St Kilda Saints Nude Photo Controversy (part 4b) : St Kilda Saints
Part 1: Nick Dal Santo, Part 2: Zac Dawson, Part 3: Nick Riewoldt, Part 4A: St Kilda Saints
In writing up the St Kilda Nude Photo Controversy, it became obvious that the best way to approach this was to look at it from multiple perspective: Each athlete and the team. This paper thus has an introduction, four sections and a conclusion. The St Kilda section is very long and has thus been broken up into several parts. I’m posting this as a draft as I finish various section. When it is eventually completed and fully edited, it will become a chapter in my dissertation. A copy of the complete, current draft of the paper as intended for my blog can be found at StKildaChapter.pdf and the data for this paper beyond what is found in the paper and appendix can be found at StKildaData.xls. The paper includes footnotes that are not found in the html version and edits made to other sections since the html versions were first posted.
A decision was made on January 2 to scale back the total analysis for the St Kilda Saints. Originally, it was the author’s intent to analyze Alexa, Wikipedia, ebay.com.au, LiveJournal, bebo, and BlackPlanet. The writing was about 14,000 words, with tables about 15,000 words, with footnotes and references 16,000 words. As the above mentioned sites mostly went to support conclusions from existing sections and the paper was already really long, I decided to stop the analysis early.
St Kilda Saints
Facebook is Australia’s largest and most popular social network. Size alone makes it worth considering in order to understand how the sport community on the site responded to the controversy. This section will look at Facebook data from two perspectives: Demographic shifts in the Saints fanbase on Facebook, and growth of the Saints Facebook official fan page compared to other teams in the league.
Facebook provides demographic information about its user interests at https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ . Details regarding the methodology and issues involved in using this can data are outlined in the Nick Riewoldt section. For this section, that data was collected on December 20, December 26, 2010 and January 2, 2011. The complete data set for this information is available in Appendix 13.
One of the first numbers worth looking at is the total number of fans who are interested in the team. On December 20, this number was 47,960. By December 26, this number was 47,880. On January 2, 2011, this number had contracted to 47,220. Since the day the story broke, the St Kilda Saints have seen a gradual erosion in the total number of people interested in the team.
The total number of fans can also be broken down by gender. For women, the total number of fans on December 20 was 23,580, on December 26 was 23,540, and on January 2, 2011 was 23,340. For men, the numbers were 23,880, 23,680 and 23,660. The losses for the whole club were not just contained to a single gender: They say a decline in interest amongst both genders.
Gender data can be further broken down by sexual orientation: Men interest in men, men interested in women, women interested in women, women interested in men. Like gender, not everyone makes their orientation information available on their profile so the numbers will not add up to the total number of fans for St Kilda. For men interested in men, the total number of fans remained level at 260 on all three dates. For men interested in women, the totals were 13,040 fans on December 20, 13,220 fans on December 26, 13,080 on January 2, 2011. For women interested in women, the number remained consistent on all three dates: 920. For women interested in men, the total for December 20 was 8,440, and for December 26, 2010 and January 2, 2011 was 8,380. The size St Kilda’s GLBT fanbase was unchanged, declined amongst its heterosexual female fanbase and saw a small increase amongst heterosexual male fanbase.
A third way of looking at this data involves looking at level of education: College grad, in college and in high school. For the first group, the total number of college graduate St Kilda fans was 5,240 on December 20, was 5,280 on December 26 and was 5,220 on January 2, 2011. For St Kilda fans in college, the total was 760 fans on December 20, and was 800 on December 26 and January 2, 2011. For high school fans, the total was 1,560 on December 20 and 26, and 1,580 on January 2, 2011. Amongst college graduates and those in college, there was a slight decline. For high school fans, there was a slight increase.
Overall, the Saints saw a small contraction of their fanbase on Facebook. In general, they saw similar small contractions across most of the groups looked at including men, women, women interested in men, college graduates, and those in college. They saw no change for women interested in women, and men interested in men. They saw small increases amongst men interested in women, and current high school students. That they saw a contraction at all probably is bad news for the club. That it is the loss occurred between men and women is also a problem. That they did not see any significant growth for these sub-populations is probably even worse. It suggests that however Facebook fans got their information about the scandal, the story did not resonate with any of those populations in such a way that they felt a need to show solidarity with the club and become fans of them on the network.
A second way to look at Facebook is to compare St Kilda’s official Facebook fan growth with that of other clubs in the league to see if St Kilda’s fan acquisition rates differed from other AFL teams. Use the facebook_followers.pl found in Appendix 12, the total number of fans for official fan pages was recorded on December 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and 31. The complete table can be found in Appendix 13. Table 9 shows a selection of these teams from the period between December 11 and December 31.
