Ozzie Sport

I’ve been some what lax with collecting data during the past month.  This morning, I decided to remedy this a bit by updating my Alexa rank list for Australian sport clubs and teams.  This is what can be found below.  (The list isn’t all comprehensive.  I tend to mostly focus on the AFL and NRL.) It is interesting to see who is doing well, especially when compared to other clubs in the same league or clubs playing in the same geographic area.

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian clubs and teams on Twitter
• Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.
• Popular sport team and league sites in Australia
• Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers

This post is basically an update of Version 2: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers. I haven’t actively sought to improve or update the accounts included on this list though there are a few new accounts.  A few accounts have been deleted and one has been suspended, LanceFranklin. Deleted and suspended accounts have been marked with a 0 for total number of followers.

This data was gathered on May 30, 2010.  It includes non-Australian teams that compete in Australian based leagues.  It also contains Australian some athlete accounts where the athlete competes for a club in an Australian based league.

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian clubs and teams on Twitter
• Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers
• Version 2: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers
• Alexa rank for Australian leagues and clubs

I’ve been checking the number of people who list a team as an interest across a number of social networks.  Yesterday, for networks where I had information on 215 teams I have on my list, I added together the number of people who listed a team as an interest in various leagues.  I got the following table.

Interesting to see what networks have what populations.  The WNBL is only really an interest on 2 networks while the AFL is present on every network.  These networks all have different population sizes so total numbers is really apple to oranges in some ways.  I then decided to rank the leagues by how popular they were on each network.  The most popular league ranks 1, the next most popular league ranks 2.  If there is a tie, they share the same rank.  The results of that are in the following table:

This table is a bit more interesting.  Across most networks, the AFL is the most popular league.  The NRL is the second most popular league.  First class cricket, compromising state cricket teams, is the third most popular.  The A-League and Super 14 are close behind.  When you get down near the bottom, patterns become interesting.  The WNBL is not as popular as Women’s Flat Track Derby Association.  This is largely a result of the large number of fans on Facebook.  AFL Canberra is also more popular than the VFL.  This is because of the high rank on JournalFen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attendance_figures_at_domestic_professional_sports_leagues lists the attendance by league for six Australian sports leagues in 2009.  I cannot find a better list of attendance data for Australian sports league, especially the minor leagues.  That makes the rest of this analysis a bit problematic but moving forward anyway… This data is then put into the following table:

For total number of people attending during the course of a season, it certainly seems to track with the average league rank on the social networks in this sample.  Total people and total attendance seems to track some too.  I ran the correlation to confirm these observations:

Total attendance does correlate meaningfully.  Average attendance isn’t as meaningful but the correlation is still relatively strong.  There is a relationship there.

I’ve found that similar relationships exist with American baseball teams.  The issue of course is: Cause and effect.  Does high fan attendance lead to more fans listing their teams as an interest on social media? Or does becoming interested in a team on social media sites lead people to attending games?  It feels like the first but I have no evidence either way.

Related Posts:

• Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.
• LiveJournal: Interest in leagues by location
• Socceroos: A creative research data dump (part 3)
• WNBL on LiveJournal and bebo

Gaia Online is an anime, role playing themed social network aimed at an English speaking audience.  According to Alexa, the site is ranked the 2,988th most popular in Australia.  Given the target audience, I was curious as to how large the Australian based sports fandom was.  I went to the search page, selected interest and then searched every team on my list.

