It appears that people are beginning to look at St Kilda’s involvement in controversy and are beginning to ask if this is bad for the club. Do these things hurt the club’s image? Will it effect their on field performance?
Most of the research I’ve done on Australian sport controversies has the take away that these things often hurt the league more than they hurt the club. The research supports the idea that by fostering a sense of national leagues and trying to get support for the games being played, rather than for individual sports, means that fans and casual observers assume that the problems are endemic to everyone. When St Kilda does something stupid, they aren’t inoculated: Social media data suggests this impacts other teams. The data supports a suggestion that the AFL and NRL should work with teams to make sure each has a strong, independent fanbase with a clear sense of its own identity.
Given all that, I’m debating writing about the latest St Kilda controversy. I’ve got to get some benchmarks on Twitter, Facebook and Alexa before I do that. A one day response probably isn’t long enough to get an idea as to how people responded. Given that this latest controversy is an extension of what went on for most December and part of January, I can’t see big shifts happening though maybe quiet shifts happened between January 1 and now. We’ll see if I get the motivation to do so.
If people are looking for for raw data and analysis regarding the impact that controversies have had on St Kilda during the past year, I have a fair amount of that. I thought I would make a post that could link to those. If people want to see any of these posts looked at or current data provided to help clarify a picture, I can do that.
- Twitter popularity of AFL teams by electorate - This post looks at the popularity of AFL teams by electorate. St Kilda is represented in at four electorates.
- Derryn Hinch: Journalist traffic versus Wikipedia traffic in response to St Kilda controversy – This article proves that Derryn Hinch is a more popular reference for getting information about St Kilda and its recent controversies than Wikipedia is. It shows that “old media” is still very much used by sport fans in Australia as one of their first places to get information.
- St Kilda Saints Nude Photo Controversy (complete) – This is a four part, 15,000 word paper that looks the St Kilda nude photo controversy and how it played out for Riewoldt, Dal Santo, Dawson and the Saints. The primary focus is Twitter, Facebook and Alexa though other sites are also looked at.
- Characteristic of AFL diggers – This posts looks at the differences of people who submitted content to digg related to various teams. St Kilda is one of the five teams looked at.
- Which AFL team do Canberrans support in the Grand Final? – This post looks at the popularity of Collingwood, Western Bulldogs, Geelong Cats and St Kilda in the lead up to the AFL Grand Final in Canberra. Which team was more popular?
- St. Kilda followers on Twitter – This post is from August and looks at the characteristics of St Kilda followers on Twitter. It makes a bit of an interesting contrast to who St Kilda followers are now.
- What domains in #afl related tweets get the most RT@ ReTweets? – This post is also from August. It looks at ReTweeting patterns in the #afl hashtag community. The Saints have generally been pretty good with their Twitter usage during the past season and it isn’t surprising that their content gets mentioned and ReTweeted.
- Data dump: Australian sport (AFL, NRL) ranking on Alexa – This is a data dump that gives an idea as to the historical volume of traffic and interest there has been for the Saints and other AFL teams.
- AFL team related Tweets by location – This is a map from July. It involves several teams in the AFL. It shows where people who Tweeted about specific teams actually tweeted from.
- Foursquare and the AFL – This post from May gives an idea as to how many people on Foursquare checked into a few of the AFL games. St Kilda games are represented.
- AFL fandom growth on Facebook: Which team is the winner? – This post compares the growth of AFL teams on Twitter from March 2010 to May 2010. St Kilda was not the top team.
Beyond this selection of posts, there is a fair amount of raw, unprocessed and not necessarily fully categorized/tagged posts that reference St Kilda that can help complete the picture of the team’s pure social media/web growth and demographic shifts in the population over the past year. When all this data is put into context, say in a packet like this one for Collingwood, it begins to paint a complete picture of the impact that all these controversies had on the club.
