Ozzie Sport » Brisbane Broncos

Australian sports fandom on Gaia Online

Laura — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:54:54 +0000

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.

Distribution of Brisbane Broncos fans

Laura — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:52:31 +0000

When I add up the bebo, blogger, LiveJournal and LiveJournal clone data for teams where I have all that data, the Brisbane Broncos are one of the most popular teams. There are 333 fans who list the team as an interest across those sites. Of those, 158 list their city of residence. When added together, you get the following distribution of Broncos fans:

Outside of Brisbane, the second big of fans is Townsville with eight. Sydney in New South Wales has five. New Zealand has one city with three fans and two cities with two fans. This accounts for 1/5 of cities with two or three fans. There are very few fans in Victoria, which makes sense as that is AFL territory. The distribution of the population inside the country for this team looks pretty logical.

This little experiment with Google Fusion Tables is pretty much done as fans are distributed across 86 cities and Google Fusion Tables is just not displaying that data.

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Data accuracy

Laura — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:06:28 +0000

While I try to be accurate with this data, there are times when trying to guess a person’s location based on only the city they list that I may guess wrong or wrongly identify the state a city is in. I’ve found this happened with the Brisbane Broncos, where I wrongly labeled two people from Sydney as being in Victoria. In another case for the Canberra Raiders, a township inside the ACT and one of the bigger cities share the same name. I originally had it labeled as the city in New Zealand. I went back, re-evaluated it and determined that this person was likely from the ACT Township. When these issues are discovered, I update the data set but not necessarily the post.

I’d advise you check the original source if this data is crucial to anything you’re doing. For me, this data set is pretty much just being built and I’m trying to gather it all, doing some preliminary totals and check it for errors as I work on compiling it. I’m also using it to learn more about Australian sport. It isn’t near being finished… Take some of this with a grain of salt.

If you want the raw data as I have it, please contact me.

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Brisbane’s sports community on LiveJournal and clones, bebo, blogger and Twitter

Laura — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:31:54 +0000

This post is a series of posts looking at the size of Australian sports leagues on LiveJournal, its clones and other social networks. Earlier posts include Australian Football League on JournalFen , Australian Football League community on DeadJournal , National Rugby League on DeadJournal and JournalFen, Australian Football League on LiveJournal clones like Blurty, Dreamwidth Studios and InsaneJournal, Adelaide Crows community on LiveJournal, its clones and Blogger,and Official Australian Football League Twitter accounts and follower population by country. and Brisbane Lions community on LiveJournal, its clones and Blogger. Methodology for this post has been discussed in earlier posts.

Brisbane has a number of professional sports team including the Brisbane Broncos, Brisbane Lions, Queensland Maroons, Brisbane Roar, Brisbane Bullets (defunct), Queensland Reds, Queensland Bulls, Queensland Blades, Queensland Firebirds, Queensland Rams and Queensland Sundevils. For all but two of these teams, the Blades and Rams, there is some small community on one of the following social networks: bebo, blogger, LiveJournal and its clones, Twitter. If Twitter is excluded, the Broncos have the largest community with 333 people interested in them and the Sundevils the smallest with 1 person interested in them.

What does the Brisbane sports team fandom look like? Half (54%) the Australian community is based out of Queensland and about a quarter (28%) is based in New South Wales. The rest is distributed amongst the other states, with the exception of Tasmania which has no Brisbane fans for any sports.

Rugby is traditionally more popular than footy in Queensland. The distribution in Queensland suggests something a bit different, with 89 total fans for the Lions versus 83 for the Broncos. Rugby and the Broncos are more popular only in New South Wales than footy and the Lions. One exception exists for the ACT where there are three fans for each.

Bearing in mind that people can be counted twice if they are one more than one network and are fans of more than one team, Brisbane sports fandom where the Australian state is known has the the largest interest base on bebo, with 272 people using it. Next is LiveJournal with 62 users, Blogger with 20, Blurty with 2 and InsaneJournal with 1. Brisbane fans in the ACT are more likely to use LiveJournal (3) with bebo (2) and blogger (2) being their next most popular choices. Victorian fans of Brisbane teams just prefer bebo (11) to LiveJournal (10) with their third choice being blogger. (2) In all other cases, bebo is the top choice in every state for Brisbane sports fans. Outside of Queensland, no other fans use or used blurty or InsaneJournal.