The list of teams on my list include: Collingwood Magpies, Carlton Blues, Queensland Maroons, Melbourne Victory, Brisbane Broncos, West Coast Eagles, Essendon Bombers, NSW Blues, Parramatta Eels, Adelaide Crows, Melbourne Storm , Wests Tigers, St. Kilda Saints, Sydney Swans, Fremantle Dockers, New South Wales Blues, Richmond Tigers, Sydney Roosters , Gold Coast Titans, Pretoria  Bulls (Northern Bulls), St. George Illawarra Dragons, Victorian Bushrangers, Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, Johannesburg Lions, South Sydney Rabbitohs , Newcastle Knights , Brisbane Lions, Adelaide United, Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles, Geelong Cats, North Queensland Cowboys , Durban Sharks (Coastal Sharks)(Natal Sharks), New South Wales Waratahs, Sydney FC, Canberra Raiders, Penrith Panthers, North Melbourne Kangaroos, Melbourne Demons, Central Cheetahs (Vodacom Cheetahs), Western Australia Force (Western Force), New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors), Wellington Hurricanes, Port Adelaide Power, Adelaide 36ers , Hawthorn Hawks, Central Coast Mariners Football Club, Brisbane Roar (Queensland Roar), Newcastle Jets, Perth Wildcats , Western Bulldogs, ACT Brumbies, Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs , St. George Dragons (defunct), Perth Glory, Melbourne Vixens , Australian Diamonds (national team), Canterbury Crusaders, Balmain Tigers (defunct), Gold Coast Football Club, North Sydney Bears (defunct), Barbagallo Perth Heat, Gold Coast United, South Australia Bite, Western Sydney Rollers, Wellington Phoenix, Illawarra Steelers (defunct), North Queensland Fury FC, Melbourne Tigers , Cape Town Stormers (Western Stormers)(Vodacom Stormers), Wollongong Hawks , Queensland Reds, Waikato Chiefs, South (Melbourne) Dragons, Australian Boomers, Tassie Tigers (Tasmanian Tigers), Townsville Crocodiles , Sydney Olympic , Cairns Taipans , Queensland Firebirds, Perth Blitz, South Australian Redbacks (Southern Redbacks), Western Suburbs Magpies (defunct), New South Wales Swifts (Sydney Swifts), Northern Eagles (defunct), Melbourne Rebels, WA Raiders, Box Hill Hawks , Casey Scorpions , North Ballarat Roosters , Auckland Blues, Sydney United , Australian Flames (national team), New Zealand Breakers , Queensland Bulls, Old Xaverians , Adelaide Thunderbirds , West Coast Fever, Sydney Kings , Mountains Kariong Cricket Club, East Bentleigh Cricket Club, Sydney Tigers , Penrith City Outlaws (UWS Outlaws), Gold Coast Blaze , Preshil Cricket Club, Western Warriors, Sydney Windies Cricket Club, Manly United , Otago Highlanders, Dandenong Jayco Rangers (Dandenong Rangers), Jinnah Cricket Club, Petersham RUFC Netball Club, ACE Netball Club, Orcas Netball, Australian Opals, Brisbane Bullets, Logan Thunder, Port Melbourne Borough , Fitzroy Lions, Newtown Jets (defunct), Alberton Cricket Club Inc., Australian Institute of Sport, Highett Cricket Club, Werribee Tigers , Gold Coast Seagulls (defunct), Canberra Capitals, Tuggeranong Hawks, Cumberland (defunct), Melbourne Phoenix , West Sydney Berries , Central Pulse , Gold Coast Chargers (defunct), Wollongong Wolves, Adelaide Lightning, Belconnen Magpies, Gold Coast Giants (defunct), Northern Bullants , Southern Steel , Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic, West Sydney Pirates, Adelaide Rams (defunct), Ainslie Football Club, Eastlake Football Club, New South Wales Waratahs, Perth Lynx, Queanbeyan Tigers, SA Fire, Sydney Uni Flames, Townsville Fire, UTS Gridiron, West Sydney Razorbacks , Western Reds (defunct), Bendigo Spirit, Fitzroy Reds, Newcastle Rebels (defunct), Northern Mystics , NT Stingers, Old Melburnians , Perth Orioles , Perth Reds (defunct), Queensland Sundevils, Tassie Tigers, Victoria Aces, Victorian Eagles, Victorian state team, Wollongong Mustangs, ACT Monarchs, Adelaide Thunder, AIS Canberra Darters , Annandale Dales (defunct), Bankstown City Lions , Bendigo Bombers , Blacktown City Demons , Bondi Raiders, Bonnyrigg White Eagles , Brisbane Spinning Bullets, Bulleen Boomers, Canberra Labor Club Lakers, Canterbury Tactix , Coburg Tigers , Collegians Football Club , Collingwood Magpies , De La Salle Old Collegians , Frankston Dolphins , Geelong Cats , Glebe Dirty Reds (defunct), Hunter Jaegers , Hunter Mariners (defunct), Marcellin Old Collegians , Marconi Stallions , Melbourne Kestrels , New South Wales Patriots , Northwestern Predators, NSW Wolfpack, Old Brighton Grammarians , Old Scotch , Old Trinity Grammarians , Perth Wheelcats, Queensland Blades, Queensland Rams, Rockdale City Suns , Sandringham Zebras , South Coast Wolves , South Queensland Crushers (defunct), Southern Hotshots, St Bedes/Mentone Tigers Football Club , Sutherland Seahawks, Sutherland Sharks , Sydney Swans Reserves, Sydney University Lions, University Blues , Victoria Vikings, WA Thundersticks, Wenty Leagues WheelKings, Williamstown Seagulls , and Wollongong Roller Hawks.

