6jUy6 #netball #anzchampionship #
• Tonight's plan: Attending #WNBL Canberra Capitals game. Love the local women's basketball team. #
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (January 21) : bit.ly/hSVfhY #nrl #afl #aleague #surfing #
• Most popular female Australian (and NZ) sport related Twitter accounts (January 21): bit.ly/dWwbYx #anzchampionship #wleague #wnbl #
• BRAIN EXHAUSTED! BUT FINISHED FIRST DRAFT OF MY DISSERTATION! WEEEE! CONCLUSION WRITTEN! #
• This is typical Canberra. twitpic.com/3rvxot #
• I just ousted @garydlum as the mayor of The Australian Institute of Sport on @foursquare! 4sq.com/cx14wt #
• Canberra Capitals warming up. #Wnbl twitpic.com/3ry19o #
• #Wnbl twitpic.com/3ry7ae #
• #wnbl #canberracapitals 92-76 waves losing. 2:19 left in fourth. twitpic.com/3ryn42 #
• Hot air balloon in Canberra. twitpic.com/3s41gx #
• I just ousted Shaz as the mayor of Gus' Cafe on @foursquare! 4sq.com/buYjRr #
• Is geography an important component of Australian sport fandom? #afl #nrl #digisportau #
• I earned the Community Fan sticker on @GetGlue! bit.ly/hAf7Ux #
• I just ousted @_nikkit_ as the mayor of Woolworths on @foursquare! 4sq.com/aCdfuk #
• *pokes Twitter* GWS Giants on Twitter: Follower location versus Tweet location: bit.ly/gYICA6 #afl #gwsgiants #
• I just ousted Nicole G. as the mayor of Old Parliament House on @foursquare! 4sq.com/9981f3 #
• Canberra. twitpic.com/3sk3ge #

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Related Posts:

• Australian and New Zealand sport relationships on Twitter
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) netball related Twitter accounts (March 23)
• Most popular female Australian (and NZ) sport related Twitter accounts (March 23)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (March 23)

As an American, I have an obsession with the geography of sport.  City is fundamental to my identity.  I’m from the Chicago area and my sporting loyalties are based on that.  My sport team rivals are based on geography.  The Chicago Bears are going to play the Green Bay Packers in an NFL playoff game.  This geography based rivalry is more important then winning the Super Bowl.  We cannot lose to our hated neighbors to the north! (They wear cheese on their heads for pete’s sake!)

This concept of geography of sport is why I constantly want to look at location over other Australian based sporting numbers.  I’m that ugly American sort that some Australians don’t like because I feel like if I explain to you my reasons as to why geography should matter more to Australian sport, you’ll finally get it!  (And if you don’t get it, I clearly need to explain it to you more.)

Greater Western Sydney is one of the places where I occassionally get obsessed with geography, even if I don’t post about it.  Today, I decided that I should post about it and went about getting the data to do that.  First, I got a list of all of GWS related tweets.  These tweets came from archives I had on TwapperKeeper.  Beyond the GWS specific Twitter lists, I pulled the #AFL tagged tweets and then filtered out all the tweets that did not mention GWS or Giants.  I ended up with a list of around 996 tweets or so when all the lists were combined.  I then compared the user names with city/state/location information I had in order to attempt to match the tweets with a location.  The list I have to match is pretty huge, with Twitter user information from well over 1 million different user names.  When user names were matched up, I had 621 tweets that I had a location for.  (That’s pretty good as I normally get around 10 to 40% unknowns when looking at some follower lists.)  I mapped these on the map below.

After that, I got the follower information for @GWS_Giants.  They had 1,923 followers.  I had Australian city information for 1,057 of them. (In both cases, I removed all non-Australian cities.) I added these to the map below.

The purpose of this map?  It is to determine regional interest in the team.  My supposition, as that annoying ugly American who believes regional barracking is key to a club’s success, is that for the team to succeed, most of their support has to be based in New South Wales and the ACT.  I was pleasantly surprised at the number one city for Tweet location.  That appears to signal the team has done a decent job of attracting local interest in terms of getting locals to Tweet about the team.  Then I looked at where followers came from… and the problems seemed to be a bit bigger.  The GWS Giants’s market doesn’t really factor into their top Australian cities for attracting followers: Only 6 of their top 20 cities are in New South Wales or the ACT.  Ouch.  Other states just completely over represent.  To me, this signals problems in that their current target audience isn’t as large as the less relevant audience.  (Translation: Who cares if some one in Hobart follows the team unless the Hobart follower attends matches and buys merchandise?)

View full map

So a question: Do you think that the geography of the GWS Giants Twitter followers and Tweeters matters? Is this data relevant in analyzing how successful the club has been in garnering local support? Does the geographic spread surprise others?

Related Posts:

• Most popular AFL teams across social media sites (February 14, 2011)
• Greater Western Sydney Giants and ACT4GWS
• Fundamental problems in the GWS Giants fanbase?
• Australian and New Zealand sport relationships on Twitter

This list gets better and better on a regular basis. I’ve recently added a few golf, tennis and netball related accounts. If there are any accounts that I’m missing, please let me know. This is an updated version of from November 13 , November 16, November 18 , November 24, and December 1,  December 11, and January 7.

Related Posts:

• Most popular female Australian (and NZ) sport related Twitter accounts (March 23)
• Most popular female Australian (and NZ) sport related Twitter accounts (February 23)
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 11)

This list finally has over 1,000 accounts listed on it. As of this morning’s run, it actually had 1,005 accounts. It’s really damned impressive. It could still use improvement, especially when it comes to athletes and smaller, more regional athletics clubs. Any help in improving this list by telling me which accounts are missing? Fantastic. Recent additions to this list have been focused on netball, tennis, golf and AFL.

This is an updated version of Most popular Australian athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (version 2), October 4 and October 11, November 11, November 16, November 18, November 24, December 1, December 11 , December 18, 2010, January 1 , January 2 , January 7, and January 16. If I’m missing anyone or anything, let me know.