There is an international interest in Brisbane sports teams. This ranges from 0 to 50% of the total community that lists their country of origin. Communities with 50% of their support base outside Australia include the Queensland Red community on bebo, and the Brisbane Roar community on bebo. In both these cases, the community is 4 and 2 people respectively. 33.3% of the 30 member strong Queensland Maroons community on bebo comes from outside Australia, with 8 people from New Zealand and 2 from the Cook Islands. 32.4% of the Twitter followers of the Brisbane Broncos are from outside Australia with 13 from China, 68 from Great Britain and 286 from the United States. 28.9% of the Brisbane Broncos on bebo comes outside Australia with 32 people from New Zealand, 10 from Papau New Guinea, 6 from the United States, 2 from Fiji, the Philippines and Tonga. The Queensland Reds unofficial Twitter follow list has 28.6% of its followers from outside the US. 50 followers are the US, 36 from Great Britain, 9 from Brazil and New Zealand, and 4 from Denmark and Italy.

bebo, Blogger and LiveJournal all allow users to display their age on their profiles. This can help develop a picture of the age of the a team’s community online. There is a small problem in that not everyone lists their age and these populations are very, very small. Thus, this data cannot be really used to extrapolate beyond the specific community unless there is some other evidence to support that.

For the Brisbane Broncos community on blogger, the average age is 33, median is 31, mode is 20 with 9 of 12 people listing their ages. This is not close to LiveJournal’s Broncos community which has an average age of 25, median age of 27 and mode age of 20 with 13 of 42 people listing their age. The bebo community is much younger than both with an average age of 23, median age of 20 and mode age of 19 with 127 of 278 people listing their age. For the lions, 49 people list their page on bebo with an average age of 24.5, median age of 21, mode age of 18. On blogger, 10 Lions fans list their age. They have a average ago of 33, median age of 30 and mode age of 27. For LiveJournal Lions fans, 17 list their age. They have an average age of 26, and a median and mode age of 24. Only one other group, Queensland Maroons on bebo, have more than 10 fans who list their ages. In that group, 21 list their ages, with an average age of 21.9, median age of 20 and mode age of 20.

Bebo and blogger both allow users to publicly display their gender. The team and network with the highest percentage of male fans involves the Queensland Reds on bebo, where all six individuals list their gender as male. The next highest percentage of male in the community include the Brisbane Bulls on bebo and the Queensland Bulls on bebo. In both cases, the percentage of males is 60%. In the case of the Brisbane Bulls, 40% or 2 people do not list a gender. For the Queensland Bulls, 20% or one person lists identifies as female and the other did not list a gender. The highest percentage of female members is the Queensland Bulls on blogger with 50% but that community only has two members. The next highest percentage is for the Brisbane Broncos community on blogger at 42% or five people identifying as female. All other members of that community identify as male. The Brisbane Lions community on blogger has a female percentage at 38, with 6 people identifying as female. 56% of the members identify as male and 6%, or one person, do not list a gender. The highest percentage of unknown/unlisted gender is for the Queensland Sundevils bebo community, which only has one person and they don’t identify their gender. After that is the Brisbane Roar community on bebo, where 69% or 11 people do not identify their gender, 4 people identify as male and 1 identifies as female. The Brisbane Lions community on bebo has 40% unknown/unlisted with 53 people not including their gender. 36% of the Lions bebo community identifies as male and 24% identifies as female.

This isn’t the best write up, mostly just summarizing some of the data. The rest of the data used for this post will show up in future posts. As I learn more, I’m planning on integrating more analysis of what this data means.

Ozzie Sport » Brisbane Broncos

Australian sports fandom on Gaia Online

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Distribution of Brisbane Broncos fans

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Data accuracy

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Brisbane’s sports community on LiveJournal and clones, bebo, blogger and Twitter

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