It is not a short list.  (At the same time, it isn’t all that comprehensive. It only includes about 215 teams of the over 3,000 various teams I know exist in the country.)  I found only seven teams had people eleven total who listed a team as an interest.  The teams included 4 from the NRL, and 1 from the AFL, A-League and Super 14.  Gaia Online is different in league representation that FaceBook, blogger, Twitter, LiveJournal and its clones, where the AFL dominates.

The teams represented on Gaiai Online include Brisbane Broncos (1), Parramatta Eels (1), Sydney Roosters  (3),  Sydney FC (2), Canberra Raiders (1), Western Bulldogs (1), and ACT Brumbies (1). The 11 team interests listing include 9 people using 10 accounts.

If the duplicates are taken out, the network is the youngest where age can easily be determined.   The average of all users on Gaia Online is 18.5.  This compares to 24 on bebo, 26 on LiveJournal and its clones, 28 on orkut, and 29 on blogger.

Three people list their city of residence.  Two of those are in New South Wales and one is the ACT.  This could explain the favoring of the NRL.   Everyone who lists a country of residence lists their location as Australia.  This is also unique when compared to other networks because except for the smaller LiveJournal clones, there is some one from another country who is a fan of an Australian based team.

Four people list their gender: Three female and one male.  This ratio is nearly inverse of what bebo and blogger are where 66% of bebo users listing an Australian team as an interest are male and 70% of blogger users are male.

Gaia Online’s unique audience has an impact on the type of Australian sports fans on it.  They are younger, more New South Wales based and much more female.

Related Posts:

• Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.
• Most popular Australian clubs and teams on Twitter
• Alexa rank for Australian leagues and clubs
• Version 2: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers

I’m not doing much of an analysis here as I’m still gathering data.  One difference between these two leagues that I see right off the bat is the type of presence.  For the A-League, there are a number of accounts created by fans dedicated to teams.  There are a few player and coach accounts for the A-League but not many.  The fan based accounts are just bigger, have more followers and appear more important to the fandom.

In comparison, the NBL appears to have a large number of players on Twitter.  In some cases, the players appear to be at have decided to have staked out their own user name, if only to have it.  Some engage but many don’t have images.  A few have their tweets protected.  Most don’t have branded backgrounds or even list that they are playing in the NBL.

That’s a big difference.  Is this a result of league policy regarding the use of social media?  Or is it a difference in sports culture, where NBL basketball players are say modeling NBA players and A-League players are emulating their European and America peers who appear to be less active on social networks?

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian clubs and teams on Twitter
• Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.
• Alexa rank for Australian leagues and clubs
• Popular sport team and league sites in Australia

I finally finished compiling a list of LiveJournal and clones users who list various teams as an interest. The issues in doing this and other maps have been discussed in earlier posts. Not all cities are picked up by the software, not everyone lists the city they live in are two of the big ones. People can list multiple teams in the same league as interests (and thus be counted twice) or the same team as an interest across multiple clones (again, counted twice).

While teams from many leagues were looked at, not all those teams had people listing them as an interest and where the individual listed their city of residence. The following leagues did though: AFL, AFL Canberra, A-League, ANZ Championship, First class cricket, NBL, NRL, NSW Premier League, Rugby League/State of Origin, Super 14, and Victorian Amateur Football Association. To make the map more readable, some of the least represented leagues were left off the map.