Table 9
AFL Facebook Page Growth December 11 to December 31
| Date checked | St. Kilda Saints | Carlton Blues | Geelong Cats | GWS Giants | Hawthorn Hawks | North Melbourne Kangaroos |
| 11-Dec-10 | 59,252 | 53,529 | 7,413 | 974 | 32,580 | 19,588 |
| 15-Dec-10 | 59,644 | 53,930 | 7,423 | 1,078 | 32,699 | 19,784 |
| 16-Dec-10 | 59,761 | 54,059 | 7,429 | 1,086 | 32,713 | 19,828 |
| 21-Dec-10 | 60,145 | 54,495 | 7,443 | 1,115 | 32,837 | 20,012 |
| 22-Dec-10 | 60,274 | 54,567 | 7,453 | 1,121 | 32,873 | 20,040 |
| 23-Dec-10 | 60,352 | 54,617 | 7,460 | 1,133 | 32,896 | 20,068 |
| 24-Dec-10 | 60,427 | 54,662 | 7,463 | 1,141 | 32,921 | 20,087 |
| 25-Dec-10 | 60,495 | 54,700 | 7,464 | 1,147 | 32,938 | 20,102 |
| 26-Dec-10 | 60,519 | 54,730 | 7,474 | 1,150 | 32,946 | 20,114 |
| 27-Dec-10 | 60,565 | 54,773 | 7,477 | 1,153 | 32,961 | 20,129 |
| 28-Dec-10 | 60,611 | 54,819 | 7,479 | 1,153 | 32,978 | 20,135 |
| 29-Dec-10 | 60,671 | 54,862 | 7,471 | 1,155 | 32,987 | 20,139 |
| 30-Dec-10 | 60,738 | 54,915 | 7,477 | 1,158 | 33,004 | 20,137 |
| 31-Dec-10 | 60,758 | 54,937 | 7,471 | 1,161 | 32,999 | 20,132 |
In the period between December 11 and December 16, before the controversy happened, St Kilda gained 509 fans. In the period between December 21 and December 26, at the height of the media coverage of the controversy, St Kilda gained 374 new followers. In the period between December 27 and December 31 after most of the media coverage had died down, St Kilda gained 193 new fans. Both in terms of difference growth and percentage growth found in Table 10, St Kilda matches up with compare Melbourne based AFL clubs like Carlton, Hawthorn and North Melbourne.
Table 10
Math for Facebook AFL Fan Growth
| . | St. Kilda Saints | Carlton Blues | Geelong Cats | GWS Giants | Hawthorn Hawks | North Melbourne Kangaroos |
| Diff: Dec-11 to Dec-15 | 509 | 530 | 16 | 112 | 133 | 240 |
| Diff: Dec-21 to Dec-26 | 374 | 235 | 31 | 35 | 109 | 102 |
| Diff: Dec-27 to Dec-31 | 193 | 164 | -6 | 8 | 38 | 3 |
| % Diff: Dec-11 to Dec-15 | 0.85% | 0.98% | 0.22% | 10.31% | 0.41% | 1.21% |
| % Diff: Dec-21 to Dec-26 | 0.62% | 0.43% | 0.41% | 3.04% | 0.33% | 0.51% |
| % Diff: Dec-27 to Dec-31 | 0.32% | 0.30% | -0.08% | 0.69% | 0.12% | 0.01% |
The data in Table 10 suggests that the controversy did not adversely effect the Saints in terms of getting followers for their official fan page.
Facebook’s demographic suggests the controversy hurt the team in key demographic groups like men, women and amongst the college educated amongst the population of Australian users on the site. At the same time that St Kilda appeared to lose broad interest on the site, the Saints ability to acquire new fans for their official fan page did not appear effected; St Kilda acquired these new fans at similar rates to other teams in the AFL.
Conclusion.
If St Kilda’s organizing of a press conference and later silence could be interpreted as controlling the narrative that the media and fans consumed, St Kilda was mildly successful: Google News shows the media stopped reporting on the story shortly after the court action was suspended for the holidays and when St Kilda stopped talking to the media, and updating their Facebook and Twitter account with their version of events regarding the controversy. On the other hand, St Kilda appears to not have controlled the narrative using IceRocket and What the Hash?! data. Fan discussion on blogs appeared to peak around the time that St Kilda was actively involved, but blog discussion levels for the club and its players plateaued at a higher level than in the period prior to the controversy. On Twitter, the level of conversation peaked several days after media interest peaked. The timelines suggest St Kilda was not prepared to effectively control the fan response to the story and. The timeline also suggests the club failed to anticipate how the social media community would respond and they were unprepared to deal with Internet fall out.
A textual analysis of Twitter data suggests that Twitter users connected the nude photo controversy more with the AFL than with the Saints. Looking at who was tweeting about the controversy suggests they are not the same people that are interested in Australian sport: The #dickileaks Tweeters are a potential fanbase for the Saints and AFL; they are not part of the current fan base. Looking at the profiles of who is following the AFL, the Saints and the teenaged girl on Twitter, the AFL appears to have problems as the girl has more followers in New South Wales, where the AFL has a new expansion team, than the league has. St Kilda has its own problems in that their followers average number of people they follow is high when compared to the teenaged girl, meaning that she can more effectively share her message with her 12,000 followers than the Saints can share with their 6,000 followers. The girl’s comparative Twitter reach could cause problems for the AFL and St Kilda as they try to grow the AFL fandom on Twitter.
On Facebook, the Saints both lost fans and gained fans. Demographic data made available from Facebook’s advertising information shows that the club lost fans, both men and women, college students and college graduates. During the controversy, St Kilda continued to gain fans on their official fan page at a rate comparable to their peers. Facebook data shows the club did not benefit from the controversy by growing their fanbase at a higher rate.
When looked at together, the picture that emerges suggests potential long-term problems for the club. They were not able to control the online narrative. Fans associated the photo controversy with both the club and the league. The team saw small losses on Facebook in important demographic bases. The Saints could not use the situation to leverage their Facebook position. As legal action continues in the New Year, the club will have to weigh these issues when making decisions if they do not want to continue to potentially harm their fan and consumer base. Those decisions will need to be made in conjunction with the AFL as the controversy has led numerous people to drawing negative associations about the league and its management.