The following map was created using MapPoint:

Play by City 220 15 1 AFL A-League NBL NRL Super 14

The map clearly shows a geographic preference in New South Wales for the NRL.  Victoria clearly prefers the AFL.  The rest of the country tends to also support the AFL.  The pattern of geographic distribution for fans of these leagues appears to fit patterns I have seen described elsewhere.  It will be interesting to see if these patterns hold for bebo.

Related Posts:

• Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.
• Alexa rank for Australian leagues and clubs
• Most popular Australian clubs and teams on Twitter
• Distribution of Australian sports fans by league and location

Perth Glory are an A-League team from Western Australia.  The name is also shared with the W-League team, an affiliate team for the professional women’s team.   There are thirteen people who list the team as an interest. Unlike the Adelaide United, there is a bit less localization of the fanbase: Four are not from Western Australia.  (One does not list a country of residence.)  Two are from New South Wales, one is from Victoria and one is from the United States.  There is also a bit less range in ages of fans compared to Adelaide United fans on LiveJournal.  Of the three who list their year of birth, all list 1987.  Despite the lack of range, the average age is still comparable: 1987.3 versus 1987.  The blogger community on Perth Glory is older by about three years than the LiveJournal community at 26.5.

Related Posts:

• Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom
• Adelaide United on LiveJournal
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Adelaide United is a soccer team that plays in the A-League.  On LiveJournal, 10 people list them as an interest.  The community on LiveJournal is very regional.  All 10 people list Australia as their country of residence.  Of the nine who list their state of residence, all are from South Australia.  Of the five who list their city of residence, all are from Adelaide.   The extreme regional pattern of no or little fans outside their state of origin is comparable to blogger where zero fans are outside of SA and on bebo, where 5% or one fan is from outside SA.  This pattern of regional based fanbases is one that appears to extend for much of the A-League that I’ve looked at so far.

Only three list their year of birth: 1985, 1987, 1990.  Their average year of birth is 1987.3 and median year of birth is 1987.  This puts their average age of 23 at slightly older than the United Fans on bebo (20) and younger than the United fans on blogger (26).  This pattern of age group ordering going like has been pretty well established in earlier posts.

The range for most recently updating on LiveJournal is between 1 week and 284 weeks or five and a half years ago.  Four have updated in the past month. Two have updated between between 18 months and 24 months ago.  The remaining four updated between 3.5 and 5.5 years ago.

The fanbase isn’t particularly large any sort of wider conclusion.  It will be interesting though to see if this pattern holds for the rest of the A-League on LiveJournal.

Related Posts:

• Adelaide United on bebo
• Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom
• Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy
• Distribution of Australian sports fans by league and location

Adelaide United are a team in the A-League and are based in Adelaide, South Australia.  There are 75 people who list Adelaide United as an interest on bebo.   This puts them at about the middle of the pack for number of fans, if they had been in the AFL.  One of the rather unique characteristics of this community compared to some of the other sites we’ve looked at is that group membership is far larger than the number of people listing the team as an interest.

On bebo, 43 or 57% of the fans do not list a gender.   Of the rest, 26 or 35% identify as male and 6 or 8% identify as female.  The huge number of people who do not list gender make it hard to compare to other A-League teams where we have gender related data.   Only the Wellington Phoenix community on blogger comes close with unknown gender, and that’s with 33% with gender not listed.  For Adelaide based teams where we have data, the Adelaide Thunderbirds have 50% with gender unlisted but the community size is two.

There are 18 people who list their age.   Of these, the average age is 20.1, median age is 19 and mode is 20.  This makes them younger than the Adelaide United, Melbourne Victory, Newcastle Jets, Perth Glory, Sydney FC, Wellington Phoenix communities on blogger.  The team closest in age to them is the Melbourne Victory community on blogger, with an average age of 22.8 based on a population of seven.   The next closet community is the Adelaide United community on blogger, at 26 and a population of two.  That’s a difference of almost six years.  (Some of this likely attributed to the fact that bebo tends to skew to a younger audience than blogger.)   The Adelaide team based community is a bit younger than United, but some of this is because the population size is one: Adelaide Thunderbirds on blogger has one fan who is 18 years old and Port Adelaide Power on blogger has one fan who is 15.

The community is overwhelming based in Australia, with 21 of the 75 people listing their country being from the country. No other countries are represented.   This contrasts a bit with the Adelaide United community on blogger, where one person is from China.   This Australian community is also overwhelming from the state that the team plays in, with 19 of the 20 people listing a state being from South Australia.  The other one is from Western Australia.   Of the South Australians, a few are from outside Adelaide with one person each from Barmera, Hallett Cove, and Roseworthy.  This pattern of loyalties for a team being very regional, to the state, is one that exists across the A-League where I have data from blogger.  This may be partially a result of the league not having aged enough for people to take their loyalties with them as they move, or a lack of stars moving from team to team with fans taking their player loyalty with them.

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian clubs and teams on Twitter
• Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.
• Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom
• Version 2: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers

Based on the somewhat data I have so far from Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and its clones, blogger and bebo, the Melbourne Victory are one of the most popular teams in Australia.  They are only behind Collingwood Magpies, Carlton Blues, and the  Queensland Maroons.  A lot of this is attributed to the 46,620 people who list the team as an interest on Facebook and 1,432 people following the team on Twitter.

So far, only 28 teams have been looked at on blogger and here, the Victory fall in the middle of the pack with only 11 people listing them as an interest.  Most of the sampling on the network has involved the AFL and Queensland based teams.  Teams ahead of the Victory include Sydney Swans, Collingwood Magpies, West Coast Eagles, Adelaide Crows, Brisbane Broncos, Brisbane Lions, Geelong Cats, and the Western Bulldogs.

What does this small community look like?  Of the eleven, nine list their country of residence.   Of these nine, eight are Australians and one is likely an Australian who is currently traveling the United States.   Of the nine Australians, seven list their state of origin and they are all from Victoria, six listing Melbourne as their home and one listing St. Kilda as theirs.  This is a team that draws, at least on blogger, from where it is based and does not have a larger, national following.

Seven people list their age.  For mean, median and mode, age is the same: 22.  This is a relatively young fan community, especially when compared to a few of the AFL team communities on blogger.  The community is also a more likely to be male with 6 people identifying as male, 3 identifying as female and 2 not identifying.  Between the Adelaide Crows, Brisbane Broncos, Brisbane Bullets, Brisbane Lions, Carlton Blues, Collingwood Magpies, Essendon Bombers, Fremantle Dockers, Geelong Cats, Hawthorn Hawks, Melbourne Demons, and North Melbourne Kangaroos communities, only the Carlton Blues, Collingwood Magpies and Geelong Cats communities have a smaller female fanbase.

It will be interesting to see how this community eventually compares to other A-League teams on the network.

Related Posts:

• Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom
• Most popular Australian clubs and teams on Twitter
• Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.
• Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers

The following chart is based on the data gathered for posts to date.  It is intended to give a general idea as to the comparative size of various sports fandom communities to each other.  Blanks indicate that no data regarding that team on the service has been gathered; it does not indicate a size of zero for that particularly service.  If you would like specific data regarding a team on a service to understand where that number of coming from, please comment or e-mail me at laura[at]fanhistory[dot]com.  I am more than happy to explain it.

Leagues with teams at the bottom include AFL, AHL, A-League, Claxton Shield, Gridiron Australia Nationals, KFC Twenty20 Big Bash, NBL, Rugby League/State of Origin, Victorian Amateur Football Association.  The AFL’s expansion team puts one of their teams in the bottom 10.  Soccer teams, baseball teams, American/Gridiron football, basketball, netball, rugby union, ice hockey, rugby league and Australian rules football are at the bottom.  Some of these sports can be accounted for because of they are not popular sports in the country.  Others can be accounted for because the teams are part of secondary leagues and competitions.  It will be interesting to see how and if popularity shifts as more data is added from additional networks.

Edited to add: This post mostly came about as I needed to take a break from gathering Yahoo!Groups data.  The directory currently is not working for me.  It limits my ability to data gather as a result.  Two of the big things in terms of moving a team up or down the above list are Facebook and Twitter.  Facebook has a lot of voids and that’s easy enough to fill in.  I did that.  Things at the bottom didn’t change much but things at the top really did change with four clubs above the 40,000 fans threshold.

Given the huge leaps there, I cannot really foresee the top order changing much, especially as the Twitter data is already there. The other social networks out there just do not have populations to provide an audience that size. Facebook claims that 7,680,420 people are from Australia on its service. When 50,000 list their interest as the Magpies or the Blues, well, that’s .6% of all Australians on Facebook. Or put another way, 3 out of every 500 Australians on the site list one of those two teams as an interest. For a sports team, that seems really high and about on par for the most popular sports team in other countries. (The New York Yankees have about 785,000 fans for an American population of about 101,468,000 on Facebook. That puts the percentage at about .7%.)

Yahoo!Groups doesn’t have a large population. While bebo is popular in Australia, it doesn’t provide numbers even close to this. The only way to get numbers that large are to find community specific sites which require registration.

More edited to add: One of the things I did not realize with the various data sets I’ve been compiling is that about a third of the teams in the National Rugby League aren’t included. My bad. Most of my focus has been on the AFL. Hence, the oversight. I’ve compiled that again and rather than update with a third image, just going to say that there have been no major shake ups. The Brisbane Broncos remain on thop. The St. George Dragons are at the bottom with 240 fans. Second to last are the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs with 1,580. No team really has the big number of fans that the AFL has.

More editing: I normally tried variations of a team’s name for Facebook to make sure I get the highest number.  In the case of St. George Illawarra Dragons, I goofed and got the one that listed 240.  When I used St Geoergillawarra Dragons combed with St. George Illawarra Dragons, I got 9,200.  This change will show up in any future data analysis.  The collection date has always been changed to today just so I know when I got that number.

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian clubs and teams on Twitter
• Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.
• Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers
• Version 2: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers

There are ten leagues in Australia and New Zealands’s soccer A-League.  All teams have either an official or unofficial Twitter account.  In some cases, there are multiple accounts dedicated to a team.  Below is a list of some of the accounts sorted by team:

• LawrieMcKinna – Central Coast Mariners Football Club
• CCMarinersFC (unofficial) – Central Coast Mariners Football Club
• GCUSC – Gold Coast United
• MVFCVIDEOS (unofficial) – Melbourne Victory
• gomvfc – Melbourne Victory
• victoryinmelb – Melbourne Victory
• victorytwit (unofficial) – Melbourne Victory
• mvfcfanzone – Melbourne Victory
• newcastle_jets – Newcastle Jets
• nqfuryfc – North Queensland Fury FC
• PerthGlory_FC – Perth Glory
• SFCNews (unofficial) – Sydney FC
• SydneyFC0910 – Sydney FC
• SydneyFC – Sydney FC
• wgtnphoenixfc – Wellington Phoenix

If you want to easily follow these accounts on Twitter, you can do so by following my ozziesport’s A-League list.    This list was compiled by looking at the A-League related lists on Twitter, finding where teams were listed.  It is an attempt to be as comprehensive as possible.
These Twitter accounts have various levels of activity.  Many are interactive, where the accounts reply to people or retweet others.  The interacting with followers seems to be more noticeable on fan run accounts.
The team with the most account dedicated to them is the Melbourne Victory, with five. Next is the Sydney FC with three.  After that, you have Adelaide United, Brisbane Roar and the Central Coast Mariners with two.  Last, you have Gold Coast United, New Castle Jets, North Queensland Fury FC, Perth Glory and the Wellington Phoenix with one account each.
The following chart shows the number of follows for each account sorted by total number of followers.  These numbers date to January 5, 2010.

When these numbers are correlated with the 2009-2010 average match attendance, a somewhat meaningful correlation of .405 is found.  This may suggest that interest in following the team on Twitter correlates to match attendance and that teams could and should focus on getting followers.  A much stronger correlation of .940 exists between the total number of Twitter accounts dedicated to the team and their attendance.  This appears to suggests that large attendance leads to an active and strong fan base for Australian soccer.

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian clubs and teams on Twitter
• Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.
• Version 2: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers
• Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers