Archive for category Canberra Raiders

Most popular NRL related Twitter accounts (November 18)

Posted by Laura on Thursday, 18 November, 2010

I wasn’t intending to run this again until tomorrow.  Things came up.  I’m going away for the weekend and I want to get everyone’s follower information to see if I can’t begin to map that again.  Also, it’s been a month since I last that information.  (It took about five days.  That was back when Shane Warne had only 198,000 followers.)  I like benchmarking that data to see if there are geographic shifts in where people follow are from.  (How did the Monaghan story affect the Raiders fanbase?)  So yeah, I figured I would run the script this morning instead of a week from now.

This particular list only includes NRL related accounts. (And everyone on it appears on the list of most popular for all of Australia.)   I’m hoping all the labels are right.  If anything is incorrect, players switched team, I’m missing people… let me know and I’ll fix it.  And yeah, I’ve ranked this one so you can more easily see who is popular and who is not.  Finding Twitter lists related to the NRL has been rather hard so I’m less certain that this is complete than I am regarding the list for the AFL.

Rank Account League Team Description Followers Statuses Listed Friends
1 LoteTuqiri NRL Wests Tigers player 14852 4517 591 83
2 RealBigDell NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons unofficial 11811 6244 337 212
3 SamBurgess8 NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs player 10703 2199 231 116
4 NRL NRL NRL 10057 5313 323 52
5 jarrydhayne_1 NRL Parramatta Eels player 9943 1670 207 131
6 mat_rogers6 NRL Gold Coast Titans unofficial 7743 2554 323 149
7 robbiefarah NRL Wests Tigers player 5356 795 106 39
8 NathanHiney NRL Parramatta Eels player 4853 86 124 12
9 scottprince7 NRL Gold Coast Titans player 4746 676 96 102
10 markMGgeyer NRL Penrith Panthers former player 4519 917 194 108
11 The_Man_Mundine NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons former player 4470 765 73 60
12 brisbanebroncos NRL Brisbane Broncos official team (male) 4183 1317 162 4
13 BrettHodgson NRL Sydney Roosters player (male) 3667 1706 88 104
14 BENJI_MARSHALL6 NRL Wests Tigers player 3636 123 72 56
15 GCTitans NRL Gold Coast Titans 3578 478 146 24
16 TheFootyShowNRL NRL NRL television show 3325 163 82 87
17 tim_mannah NRL Parramatta Eels player 3194 266 78 65
18 nzwarriors NRL New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) unofficial 2968 259 92 377
19 bigjstevens NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks former player 2935 743 77 70
20 Wests_Tigers NRL Wests Tigers official 2876 714 109 820
21 MelbStormRLC NRL Melbourne Storm official 2591 793 132 2097
22 SSFCRABBITOHS NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs 2456 1615 130 1035
23 MarioFenech NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs former player (male) 2385 879 69 5
24 TripleM_NRL NRL NRL radio (male) 2182 1893 102 66
25 manlyseaeagles NRL Manly Sea Eagles 2035 1003 107 1973
26 M_Jennings_03 NRL Penrith Panthers player 1993 53 55 9
27 benross23 NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs unofficial 1825 1127 74 68
28 TheParraEels NRL Parramatta Eels fansite (male) 1783 357 53 20
29 NRLNEWS NRL NRL unofficial 1722 4333 49 492
30 iam_chriswalker NRL Gold Coast Titans former player (male) 1721 1746 96 51
31 FOXSPORTSAU_NRL NRL NRL news site 1720 2531 64 6
32 NRL_Dragons NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons official team (male) 1611 733 74 140
33 penrithpanthers NRL Penrith Panthers unofficial 1584 1360 91 88
34 NRL_Bulldogs NRL Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs official team (male) 1366 1230 42 83
35 kevin_gordon1 NRL Gold Coast Titans player 1328 41 38 19
36 EricGrotheJnr NRL Parramatta Eels player 1295 35 28 3
37 therabbitohs NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs official 1285 219 77 10
38 DarrenLockyer NRL Brisbane Broncos player (male) 1209 15 27 12
39 NRLTweet NRL NRL unofficial 1203 7493 65 229
40 gorgeousgrose NRL Manly Sea Eagles unofficial 1179 494 59 75
41 therealsteavis NRL NRL journalist (male) (TripleM) 1158 3253 65 1050
42 RaidersCanberra NRL Canberra Raiders 1123 212 84 6
43 parramatta_eels NRL Parramatta Eels 1105 17 40 1070
44 wolfmanwilliams NRL Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles player 1043 66 27 30
45 lukeodwyer NRL Gold Coast Titans unofficial 1029 795 63 71
46 PirtekParraEels NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 1014 57 60 7
47 AshHarrison1 NRL Gold Coast Titans unofficial 1004 216 56 25
48 MelbourneStorm_ NRL Melbourne Storm unofficial 1000 14 37 12
49 rabbitohs NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs unofficial 981 1299 46 718
50 Clintontoopi NRL Gold Coast Titans player 952 231 31 27
51 thenzwarriors NRL New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) 907 200 67 72
52 Cronulla_Sharks NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks official team (male) 864 405 66 55
53 robbieodavis1 NRL Newcastle Knights former player (male) 803 255 59 205
54 DanGinnane_MMM NRL NRL journalist (male) (TripleM) 788 1359 29 148
55 leaguescores NRL NRL fansite (male) 781 11245 48 342
56 TWiLeague NRL NRL show 746 2444 44 1486
57 TripleM_NRLlive NRL NRL radio (male) 720 948 30 1
58 RugbyLeagueFeed NRL NRL fansite 702 7851 37 211
59 Fergo1990 NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks unofficial 561 47 31 15
60 PlanetEels NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 554 2863 33 605
61 rleaguecom NRL NRL 540 4402 36 3
62 fakebrycegibbs NRL Wests Tigers unofficial 534 457 24 382
63 bigleaguemag NRL NRL 528 437 26 147
64 deadsetlegends NRL NRL journalist (male) (TripleM) 494 247 26 8
65 terrycampese NRL Canberra Raiders player (male) 487 63 37 8
66 broncosbigfan NRL Brisbane Broncos unofficial 473 971 31 511
67 nrlfanclub NRL NRL fansite 456 1931 28 365
68 NewyKnights NRL Newcastle Knights 454 186 19 584
69 mighty_dragons NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons unofficial 393 3 17 7
70 nthqldcowboys NRL North Queensland Cowboys 368 474 28 28
71 wade_graham NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks player (male) 368 6 19 2
72 NRLlivebetting NRL NRL unofficial 364 1959 5 18
73 goldcoasttitans NRL Gold Coast Titans fansite (male) 350 1 6 7
74 Bulldogs_FC NRL Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs fansite 341 314 19 7
75 FootyBoys NRL NRL fansite (male) 337 2034 13 166
76 lone_scout NRL NRL NRL Dream Team (male) 318 202 11 1
77 joe_tomane29 NRL Gold Coast Titans player 281 184 6 33
78 1eyedeel NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 251 1872 16 635
79 jsaffy NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons unofficial 244 9 23 11
80 GirlsLikeLeague NRL NRL fansite (female) 236 533 15 156
81 bulldogsnews NRL Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs unofficial 226 828 8 122
82 newtownrlfc NSWRL Newtown Jets official team (male) 214 611 19 0
83 tigers1908 NRL Balmain Tigers unofficial 208 75 14 7
84 DragonsRedV NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons fansite 203 0 16 0
85 CCBEARS NSWRL Central Coast Bears official team (male) 191 36 14 63
86 NRLKnights NRL Newcastle Knights 169 132 6 0
87 TitaniumBar NRL Gold Coast Titans 153 392 7 26
88 Aaron_Cannings NRL Gold Coast Titans unofficial 139 1 15 3
89 BennyGalea NRL Wests Tigers former player (now with Hull KR) 130 14 2 34
90 womeninleague NRL NRL 120 50 10 15
91 welovetheshire NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks fansite 103 8 7 362
92 oldie90 NRL Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles player (male) 92 305 6 35
93 RL1908 NRL NRL Rugby league historian/writer 89 94 4 111
94 Eelguts NRL Parramatta Eels radio commentator (male) 87 210 4 187
95 nrlthoughts NRL NRL fansite 59 120 1 217
96 parraeels NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 44 4 4 0
97 ChaseNRL NRL NRL journalist 41 116 4 65
98 sidelinedNRL NRL NRL fansite 24 64 4 8
99 WWWraidersNETau NRL Canberra Raiders fansite 16 1390 0 1
100 raba NSWRL Central Coast Bears fansite (male) 4 0 1 0
101 blueandgoldarmy NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 0 0 0 0

Related Posts:

Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 16)

Posted by Laura on Tuesday, 16 November, 2010

Yeah, it is that time again! I’ve added about 50 new accounts to this list. The focus was on adding cricketers and female athletes. There are a few that where the accounts to have been deleted and those are just left off this list rather than be signified with a 0. This is an updated version of Most popular Australian athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (version 2), October 4 and October 11,  and November 11. If I’m missing anyone or anything, let me know. This work is a constant work in progress, with the results changing every time it updates.  Every iteration should be an improvement.  (For example, the next run has one spelling variation for the national netball and fixed the typo for Bendigo.)  There should be around 40 new accounts in the version run either Friday, November 19 or on Monday, November 22.  I’ve tried to add more rugby players and fansites. (And @Essendon_FC .  Doh! I don’t know how I missed them. :( )I’ve also tried to add more baseball players and leagues.   Please let me know if any athlete, team, league, organization or fansite is missing.  If you have better descriptions for accounts listed, let me know. I will try to get it included in the next update.

This list contains non-Australian and non-Kiwi teams when the leagues play in other places.  As the Rugby World Cup is also coming up and it is being hosted in New Zealand (and I’m thinking of writing a paper about that), I’ve also included Rugby Unions from competing countries on the list.  Some international organizations have also been included.

I’ve been debating putting this information on a static page and updating that regularly in contrast to creating new posts every time I update the totals.  I haven’t found a compromise that makes me happy yet as I really like the historical data that becomes available by creating new posts.  As readers, you’re allowed to go back through posts and try to track the growth of some athletes and leagues.  That could have potential value depending on the narrative you create surrounding the data.  If people would prefer a static list, rather than new posts, please let me know and I will make the change in the future.

Account League Team Description Followers Statuses Listed Friends
warne888 Cricket Australia Victorian Bushrangers player 216432 2017 4330 95
MClarke23 Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues player 58012 599 1540 67
AndrewMBogut Basketball Australia Australian Boomers Andrew Bogut 29916 0 1545 162
Mick_Fanning Surf Life Saving Australia Mick Fanning surfer 25195 2207 914 259
JohnSmit123 Super League Natal Sharks player 20996 444 631 28
dmartyn30 Cricket Australia Western Warriors former player 20038 3279 802 990
VictorMatfield Super League Pretoria Bulls (Northern Bulls) player 18777 470 569 48
AFL AFL AFL official 16707 5327 571 1268
Olympics International Olympic Committee International Olympic Committee official 16603 438 1165 288
LoteTuqiri NRL Wests Tigers player 14767 4486 590 82
PH408 Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues player 14114 15 526 0
ItsStephRice Swimming Australia Stephanie Rice athlete (female) 13086 2956 422 51
australianopen Tennis Australia Tennis Australia event 12880 4198 1351 514
AllBlacks Rugby World Cup All Blacks fansite (male) 12653 6654 588 94
QuadeCooper Super League Queensland Reds player 12641 7730 389 47
CricketAus Cricket Australia Cricket Australia official 12411 4052 483 1267
RealBigDell NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons unofficial 11754 6244 333 211
harry_o AFL Collingwood Magpies player 10880 2202 301 534
LionsRugbyTeam Rugby World Cup South Africa Lions 10715 5047 336 11788
SamBurgess8 NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs player 10629 2182 228 114
NRL NRL NRL 10002 5302 322 52
jarrydhayne_1 NRL Parramatta Eels player 9894 1647 205 130
rugbyworldcup Rugby World Cup Rugby World Cup official (male) 9815 378 464 2727
Collingwood_FC AFL Collingwood Magpies official 9701 2089 291 5537
jimstynes AFL Melbourne Demons player 9449 145 226 13
karmichaelhunt AFL Gold Coast Football Club Karmichael Hunt (player) 9023 5403 292 192
giteau_rugby Super League ACT Brumbies player (male) 8910 469 263 38
Planet_Rugby Rugby World Cup Rugby World Cup fansite (male) 8669 9977 512 510
mornesteyn Super League Canterbury Crusaders unofficial 8571 83 291 8
JamesOConnor832 Super League Western Force player 8343 1326 248 47
mat_rogers6 NRL Gold Coast Titans unofficial 7705 2549 322 149
GaryAblettJnr AFL Geelong Cats player 6990 137 123 34
mickmalthouse AFL Collingwood Magpies Mick Malthouse 6856 87 187 27
adam_gilly Cricket Australia Western Warriors former player 6846 14 158 1
NBRACKEN142 Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues player (Nathan Bracken) (male) 6819 2871 293 224
Adelaide_FC AFL Adelaide Crows official 6693 3150 239 6637
DT_13 AFL Collingwood Magpies Dale Thomas 6619 286 141 19
bokrugby Rugby World Cup Springboks official team 6455 1411 313 119
CoryJane1080 Super League Wellington Hurricanes Cory Jane (male) 6415 2578 301 614
JobeWatson AFL Essendon Bombers player 6388 139 190 4
WelshRugbyUnion Rugby World Cup Welsh Rugby Union official (male) 6283 790 306 36
NeemiaTialata Super League Wellington Hurricanes Neemia Tialata 6278 2962 363 815
sydneyswans AFL Sydney Swans official 6209 2794 251 2436
SP_10 AFL Collingwood Magpies player 6030 346 125 65
drew_mitchell Super League New South Wales Waratahs player 5825 252 197 41
lehmo23 AFL Hawthorn Hawks player 5587 1860 208 590
stkildafc AFL St. Kilda Saints official 5476 2887 210 5551
AdamCoopy Super 14 ACT Brumbies player (male) 5361 172 181 40
robbiefarah NRL Wests Tigers player 5330 780 104 39
BrendanFevola05 AFL Brisbane Lions player 5314 271 145 28
AngusMonfries AFL Essendon Bombers player 5228 266 186 18
watsonjessica Yachting Australia Jessica Watson sailor (female) 5202 259 192 8
Carlton_FC AFL Carlton Blues official 5200 2505 238 4056
QantasWallabies Rugby World Cup Wallabies 5177 2537 266 450
socceroos World Cup Socceroos official 5128 527 229 2188
libby_trickett Swimming Australia Libby Trickett athlete (female) 4832 1415 164 111
NathanHiney NRL Parramatta Eels player 4814 86 123 13
scottprince7 NRL Gold Coast Titans player 4715 655 95 102
kurtley_beale Super League New South Wales Waratahs player 4599 277 143 25
markMGgeyer NRL Penrith Panthers former player 4501 1001 192 106
The_Man_Mundine NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons former player 4425 748 70 60
northkangaroos AFL North Melbourne Kangaroos official 4281 1983 163 4699
Richmond_FC AFL Richmond Tigers official 4263 1184 171 4690
SharrodW_21 AFL Collingwood Magpies player 4196 75 112 25
Sally_Fitz Surf Life Saving Australia Sally Fitzgibbons surfer (female) 4032 545 237 71
GeorgeGregan Rugby World Cup Wallabies player (male) 4012 609 133 28
Hurricanesrugby Super League Wellington Hurricanes 3984 691 176 3288
Geelong_FC AFL Geelong Cats fansite 3740 3746 161 1942
HawthornFC AFL Hawthorn Hawks official 3730 1047 170 10
BENJI_MARSHALL6 NRL Wests Tigers player 3640 123 72 56
GCTitans NRL Gold Coast Titans 3567 471 146 24
nathan2jones AFL Melbourne Demons player 3519 1476 146 309
SuperCoachAFL AFL AFL fansite 3384 219 170 2305
gypsy_gilmore Surf Life Saving Australia Stephanie Gilmore surfer (female) 3300 173 193 30
SpidaEveritt AFL AFL former player 3207 237 76 1409
tim_mannah NRL Parramatta Eels player 3177 263 77 65
nzwarriors NRL New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) unofficial 2951 259 91 377
DemonsHQ AFL Melbourne Demons official 2930 2050 158 543
bigjstevens NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks former player 2917 741 77 70
gomvfc A-League Melbourne Victory 2906 1347 168 1411
Wests_Tigers NRL Wests Tigers official 2871 714 108 820
sharksrugby Super League Durban Sharks (Coastal Sharks)(Natal Sharks) 2841 250 127 36
CyclingAus Cycling Australia Cycling Australia official 2833 1369 174 42
GoldCoastFC AFL Gold Coast Football Club official 2793 938 150 604
British_Lions Rugby World Cup British Lions team (male) 2788 343 94 794
craiglowndes888 V8 Supercars TeamVodafone driver 2737 98 144 41
marcmurphy3 AFL Carlton Blues player 2644 127 83 40
stevenbaker10 AFL St. Kilda Saints player 2624 755 71 125
Fremantle_FC AFL Fremantle Dockers official 2602 651 141 164
LayneCBeachley Surf Life Saving Australia Layne Beachley surfer (female) 2591 187 124 33
MelbStormRLC NRL Melbourne Storm official 2573 788 130 2066
CamSchwab AFL Melbourne Demons ceo 2547 2102 106 460
WCEofficial AFL West Coast Eagles 2542 1363 143 708
PAFC AFL Port Adelaide Power official 2533 1245 162 79
RWC2011 Rugby World Cup Rugby World Cup fansite (male) 2506 39 146 1961
TennisAustralia Tennis Australia Tennis Australia official 2459 2105 226 95
SSFCRABBITOHS NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs 2444 1609 130 1035
stevesmith49 Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues player (male) 2424 230 104 26
Follow24Hodge NBL Melbourne Tigers player 2394 2997 129 58
KeeganDaniel Super League Natal Sharks player 2315 230 77 15
Bushrangers Cricket Australia Victorian Bushrangers official 2293 2225 135 1000
AndrewMackieGFC AFL Geelong Cats player 2288 33 97 3
THESTORMERS Super League Cape Town Stormers (Western Stormers) 2288 387 90 213
unionargentina Rugby World Cup Union Argentina Rugby team (male) 2119 445 59 61
chooka_86 AFL Carlton Blues player 2111 1494 76 197
Rickypetterd15 AFL Melbourne Demons unofficial 2058 336 93 89
manlyseaeagles NRL Manly Sea Eagles 2023 1000 107 1973
Adam0017 AFL Western Bulldogs player 2011 230 60 86
westernbulldogs AFL Western Bulldogs official 2006 314 101 51
M_Jennings_03 NRL Penrith Panthers player 1989 53 55 9
andrewswallow AFL North Melbourne Kangaroos unofficial 1979 362 85 15
MCC_Members AFL Melbourne Demons 1919 796 49 1591
Beamdogg AFL Melbourne Demons player 1906 147 65 112
socceroos_news World Cup Socceroos unofficial 1859 12554 82 1712
BradMilzy AFL Melbourne Demons player 1855 147 60 79
benross23 NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs unofficial 1815 1114 73 67
SharelleVixens ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens player (female) 1786 301 70 43
howcroft AFL Melbourne Demons player 1768 276 70 78
MelbourneVixens ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens official team (female) 1721 825 71 25
clairebevo Surf Life Saving Australia Claire Bevilacqua surfer (female) 1715 1257 115 234
NRLNEWS NRL NRL unofficial 1708 4239 47 482
FOXSPORTSAU_NRL NRL NRL news site 1705 2521 64 6
anthonyalsop AFL AFL sport media specialist (male) 1694 12371 119 1437
snorkymortlock Super League ACT Brumbies player 1692 83 94 14
Real_ColSylvia AFL Melbourne Demons player 1683 20 56 32
caseydellacqua Tennis Australia Casey Dellacqua player (female athlete) 1661 13 221 24
bigdyman AFL Collingwood Magpies player 1659 585 88 23
AndrewMcDonald4 Cricket Australia Victorian Bushrangers Andrew McDonald 1647 232 99 49
AUSOlympicTeam International Olympic Committee Australian Olympic Committee official 1639 485 109 49
paigehareb Surfing New Zealand Paige Hareb surfer (female) 1635 1032 121 52
Hawks_AFL AFL Hawthorn Hawks unofficial 1625 1081 30 1951
Staffy9 Super League Auckland Blues Alby Mathewson (male) 1589 1315 99 64
penrithpanthers NRL Penrith Panthers unofficial 1577 1360 90 88
nzheraldrugby Rugby World Cup All Blacks newspaper (NZ Herald) 1575 5090 93 5
SteveAlessio AFL Essendon Bombers former Essendon AFL player 1566 761 80 222
warrentredrea AFL Port Adelaide Power player 1530 493 58 91
Joeingles7 NBL South Dragons unofficial 1527 981 84 53
sgrigg88 AFL Carlton Blues player 1488 85 52 17
kadesimpson6 AFL Carlton Blues player 1487 47 49 13
katehollywood10 Hockey Australia Hockeyroos player (female) 1477 824 59 86
_Moffy Triathlon Australia Emma Moffatt triathlete (female) 1471 71 97 19
Adelaide36ers NBL Adelaide 36ers 1447 878 84 835
ALFbrisbane AFL Brisbane Lions fansite 1441 38 58 3
ireland_rugby Rugby World Cup Irish Rugby Union official (male) 1439 860 72 3
crusadersrugby Super League Canterbury Crusaders 1436 127 93 2
SydneyFC1011 A-League Sydney FC 1433 3222 106 1234
PeterDaicos AFL Collingwood Magpies unofficial 1413 59 77 678
arodionova Tennis Australia Anastasia Rodionova player (female athlete) 1409 325 241 19
clintmckay27 Cricket Australia Victorian Bushrangers Clint Mckay 1393 145 71 28
QLDrollerderby Australia Roller Derby Queensland RollerDerby Roller Derby team or league 1368 406 78 1908
NZStuffSport General New Zealand sport General New Zealand sport fansite 1332 11367 77 14
kevin_gordon1 NRL Gold Coast Titans player 1326 40 38 19
team_gws AFL Greater Western Sydney official 1320 252 77 175
brett_kirk AFL Sydney Swans player (Brett Kirk) (male) 1313 8 20 2
BrumbiesRugby Super 14 ACT Brumbies official 1309 892 86 134
NBLhoops NBL NBL 1285 959 75 90
RochelleGilmore Cycling Australia Rochelle Gilmore biker (female athlete) 1281 115 87 90
therabbitohs NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs official 1273 218 77 10
EricGrotheJnr NRL Parramatta Eels player 1268 33 26 3
ClarkeVC Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues player 1267 16 43 32
adrianleijer A-League Melbourne Victory player, Adrian Leijer 1266 185 83 62
geoffhuegill Swimming Australia Geoff Huegill retired athlete, former Olympian 1248 20 56 12
wgtnphoenixfc A-League Wellington Phoenix 1242 732 69 78
Reds_Rugby Super League Queensland Reds 1233 230 67 28
zacd_6 AFL St. Kilda Saints player 1221 115 34 55
CaleMorton AFL Melbourne Demons player 1218 225 47 57
TorahBright Ski and Snowboard Australia Torah Bright snowboarder (female) 1211 164 78 2
auckland2011 Rugby World Cup Rugby World Cup official city 1204 348 47 959
AFLphotos AFL AFL official 1197 784 57 96
NRLTweet NRL NRL unofficial 1196 7426 64 228
MichaelWrightMP AIS South Australia Institute of Sport Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Recreation, Sport and Racing 1195 597 91 1675
AFL_Shifter AFL AFL talent scout Kevin Sheehan 1176 108 35 12
cmail_sport General Australian sport General Australian sport newspaper (Courier Mail Sport section) 1166 7862 28 9
gorgeousgrose NRL Manly Sea Eagles unofficial 1164 490 57 75
BLACKCAPS Cricket New Zealand Cricket New Zealand official team (male) 1161 715 90 9
AFLInsider AFL AFL official 1159 54 58 84
NetballAust Netball Australia Netball Australia (female) 1159 442 58 133
LawrieMcKinna A-League Central Coast Mariners Football Club coach 1157 2130 85 1
ADRD Australia Roller Derby Adelaide RollerDerby official 1152 654 99 696
richtercity New Zealand Roller Derby RC Roller Derby Roller Derby team or league from New Zealand 1146 1016 88 506
TimmyRRoe Cycling Australia Timothy Roe athlete (male) 1129 105 79 58
RaidersCanberra NRL Canberra Raiders 1118 211 83 6
wollongonghawks NBL Wollongong Hawks 1113 1929 77 1698
RedsRugby Super League Queensland Reds unofficial 1105 370 53 174
parramatta_eels NRL Parramatta Eels 1103 17 40 1070
sydneyderby Australia Roller Derby Sydney Roller Derby Roller Derby team or league 1082 114 92 123
samjacobs32 AFL Carlton Blues player 1077 53 35 23
rebekahkeat Triathlon Australia Rebekah Keat triathlete (female) 1064 82 85 38
AFL_JenWitham AFL AFL 1061 859 56 281
aussieboomers Basketball Australia Australian Boomers national team 1040 484 72 0
MarkBosnich NSW Premier League Sydney Olympic unofficial 1038 29 58 15
wolfmanwilliams NRL Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles player 1036 64 27 30
thefootballsack A-League A-League fansite 1034 6591 66 1850
Rivshouse AFL Melbourne Demons player 1032 10 49 8
alauterstein Swimming Australia Andrew Lauterstein athlete 1027 702 63 152
perthwildcats NBL Perth Wildcats 1024 270 64 69
hockeyaus Hockey Australia Hockey Australia official federation 1018 525 64 698
lukeodwyer NRL Gold Coast Titans unofficial 1016 789 63 71
PirtekParraEels NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 1006 57 59 7
AshHarrison1 NRL Gold Coast Titans unofficial 1004 216 56 25
MelbourneStorm_ NRL Melbourne Storm unofficial 1000 14 37 12
collingwoodnews AFL Collingwood Magpies unofficial 999 6 34 1
ade_cyclists Cycling South Australia Adelaide Cyclists club 991 3223 78 508
saskystewart AWIHL AWIHL player (female) 990 6332 89 1050
AussieDiamonds Netball Australia Australian Diamonds national team (female) 983 581 52 83
bater06 AFL Melbourne Demons Matthew Bate 977 112 40 63
NicLiv Swimming Australia Nicole Livingstone retired athlete, former Olympian (female) 975 72 42 20
njbrown17 AFL St. Kilda Saints player 975 43 54 19
rabbitohs NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs unofficial 974 1298 45 719
nqfuryfc A-League North Queensland Fury FC 973 2279 70 1771
sba_ Skateboarding Australia Skateboarding Australia official 972 704 18 1918
VODA_WGTN_LIONS NPC Wellington Lions official team (male) 968 1160 55 982
melbournerebels Super League Melbourne Rebels 967 149 51 749
troychaplin30 AFL Port Adelaide Power player 958 315 38 85
jessmileydyer Surf Life Saving Australia Jess Miley-Dyer surfer (female) 950 624 66 166
Clintontoopi NRL Gold Coast Titans player 949 231 31 27
bcr_rollerderby Australia Roller Derby Brisbane City Rollers Roller Derby team or league 943 487 64 905
PerthGlory_FC A-League Perth Glory 927 92 84 39
ASICSaustralia Australian Olympic Committee Australian Olympic Committee apparel (official brand) 926 301 41 102
andrew_symonds Cricket Australia Queensland Bulls player 923 2 35 5
FFRugby Rugby World Cup French Rugby Union team (male) 923 142 74 11
JasonJohnson14 AFL Essendon Bombers former Essendon AFL player 918 89 36 29
tamsynlewis Athletics Australia Tamsyn Lewis athlete, media personality 914 1818 49 148
thenzwarriors NRL New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) 900 191 66 72
unicanberra AIS University of Canberra National Institute of Sport Studies 897 150 56 316
Mozzie21 Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues player (male) 885 287 67 46
meagen_nay Swimming Australia Meagen Nay athlete (female) 877 1537 47 104
milkandco Swimming Australia Michael Klim athlete 870 271 24 128
patjonker Cycling Australia Patrick Jonker athlete (male) (retired) 863 63 58 30
ssalopek3 AFL Port Adelaide Power player 853 197 36 51
thesydneykings NBL Sydney Kings official 852 519 50 20
biancachatfield ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens player (Bianca Chatfield) (female) 834 633 40 115
L_Weeks Super League Queensland Reds player 808 670 57 131
JulieCorletto ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens Julie Corletto (female) 797 347 28 123
AFLBrisbaneFC AFL Brisbane Lions fansite 795 1204 34 25
BNERoar A-League Brisbane Roar unofficial 791 1046 60 242
Robeddy40 AFL St. Kilda Saints player 782 73 29 52
backingblack Rugby World Cup All Blacks fansite (male) 770 1080 43 840
Renaehallinan ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens player (female) (Renae Hallinan) 768 455 35 49
laurafirebirds ANZ Championship Queensland Firebirds player (female) 766 43 39 11
APWelsh AFL Essendon Bombers player 760 59 27 56
Soph_Edington Swimming Australia Soph Edington athlete (female) 757 350 58 216
lauraenever Surf Life Saving Australia Laura Enever surfer (female) 753 70 54 72
StarsIceHockey AIHL Southern Stars Ice Hockey Club team (male) 752 941 9 1879
TWiLeague NRL NRL show 742 2427 42 1486
JaredCrouch AFL Sydney Swans former player 724 675 43 128
SophieSmith86 General Australian sport General Australian sport sport journalist for Geelong Advertisers (female) 721 2136 52 278
johnrillie NBL New Zealand Breakers unofficial 718 3093 52 376
victoryinmelb A-League Melbourne Victory 715 2055 53 102
MitchellWatt Athletics Australia Mitchell Watt athlete 707 1471 41 142
brisbaneroar A-League Brisbane Roar 700 608 67 33
RugbyLeagueFeed NRL NRL fansite 692 7825 37 209
NatTbirds ANZ Championship Adelaide Thunderbirds (female) 688 102 42 24
becwoods Surf Life Saving Australia Rebecca Woods surfer (female) 669 122 57 486
RTTF_AU AFL Sydney Swans fansite 669 1298 38 925
sumostevenson General New Zealand sport General New Zealand sport journalist (SKY Sport New Zealand) (male) 665 1099 37 467
newcastle_jets A-League Newcastle Jets 664 16 44 14
adelaideunited A-League Adelaide United team (male) 660 250 50 133
RustyRussell02 AFL Carlton Blues player (male) 658 17 19 9
amberhalliday Cycling Australia Amber Halliday rower, biker (female) 651 1753 69 328
newto29 AFL Melbourne Demons player 651 193 31 94
Freo_Dockers AFL Fremantle Dockers fansite 642 2281 43 374
SusanSwifts ANZ Championship New South Wales Swifts player (female) 641 558 37 32
ash_delaney Swimming Australia Ashley Delaney athlete (female) 633 1467 46 70
NSWRL Rugby League/State of Origin New South Wales Blues 630 721 37 81
GGArmy World Cup Socceroos unofficial 629 559 36 628
RowingAust Rowing Australia Rowing Australia official 618 158 26 18
crickettas Cricket Australia Tassie Tigers state organization 615 236 39 1
SANFLnews SANFL SANFL news site 615 2111 41 105
hughesy_53 AFL Melbourne Demons player 612 80 24 43
wingsofperth AFL West Coast Eagles unofficial 612 847 10 8
AliciaMolik Tennis Australia Alicia Molik player (female athlete) 604 22 71 8
PencilsCase AFL Melbourne Demons Jake Spencer 588 36 38 40
eddiecowan Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues player 587 1180 47 171
Wortho33 NBL Melbourne Tigers player 569 469 32 65
Fergo1990 NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks unofficial 561 47 31 15
SFCNews A-League Sydney FC unofficial 557 864 59 135
PlanetEels NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 553 2857 33 606
TsvCrocs NBL Townsville Crocodiles 548 2227 43 374
Sam_Blease AFL Melbourne Demons player 545 67 15 67
Maverick_weller AFL Gold Coast Football Club player 540 590 31 74
fakebrycegibbs NRL Wests Tigers unofficial 535 456 22 382
ultimatealeague A-League A-League fansite 534 3701 48 101
milisimic NBL Wollongong Hawks player 530 4098 40 853
CatsGM NBL Perth Wildcats 526 2908 61 59
flickabram Triathlon Australia Felicity Abram triathlete (female) 525 670 31 111
WestEndRedbacks Cricket Australia Southern Redbacks fansite (male) 520 569 46 130
rachneylan Cycling Australia Rachel Neylan athlete (female) 519 702 52 256
rgray17 AFL Port Adelaide Power player 514 52 21 42
adelaidereds A-League Adelaide United team (male) 513 1300 60 286
Carltonfc AFL Carlton Blues fansite 507 602 19 58
NikButterfield Cycling Australia Nikki Butterfield biker (female athlete) 507 1836 50 102
Kimmygee8 Netball Australia Aussie Diamonds player (female) 493 540 25 98
snowygrl Triathlon Australia MacBeth Kingsbury Watson triathlete (female) 493 2316 33 867
TalkingCarlton AFL Carlton Blues fansite 489 2236 33 36
FremantleFC AFL Fremantle Dockers unofficial 485 2 13 0
mstarc56 Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues player (male) 483 95 36 31
AthsAust Athletics Australia Athletics Australia organization 481 659 29 109
BrendanWhiteX AFL Hawthorn Hawks player (male) 475 65 10 29
ABLeague Australian Baseball League Australian Baseball League official 474 0 22 5
broncosbigfan NRL Brisbane Broncos unofficial 474 971 31 510
CricketNSWBlues Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues fansite (male) 463 621 33 379
BlairEvans Swimming Australia Blair Evans athlete 461 438 22 94
chomicide NBL Townsville Crocodiles player 460 897 29 481
Jade_Sutcliffe Triathlon Australia Jade Sutcliffe triathlete (female) 459 663 10 69
MitchJbrown17 AFL West Coast Eagles unofficial 459 13 42 6
AnnaMeares Cycling Australia Anna Meares biker (female athlete) 458 49 31 202
essendonfc AFL Essendon Bombers unofficial 457 2 10 0
Dusty_Rychart NBL Cairns Taipans player 455 1848 30 61
netballvic Netball Victoria Netball Victoria (female) 452 80 29 625
NZBreakers NBL New Zealand Breakers 450 179 39 14
wallabies_rugby Rugby World Cup Wallabies fansite (male) 444 2015 43 3
WilliamstownFC VFL Williamstown FC official 437 494 17 302
PAFCNews AFL Port Adelaide Power fansite (male) 428 1419 17 151
ryanmcrowley AFL Fremantle Dockers player 426 31 26 17
shayne_hope General Australian sport General Australian sport sport journalist (The West Australian) (male) 424 3928 27 190
KateBevNetball ANZ Championship Adelaide Thunderbirds player (Kate Beveridge) (female) 422 239 21 24
Israel_Folau NRL Brisbane Broncos player 420 204 14 10
saracarrigan Cycling Australia Sara Carrigan coach (female athlete) 419 14 30 36
GCUSC A-League Gold Coast United unofficial supporter club 418 1036 34 470
dsrwa AIS Western Australia Institute of Sport The Department of Sport and Recreation 411 444 23 29
Bridie_OD Cycling Australia Bridie O’Donnell biker (Cyclones) (female athlete) 410 764 37 29
madibrowne ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens player (Madison Browne) (female) 409 180 21 27
SarahLWall ANZ Championship Melbourne Vixens player (Sarah L Wall) (female athlete) 397 203 16 75
mighty_dragons NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons unofficial 392 3 17 7
teamjaycoskins UCI Continental Team (Oceania Region) Team Jayco Skins / Cycling Australia official 391 137 26 22
qldcricket Cricket Australia Queensland Bulls state organization 384 286 29 22
HalfTimeHeroes World Cup Socceroos soccer fansite 380 370 20 1113
_the_kennel_ AFL Western Bulldogs fansite 379 2758 20 37
piratecity New Zealand Roller Derby Pirate City Rollers Roller Derby team or league from New Zealand 371 312 33 317
bmsew AFL Hawthorn Hawks unofficial 366 0 24 64
NRLlivebetting NRL NRL unofficial 364 0 5 18
geelongrollers Australia Roller Derby Geelong Roller Derby Roller Derby team or league 361 15 32 52
Blueseum AFL Carlton Blues fansite 357 185 17 1423
NBRrollerderby Australia Roller Derby NBR Roller Derby Roller Derby team or league 356 1178 29 237
SusanWCFever ANZ Championship West Coast Fever player (female) 353 236 25 22
nswswifts ANZ Championship New South Wales Swifts official team (female) 349 10 27 8
CCMarinersFC A-League Central Coast Mariners Football Club unofficial 345 658 40 127
CaseyScorpions VFL Casey Scorpions 343 88 14 5
amygillettfdn Cycling Australia Amy Gillett track cyclists (female) 339 148 13 106
kennymonk Swimming Australia Kenrick Monk athlete 334 599 8 89
MelbourneFC AFL Melbourne Demons fansite 330 1 9 0
mhfcsupporters A-League Melbourne Heart 329 743 30 87
athsvic Athletics Australia Athletics Victoria federation 325 2126 17 223
WestCoastEagles AFL West Coast Eagles unofficial 315 2 2 0
oscarforman NBL New Zealand Breakers unofficial 314 526 26 43
AdelaideTBirds ANZ Championship Adelaide Thunderbirds official team (female) 313 175 21 0
SouthYarraSC Football Federation Victoria South Yarra Soccer Club club 311 420 6 119
bigfootynews AFL AFL fansite 309 139 15 141
ccaallward AFL Western Bulldogs player 308 1 33 0
demonland AFL Melbourne Demons fansite 305 566 12 209
go_saints AFL St. Kilda Saints fansite 304 68 13 274
PerthRollaDerby Australia Roller Derby Perth Roller Derby Roller Derby team or league 300 58 35 39
TheRealSchensh NBL Perth Wildcats player 300 47 22 51
TheMelbourneIce AIHL Melbourne Ice 298 522 21 1
Dockerland AFL Fremantle Dockers fansite 293 387 13 0
Brogsy5 AFL Port Adelaide Power player 292 28 17 49
Demonblog AFL Melbourne Demons fansite 292 3431 14 53
kristy_giteau Australian Rugby Union Wallaroos player (female) (Kristy Giteau) 292 238 23 26
DarrenNg8 NBL Adelaide 36ers player 291 248 19 77
TheFirebirds ANZ Championship Adelaide Thunderbirds team (female) 291 89 16 32
melbourneaces ABL Melbourne Aces official team (male) 289 174 12 295
rustyhinder NBL Townsville Crocodiles player 288 572 26 115
NB_Roosters VFL North Ballarat Roosters 287 104 14 16
520507 AIS University of Canberra National Institute of Sport Studies Keith Lyons 282 1781 14 347
joe_tomane29 NRL Gold Coast Titans player 282 179 6 32
WNBL WNBL WNBL (female) 278 405 28 46
AusCanoe Australian Canoeing Australian Canoeing official 272 192 17 17
ausvolley Volleyball Australia Volleyball Australia 270 368 16 9
gymaustralia Gymnastics Australia Gymnastics Australia official 270 496 5 12
Andrew_Crowell AFL Adelaide Crows AFL Ladder Project Officer (Adelaide Crows Emcee) (SANFL Radio Commentator) 269 512 18 257
AusComGamesTeam Australian Commonwealth Games Team Australian Commonwealth Games Team organization 268 34 15 38
MattAbood Swimming Australia Matt Abood athlete 268 283 32 28
AUFC_Official A-League Adelaide United team (male) 263 44 25 18
AUSParalympics Australia Paralympics Australia Paralympics organization 263 173 19 90
wirdrollerderby Australia Roller Derby Wollongong Derby Roller Derby team or league 261 281 37 153
sarahkent90 Cycling Australia Sarah Kent biker (female athlete) 260 587 32 56
JoeyDaye AFL Gold Coast Football Club player 259 297 26 118
catslisch NBL Perth Wildcats 258 167 13 15
CyclonesHQ Cycling Australia Cyclones 2010 Road World Championships (national team) 256 509 14 245
Robert_Hurley Swimming Australia Swimming Australia Athlete (Robert Hurley) 256 306 22 64
sydneybears AIHL Sydney Bears 256 566 6 483
AussieBall Australian Olympic Committee Australian Olympic Committee Australian sport fansite 253 2653 25 340
katebevilaqua Triathlon Australia Kate Bevilaqua triathlete (female) 250 1087 23 55
1eyedeel NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 249 1857 16 636
jsaffy NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons unofficial 244 9 21 11
petrinaprice Athletics Australia Petrina Price athlete, high jumper (female) 242 1005 15 142
BionicSwan AFL Sydney Swans unofficial 240 415 27 20
RohanDennis Cycling Australia Dennis Rohan athlete (male) 238 13 27 35
SportingSheilas Australian Olympic Committee Australian Olympic Committee fansite (female) 236 511 21 107
Mengelsman Swimming Australia Michelle Engelsman athlete (female) 231 876 6 458
VicInstSport AIS Victorian Institute of Sport official 231 145 8 261
theNSWIS AIS New South Wales Institute of Sport official 230 383 5 306
crickethof Cricket Australia Cricket Australia Cricket Hall of fame 228 313 18 656
NorwoodFC SANFL Norwood Football Club official team (male) 228 166 9 54
sallypeers3 Tennis Australia Sally Peers player (female athlete) 227 7 29 8
bulldogsnews NRL Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs unofficial 225 827 8 123
jgovereasy NBL Adelaide 36ers player 225 234 13 263
s14_force Super League Western Australia Force (Western Force) 225 81 13 2
sashpet Handball Australia Canberra Handball Club player 225 1156 9 912
SportForWomen Australian Olympic Committee Australian Olympic Committee fansite (female) 224 497 9 315
NABCup AFL AFL fansite 220 2365 23 217
JK404 Cricket Australia Tassie Tigers player ( Jason Krejza ) (male) 217 162 31 31
SydAFLFan AFL Sydney Swans fan account 216 674 8 625
mvfcfanzone A-League Melbourne Victory 215 130 25 160
SturtFC SANFL Sturt Football Club official team (male) 214 39 13 13
QLD_Maroons Rugby League/State of Origin Queensland Maroons 212 1 6 1
GCRollerDerby Australia Roller Derby Gold Coast Roller Derby Roller Derby team or league 211 89 23 421
briansham AFL Fremantle Dockers unofficial 210 76 18 12
OZrollerderby Australia Roller Derby Australia RollerDerby Roller Derby team or league 209 340 25 53
Epicrollerderby Australia Roller Derby ENRG Roller Derby Roller Derby team or league 208 449 20 232
tigers1908 NRL Balmain Tigers unofficial 208 75 14 7
pattmurphy Swimming Australia Patrick Murphy athlete 207 1010 8 107
Taranakirugby New Zealand Rugby Union Taranaki Rugby official (male) 207 306 21 121
hayden_stoeckel Swimming Australia Hayden Stoeckel athlete (male) 201 22 13 38
matesOmelbourne AFL Melbourne Demons unofficial 200 25 14 22
s14_queensland Super League Queensland Reds unofficial 200 87 11 2
Ausport AIS AIS Official Australian Sports Commission and Australian Institute of Sport 198 54 12 34
Centericeaus AIHL AIHL fansite (male) 198 1092 0 470
AFLgf2 AFL AFL fansite 196 148 4 849
Saints_FC AFL St. Kilda Saints fansite 196 86 14 8
TABNewZealand General New Zealand sport General New Zealand sport gambling site 195 654 12 11
timmacs Cricket Australia Tassie Tigers player (Tim Macdonald ) (male) 195 381 25 106
CF_Demons AFL Melbourne Demons fansite 194 344 10 106
WgtnRugby Super League Wellington Hurricanes union account (male) 194 627 14 14
AustralianOpals Basketball Australia Australian Opals national team (female) 191 19 4 486
sw_cultivate Australian Olympic Committee Australian Olympic Committee sport management company 185 819 11 458
SydneyBlueSox ABL Sydney Blue Sox official team (male) 185 204 16 27
AusWomensGame W-League W-League fansite (female) 183 761 14 47
sydneykings NBL Sydney Kings 183 90 16 60
Marcus__White AFL North Melbourne Kangaroos player 179 33 21 27
MPNFL Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League official league 177 2161 3 111
Towns_Villains Australia Roller Derby Towns Villains Roller Derby Roller Derby team or league 176 67 26 239
localfootysa SANFL SANFL news site 175 71 12 307
CanberraCycling Cycling ACT Canberra Cycling Club organizational website 174 346 6 3
wceaglesfc AFL West Coast Eagles fansite 172 110 5 55
Cuttsy31 Cricket Queensland Queensland Bulls player (male) 170 135 19 43
shaunanderson22 Hockey Australia Hockeyroos Manager at Hockey Australia (female) 167 341 0 440
AaronNye23 Cricket Australia Queensland Bulls player (Aaron Nye) (male) 164 516 7 219
Nrimmington Cricket Australia Queensland Bulls player (Nathan Rimmington) (male) 163 155 20 53
swansreserves AFL Canberra Sydney Swans Reserves 162 1707 7 154
TheFlyingBats Football New South Wales The Flying Bats team (female) 162 243 9 89
victorytwit A-League Melbourne Victory unofficial 161 1172 12 49
danjackson9 NBL Wollongong Hawks player 157 325 13 79
CaulfieldBears SFL Caulfield Bears 156 1170 4 243
WesternReds NSW Touch Association Western Reds official team (male) 154 114 1 538
ceonetballvic Netball Australia Netball Victoria ceo of Netball Victoria 152 48 8 64
AIHL AIHL AIHL 150 313 7 33
saltydolls Australia Roller Derby Salty Dolls Roller Derby team or league 150 29 15 189
AFL_Aus AFL AFL fansite 148 314 10 0
Cats_Coach NBL Perth Wildcats 147 71 9 11
ftscrazy AFL Western Bulldogs fansite 147 327 12 29
adelaidefc AFL Adelaide Crows fansite 145 186 5 0
MelissaBreen_ Athletics Australia Melissa Breen athlete (female) 145 234 11 48
ForrestPJ Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues player (Peter James Forrest) (male) 143 86 24 35
BrisbaneBandits ABL Brisbane Bandits official team (male) 142 155 8 17
CatsWagstaff NBL Perth Wildcats 140 143 7 16
PerthHeat ABL Perth Heat official team (male) 140 218 11 28
RWBFooty AFL St. Kilda Saints unofficial 140 536 8 79
Aaron_Cannings NRL Gold Coast Titans unofficial 138 1 15 3
kateporter83 Australian Rugby Union Wallaroos player (female) 138 224 18 24
WomensportNSW AIS New South Wales Institute of Sport fansite 137 524 7 127
SWSRockets Australia Roller Derby SWS Rockets Roller Derby team or league 134 257 18 308
LisaWeightman Athletics Australia Lisa Weightman Marathon runner, Olympian (female) 133 234 12 20
CatsTM NBL Perth Wildcats 132 129 11 36
CricNSWBreakers Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Breakers official team (female) 132 357 13 104
melbfcblog AFL Melbourne Demons fansite 132 147 5 82
mckeonswimming Swimming Australia Swimming New South Wales Swimming school 129 287 5 240
JoshJenkins24 NBL Townsville Crocodiles player 127 2399 12 103
LaurenBoden Athletics Australia Lauren Boden athlete (female) 125 123 10 52
LDevanna_dc Football Federation Australia Matildas player (Lisa De Vanna) (female) 125 0 16 1
KristenBeams Cricket Victoria DEC Spirit player (Kristen Beams) (female) 124 144 9 50
PortMagpies SANFL Port Adelaide Magpies team (male) 123 61 8 0
copes9 Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues player (male) 122 139 15 37
TasU18s U18 National Championships Tasmania U18s team 122 18 3 7
WA_U18s U18 National Championships Western Australia U18s team 120 2 3 10
yellow_n_black AFL Richmond Tigers unofficial 120 1126 12 12
womeninleague NRL NRL 119 50 10 15
BF_Lions AFL Brisbane Lions fansite 117 416 5 46
fatloaf Gridiron Australia Nationals Perth Blitz player 116 874 5 235
Cats_Media NBL Perth Wildcats 115 232 8 210
thecattery AFL Geelong Cats unofficial 112 478 8 28
Bradenstokes AFL AFL Player Relations Coordinator with the AFLPA 110 307 5 157
SA_U18s U18 National Championships South Australia U18s team 110 2 4 8
ahealy77 Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Breakers player (female) 109 105 13 30
southadelaidefc SANFL South Adelaide Football Club official team (male) 109 29 7 1
gcbluetongues AIHL Gold Coast Bluetongues 107 693 3 47
SEABL Semi Professional Basketball League Semi Professional Basketball League 106 964 11 42
GlenelgFC SANFL Glenelg Football Club official team (male) 105 17 6 0
VicMetroU18s U18 National Championships Victoria U18s team 103 0 6 4
AlexBlackwell2 Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Breakers player (female) 102 42 12 33
ozcardtrader General Australian sport General Australian sport fansite 101 4425 2 53
QldU18s U18 National Championships Queensland U18s team 99 1 3 5
RachaelHaynes Cricket Victoria DEC Spirit player (RachaelHaynes) (female) 99 165 8 56
pmnevill Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues Peter Nevill (male) 97 8 9 20
CanberraCavalry ABL Canberra Cavalry official team (male) 95 110 10 7
Sydney_Netball Netball New South Wales Netball New South Wales Organization (female) 95 336 6 63
36ers NBL Adelaide 36ers unofficial 94 1 11 16
hawkaDT AFL Hawthorn Hawks fansite 94 12 4 473
demonwiki AFL Melbourne Demons fansite 93 195 3 76
ElyseVillani Cricket Victoria DEC Spirit player (Elyse Villani) (female) 93 74 9 27
ACT4GWS AFL Greater Western Sydney 92 219 3 58
mmurpha Volleyball Australia Volleyball SA unofficial 92 75 2 158
VicCountryU18s U18 National Championships Victoria U18s team 91 0 5 5
Debby_H_Rugby Australian Rugby Union Wallaroos player (female) (Debby Hodgkinson) 90 16 11 14
CatsGear NBL Perth Wildcats 89 102 5 54
natskii AFL Brisbane Lions player (male) 89 656 4 173
WA_Roller_Derby Australia Roller Derby WA Roller Derby Roller Derby team or league 89 6 12 82
CatsTickets NBL Perth Wildcats 88 18 7 7
KirstyBroun Cycling Australia Kirsty Broun biker (female athlete) 88 39 19 40
samikennedy Ski and Snowboard Australia Sami Kennedy Australian National Ski Cross Team Athlete (female) 88 176 5 130
newcastlederby Australia Roller Derby NRDL Roller Derby team or league 87 76 14 10
nunawading_sc Swimming Australia Nunawading Swimming Club Swimming club/school 86 234 3 14
ANZnetball ANZ Championship ANZ Championship league (female) 85 11 4 34
bendigospirit WNBL Bendio Spirit (female) 85 267 7 64
mariekeguehrer Swimming Australia Marieke Guehrer swimmer (female athlete) 85 40 8 82
NT_U18s U18 National Championships Northern Territory U18s team 85 80 3 16
SydneyFC A-League Sydney FC 85 1 5 0
AdelaideBite ABL Adelaide Bite official team (male) 84 105 8 0
AlexCarver91 UCI Continental Team (Oceania Region) Team Jayco Skins / Cycling Australia athlete 83 49 5 78
Eelguts NRL Parramatta Eels radio commentator (male) 82 210 4 187
NSWACT_Rams U18 National Championships New South Wales U18s team 82 3 3 7
BenFitz NBL Adelaide 36ers player 78 148 9 55
ryannapoleon Swimming Australia Ryan Napoleon athlete 77 34 6 55
CatsCommunity NBL Perth Wildcats 75 98 7 101
wwtfc_eagles SANFL Woodville West Torrens Football Club official team (male) 75 369 12 7
ozgooner2010 A-League/W-League Perth Glory fan 74 745 10 220
DECspirit Cricket Victoria DEC Spirit official team (female) 71 28 8 49
nthmelbourne AFL North Melbourne Kangaroos fansite 71 54 2 92
AWIHL AWIHL AWIHL official league (female) 70 30 9 143
CatmanForever AFL Geelong Cats fansite 70 700 7 6
JaycoRangers WNBL Dandenong Jayco Rangers (female) 65 204 8 32
muirsop Skate Australia Sophie Muir speed skater (female) 63 29 10 23
willo43 NBL Townsville Crocodiles player 63 2 9 24
Chippa39 AFLNT AFLNT official 62 951 0 117
ManlyUnited NSW Premier League Manly United 62 489 6 40
shellwu Triathlon Australia Shelly Wu triathlete (female) 61 520 3 304
vandiemenroller Australia Roller Derby Van Diemen Rollers Roller Derby team or league 61 58 13 72
nrlthoughts NRL NRL fansite 57 120 1 217
VictoriaParkHC AFL Collingwood Magpies grounds 57 98 2 23
WSRollers Australia Roller Derby Western Sydney Rollers Roller Derby team or league 57 18 11 57
TennisQld Tennis Australia Tennis Queensland federation 55 13 1 17
hnim AIHL AIHL unofficial 54 44 4 2
NA_Brisbane Tennis Australia Tennis Australia National Academy Brisbane 54 293 4 114
SAVEOURDRAGONS NBL South (Melbourne) Dragons unofficial 54 40 3 54
AUS_XC Australian Cross Country Ski Team Australian Cross Country Ski Team official 52 64 8 10
nickmarvin NBL Perth Wildcats CEO 52 19 4 11
PerthGloryWomen W-League Perth Glory team (female) 52 74 2 53
CricketNSW Cricket New South Wales Cricket New South Wales organization 51 28 4 0
nzru Rugby World Cup All Blacks 50 8 0 1
fake_EssendonFC AFL Essendon Bombers fansite 49 66 4 79
Kegs42 NBL Townsville Crocodiles player 49 104 7 56
hockeypulse AIHL AIHL unofficial 48 188 2 20
ACENetball Brisbane Netball Association ACE Netball Club official 47 27 5 4
canberracyclist Cycling Australia Cycling ACT fansite 47 34 2 58
NicksBB AFL Collingwood Magpies fansite 46 6 2 64
PetershamNetbal Netball New South Wales Petersham RUFC Netball Club (female) 46 9 6 13
Anna_Flanagan Hockey Australia Hockeyroos Anna Flanagan (female) (player) 45 6 4 56
SkierCross Ski and Snowboard Australia Ski and Snowboard Australia fansite 45 23 2 186
parraeels NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 44 4 4 0
velocanberra Cycling Australia Velo Canberra official 43 51 2 31
bc8977 AFL Fremantle Dockers unofficial 42 8 9 10
Orcas_Netball Plenty Valley Netball Association Orcas Netball 42 95 8 2
Shannon_McCann Athletics Australia Shannon McCann athlete, one hundred meter hurdles (female) 42 227 2 67
swimmingNSW Swimming Australia Swimming New South Wales official 41 113 1 9
bomberblitz AFL Essendon Bombers player 40 117 1 20
Vandy21 NBL Gold Coast Blaze player 40 0 8 10
BoroughBoy VFL Port Melbourne Borough unofficial 39 0 13 2
becdomange Cycling Australia Bec Domange biker (female athlete) 36 34 12 48
BluesSix Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Blues 31 26 5 0
DollsAuGoGo Australia Roller Derby Dolls Australia Go Go Roller Derby team or league 31 23 7 3
FootballCityAUS A-League A-League fansite 31 75 1 55
SWSportAcademy Victorian Institute of Sport SW Academy of Sport organization 30 11 1 97
georgebazeley Hockey Australia Kookaburras player (male) 28 27 0 22
AFL_Undercover AFL AFL fansite 23 25 1 116
bikesa Cycling Australia Cycling South Australia federation 23 7 1 12
ckoski55 Cricket New South Wales New South Wales Breakers player (female) 23 30 6 19
loganthunder WNBL Logan Thunder (female) 23 45 6 3
abcwleague W-League W-League media outlet (female) 22 31 3 15
SwansPerthCrew AFL Sydney Swans fan group 22 362 3 128
ucniss AIS University of Canberra National Institute of Sport Studies official 21 76 1 20
ToffCedar NBL Townsville Crocodiles player 18 1 5 39
BlueTongueBluey AIHL Gold Coast Bluetongues fan (male) 17 14 0 19
KenilworthCC Birmingham & District Premier Cricket League Kenilworth Cricket Club official 17 48 2 33
cameronwhiting NBL Townsville Crocodiles player 16 2 7 12
jreynojreyno AFL Essendon Bombers player 16 11 1 25
WWWraidersNETau NRL Canberra Raiders fansite 15 1306 0 1
TriathlonTSO Triathlon Australia TriathlonTSO 14 31 1 40
brad_393 NBL Adelaide 36ers player 12 3 3 10
tenniscanberra Tennis Australia Tennis Canberra official 12 363 0 10
WillGodward Australian International Shooting Limited Will Godward athlete (male) 12 8 1 3
aimee_watson Ski and Snowboard Australia Aimee Watson Australian National Ski Cross Team Athlete (female) 11 5 3 8
CoffsDerbyDolls Australia Roller Derby Coffs Derby Dolls Roller Derby team or league 10 2 4 10
cheltz333 Skate Australia Cheltzie Breanna Lee figure skater (female) 9 0 2 2
sfsc_newsletter Skate Australia Sydney Figure Skating Club club 9 43 0 29
perthblitz Gridiron Australia Nationals Perth Blitz 6 14 2 5
SelenaJW Australian Rugby Union Wallaroos player (female) (Selena Tranter) 4 2 4 5
BCRollerDerbyHB New Zealand Roller Derby Bay City Rollers Roller Derby team or league from New Zealand 3 1 1 1
gladrollerderby Australia Roller Derby Gladstone Derby Roller Derby team or league 2 3 1 1
SWBLest1995 Sydney Women’s Basketball League Sydney Women’s Baseball League league (female) 1 1 1 2
blueandgoldarmy NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 0 0 0 0

Related Posts:

Search traffic stats to OzzieSport

Posted by Laura on Sunday, 14 November, 2010

I thought this might be a bit interesting so I decided to post it.  Basically, for the period between November 7 and November 13, I got the daily total for all the keywords that led to OzzieSport.  This data is available from Google Analytics.  For every keyword, I tried to assign a league and a team.  This wasn’t always possible as keywords related to writing a PhD proposal aren’t sport related.  Once that was done, I totaled everything up by team to see which teams and leagues gave me the most search related traffic over the past week.  (This is all entirely subjective in that the SEO work I do/don’t do has a large impact on the findability of my blog.  Ditto for the topics covered. Nonetheless, this is interesting to me.)

League Team 7-Nov-10 8-Nov-10 9-Nov-10 10-Nov-10 11-Nov-10 12-Nov-10 13-Nov-10
ABL ABL 1 0 0 0 0 0 1
AFL AFL 1 0 3 1 3 3 0
New Zealand Roller Derby Bay City Rollers 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Swimming Australia Blair Evans 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
NRL Canberra Raiders 40 33 93 16 5 10 12
Football Australia Football Victoria 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
General Australian sport General Australian sport 3 4 3 5 6 3 2
Archery Australia Guy Phillips 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
Yatching Australia Jessica Watson 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
NRL Melbourne Storm 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
Netball Australia Netball Australia 0 0 1 0 0 1 0
NRL NRL 0 0 1 2 0 1 0
NRL Penrtih Panthers 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Swimming Australia Swimming Australia 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
AIS UCNISS 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
AFL Western Bulldogs 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
W-League W-League 0 0 0 0 0 1 0

Yeah, poor Joel Monaghan. His plight gave me a fairly above average search traffic boost. :/

Related Posts:

Joel Monaghan’s Mad Monday and the Online Canberra Raiders Fan Base

Posted by Laura on Sunday, 7 November, 2010

Laura Hale, University of Canberra

November 7, 2010

A copy of this article is available in .pdf.

This article references the Jason Akermanis and Melbourne Storm articles.

Abstract

The Joel Monaghan dog sex picture story broke on November 3, 2010. By November 5, people were demanding that Monaghan be sacked. Sponsors were threatening to pull their support if the team failed to fire him. This was another major Australian sport controversy in the making. Given the sponsor demands and media attention to the story, the questions are: How much do fans of the Canberra Raiders and the NRL really care about it, and what is the impact of Monaghan’s action on the online fan base? This paper answers that question by looking at Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Wikia and a few other selected sites. It concludes that the story was largely a non-event in terms of causing people to stop barracking for the Raiders. It also finds that there may be indicators that this type of story gets more attention in geographic areas where the NRL would hope to grow their fanbase. This latter part could be the biggest problem for the NRL.

Keywords: NRL, Canberra Raiders, Joel Monaghan, Mad Monday, RSPCA, social media

Joel Monaghan’s Mad Monday and the Online Canberra Raiders Fan Base

Figure 1. 5 Nov 2010 front page of The Canberra Times.

Figure 2. 6 Nov 2010 front page of The Canberra Times.

Figure 3. 7 Nov 2010 front page of The Canberra Times.

In Canberra, the story of Joel Monaghan’s Mad Monday actions has been above the fold in the city’s leading newspaper for two days and was the whole cover on the third. The story was sensational and received coverage in other newspapers across the country such as The Daily Telegraph, The Herald-Sun, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Adelaide Advertiser and The Australian. According to The Canberra Times, Monaghan was involved in a prank where he was photographed “sitting on a tiled floor with a dog’s head near his exposed groin.” (Dutton & Moloney, 2010, November 5) The pictures had gone viral on Twitter (Dutton, 2010, November 6) and sponsors threatened to pull their support if the Raiders failed to sack Monghan for his actions. (Dutton, 2010, November 6)

This news was bad news for the Raiders as sponsorship is an important revenue stream for the club. Beyond that, Monaghan’s actions are potentially bad for rugby league and the NRL who have an image problem in Australia, where players are viewed by some people as uneducated thugs. This characterization of NRL players can be witnessed by doing a quick Google search for NRL scandal as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. A screencap of a search for NRL scandal on Google. Screenshot is dated Nov 6, 2010.

Scandals like Monaghan’s have the possibility of hurting the NRL in terms of growing the size of their potential audience and widening their demographic base so that they can better compete with other leagues in the country like the AFL, who draw upon larger segments of the population, including women. Measuring exactly how people respond to these controversies is difficult as there are an array of dependent and independent variables that factor into why people support their clubs, and how much money they will spend to do that. These variables include a club’s performance, loyalty to a club, available disposable income, amount of free time, availability for attending matches, television coverage, and merchandise to name a few.

It is an interesting exercise to critically examine how scandals can impact a club’s supporter base. In the case of the Jason Akermanis scandal in the AFL in June 2010, there was little negative impact in terms of supporters shifting their loyalties away from the club in the immediate aftermath of the scandal. (Hale, 2010, June 14) In the NRL, the Melbourne Storm salary cap controversy in May 2010 saw a huge immediate spike in interest and demonstrations of online loyalty to the club. (Hale, 2010, May 20)

The question for this scandal is thus: What was the immediate impact on the online Canberra Raiders community in response to the media coverage of the Joel Monaghan dog sex prank? This paper will attempt to answer that question by looking at Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, Wikia, YouTube and Yahoo!Groups.

Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging platform that is popular in Australia. According to Alexa, it is the tenth most popular site in the country. (Alexa Internet, Inc., 2010) There is an active community of Australian sport fans on it who frequently discuss what is going on with their favorite teams and athletes. Sport organizations, leagues, clubs and athletes also use Twitter to engage with fans. The Canberra Raiders are on Twitter at @RaidersCanberra.

There are several methods that can be employed to begin to understand how the Canberra Raiders fanbase responded to the Monaghan controversy that broke on November 4, 2010. This includes looking at any shift in the geographic location of Canberra Raiders fans on Twitter, comparing the total number of new followers for the Raiders to other teams over the same period, looking at the geographic location of Tweets that mention Monaghan versus the team, and looking to see how many Tweets mention Monaghan and the Raiders together. Each of these different methods gives a different perspective on how fans responded and when looked at together, give a more informed big picture perspective.

One way of measuring the impact of the Monaghan scandal on Twitter is to compare the geographic location of the Canberra Raiders followers and to see if there were any noticeable shifts before and after the scandal broke. The way this was done in this paper was to get a list of all the followers for @RaidersCanberra, get the location that the user included on their profile, and get the timezone that the person listed themselves as from. Using those two pieces of information, translate that into a real location. For example, “canberra :) ” would be the location Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia. Once as many locations have been identified as possible, they are totaled by date.

The October 15 @RaidersCanberra list had 996 followers on it. Of these, 772 had a country location attached to them. The November 6 @RaidersCanberra list had 1,071 followers on it. Of these, a country location could be identified for 790. When locations are removed because they are not Australian or New Zealand locations that include a city, there remains 454 locations for October 15 and 483 for November 6. Table 1 shows difference for followers by city and date. Only the cities where the difference did not equal zero were included.

Table 1

@RaidersCanberra followers by City

Location
15-Oct

6-Nov

Difference
Auckland,Auckland,New Zealand
9

10


1
Belconnen,Australian Capital Territory,Australia
1

2

1
Bowen,Queensland,Australia
1

0

-1
Brisbane,Queensland,Australia
49

50

1
Canberra,Australian Capital Territory,Australia
145

154


9
Casino,New South Wales,Australia
1

0

-1
Cremorne,New South Wales,Australia
1

0

-1
Gold Coast,Queensland,Australia
7

16

9
Gosford,New South Wales,Australia
2

1


-1
Greystanes,New South Wales,Australia
1

0

-1
Hamilton,Waikato,New Zealand
1

0

-1
Jerrabomberra,New South Wales,Australia
1

0

-1
Mandurah,Western Australia,Australia
1

0


-1
Newcastle,New South Wales,Australia
10

16

6
Orange,New South Wales,Australia
0

2

2
Parramatta,New South Wales,Australia
1

2

1
Penrith,New South Wales,Australia
2

3


1
Queanbeyan,New South Wales,Australia
3

5

2
Rockhampton,Queensland,Australia
2

3

1
South Auckland,Auckland,New Zealand
1

0

-1
Sydney,New South Wales,Australia
97

106


9
Taigum,Queensland,Australia
1

0

-1
Turramurra,New South Wales,Australia
2

1

-1
Tweed Heads,New South Wales,Australia
2

1

-1
Wallacia,New South Wales,Australia
1

0


-1
Wellington,New South Wales,Australia
1

0

-1
Wellington,Wellington,New Zealand
2

1

-1

There were 93 total Australian and New Zealand cities on this list. Of them, only 27 saw any difference in the total volume of followers from that location. Some of these differences could be explained as an issue with processing or user profile changes. A person may have used geographic coordinates for their location and updated them as they traveled around, resulting in a change in city location for the user. Some may have removed location information from their profiles. The populations are so small that these small shifts in normal user activity may have nothing to do with being a Raiders fan.

The independent user profile variables aside, the data appears to support a conclusion geography did not play a role in choosing to follow or not follow the team in response to the controversy. There might be small micropatterns at play. Of the four New Zealand cities where there was a difference, three saw a loss in followers for the team. This might be a bit misleading as four New Zealand cities saw no change in the total number of followers from them. Of the four cities that saw gains of five or more, all are large cities that are traditional league strong holds. Their increase is probably reflective of that reality, rather than as an increase in interest in the team because of the controversy. Geography does not appear to have played a role in Twitter users decision to follow or not follow the team in response to the Monaghan situation.

On Twitter, people follow accounts that are of interest to them. This can be seen as a positive expression of interest in the club as people are unlikely to follow groups or organizations they despise. By measuring comparative growth patterns, we can begin to see if the scandal had an impact on the Raider’s Twitter follower fanbase. As the official team account has not mentioned the controversy and the Raiders have not changed their Twitter practices in response to this controversy, the official account content can be excluded as a variable for growth; the Raiders have not used the situation to try to leverage their fanbase. Given that, Table 2 shows the total follower counts by date for the Raiders compared to the official accounts for the Manly Sea Eagles, Gold Coast Titans, New Zealand Warriors and Melbourne Storm.

Table 2

Total Twitter Followers: Raiders, Eagles, Titans, Warriors, Storm

Date collected
Raiders

Canberra


Manly

seaeagles


GCTitans

Thenz

warriors


Melb

StormRLC

9-Mar-10
202

888

1,616

434

458
30-May-10
375

1,129

2,052

521


1,124
5-Jun-10
389
19-Jun-10
417

1,215
21-Jun-10

424


1,203

2,176

565

1,226
29-Jul-10
608

1,338

2,447

614

1,473

13-Sep-10


841

1,705

3,011

884

1,942
14-Sep-10
870
15-Sep-10
873

1,726

3,036

756

1,983
4-Oct-10

949


1,842

3,274

763

2,222
6-Nov-10
1,071

1,963

3,513

884

2,504

Difference: October 4

- November 6


122

121

239

121

282

The controversy did not appear to create a spike in new followers for the Canberra Raiders. The total number of new followers for the most recent period available with the data suggests that the total number of new followers for the Raiders is in line with other teams with similar follow totals.

Beyond user follow patterns, it is sometimes useful to look at content. The geographic location of Tweets is one method of looking at tweets. There is a tool called Tribalytics that allows this to be done. Tribalytics maintains a list of over 200,000 Australian based Twitter users, sorted by state. Tribalytics allows users to search for a word or phrase on Twitter and adds up the total number of people who tweeted using it by state. This data can then be visualized over time. Table 3 uses data provided by Tribalytics to show the total number of tweets that mention Monaghan.

Table 3

Tribalytics: Tweets that mention Monaghan by state

State Monaghan
3-Nov

4-Nov

5-Nov
Australian Capital Territory

Tweets


1

41

44
Users

1


31

29
New South Wales Tweets
7

286

191
Users
7

203

152
Northern Territory Tweets
0

2

3

Users
0

2

3
Queensland Tweets
3

154

69
Users
2

80

57
South Australia

Tweets


0

25

9
Users

0


18

7
Tasmania Tweets
0

5

1
Users
0

3

1
Victoria Tweets
0

164

87

Users
0

122

79
Western Australia Tweets
0

16

21
Users
0

10

19
Total

Tweets


11

694

428
Users

10


470

350

The geographic location of the Tweets that mention Monaghan suggests that the controversy had the biggest audience in New South Wales, one of rugby league’s traditional strongholds. The situation in regards to Queensland and Victoria is interesting. Victoria has a much larger population than Queensland. Thus, it is not surprising that the total number of Twitterers and Tweets from Victoria is larger than Queensland. On the other hand, Victoria is not a rugby league stronghold; Queensland is. Logically, it would seem that this story should be bigger in Queensland but it isn’t. Interpreting what this means in a practical sense is difficult. The best conclusion is that this story will not help the NRL’s attempt to expand into Victoria, as fans are more aware of negative news regarding players and the league. On the other hand, for the traditional stronghold of Queensland, the controversy is not as interesting to the local population so there should be less risk in terms of attempting to grow the fan community for the NRL in the state.

The last major method for analyzing Twitter given a controversy like this is to examine the other words used in Tweets that include the word Monaghan. This can be done using Tribalytics, which provides a table that includes a list of the most popular words used in tweets mentioning a term and the percentage of time that the word is included in a Tweet involving a specific keyword. Table 4 was generated using Tribalytics and the keyword Monaghan.

Table 4

Popular words used in Tweets mentioning Monaghan

Word Inclusion Word Inclusion Word Inclusion
monaghan 87.31% sex 2.79%

#doggate


2.03%
joel 73.10% worse 2.54% wrong
1.78%
dog 21.32% monday

2.54%

today
1.78%
#nrl 9.64% trending 2.28% clear
1.78%
photo 8.88%

talking

2.28% bad
1.78%
raiders 6.85% sticking 2.28% takes
1.52%
#bonegate

6.60%

dangers 2.28% sexual
1.52%
canberra 6.09% club 2.28% room
1.52%

dogs

5.33% ve 2.03% qantas
1.52%
statement 5.08% social 2.03% mad

1.52%

nrl 5.08% sack 2.03% jokes
1.52%
news 4.57% releases 2.03%

guess


1.52%
twitter 3.30% player 2.03% bulldogs
1.52%
sacked 3.30% mr

2.03%

blew
1.52%
wow 3.05% danger 2.03% barking
1.52%
sick 3.05%

agent

2.03% admits
1.52%
breaking 3.05% #rugbyleague 2.03% #thatpicture
1.52%

This table suggests good things for the NRL and the Canberra Raiders. While people are discussing Monaghan and a lot of them are mentioning the dog, only 9.64% mention the NRL and even fewer Tweets reference that Monaghan plays for the Canberra Raiders. Based on Tweets, people are not necessarily associating the controversy with the NRL and the Raiders. Things may not be as bad as they could be for both organizations in terms of what Australians are choosing to focus on.

Overall on Twitter, the controversy involving Joel Monaghan has been rather neutral for the Raiders and the NRL. The Canberra Raiders did not see a mass defecting of followers. Those that did leave were geographically distributed so there was not a geographic area that responded particularly badly. Outside of New South Wales, most of the tweets came from an area where the NRL is not strong: The NRL should not lose strength in their traditional strongholds. The controversy may hurt their ability to push into Victoria as it may reaffirm negative opinions about rugby league. When people are tweeting about Monaghan, they are rarely connecting it to the Raiders and the NRL. While Twitter suggests not all-good news, things could be much, much worse in terms of the respective fanbases.

Facebook

Facebook is the most popular social networks in Australia. According to Alexa, the site ranks as the second most popular web site in the country. (Alexa Internet, Inc., 2010) According to Facebook’s “What do you want to advertise?” page on November 6, 2010, the site has 9,530,800 users from Australia. The site probably has more Australian sport fans on it than any other site in Australia. This is because a lot of the users are fans of the fan pages run by Australian sport leagues, clubs and athletes. Several of these official fan pages have well over 100,000 fans.

Given the large number of Australians using the network, the official presence of so many clubs and the amount of media attention paid to the service, a response to the Monaghan controversy was inevitable. Given the timing of the writing of this paper, there are two methods that can be used to measure the impact of the Joel Monaghan controversy on the Canberra Raiders’ fanbase on Facebook. The first way is to see if there has been a demographic shift in fans of the Canberra Raiders using Facebook’s advertising page data. The second is to measure the relative growth in the number of followers for the Raiders compared to other NRL teams. The third is to look at total and nature of the groups and fan pages created about Monaghan. As group and fan page size had not been recorded earlier, it is impossible to compare their growth like was done in the Akermanis paper.

Facebook’s advertising buy page provides demographic information about Facebook users in order to help advertisers target specific audiences. This information can be found at https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ and is the easiest method of accessing publicly available demographic data on Facebook. On November 5 and November 6, 2010, the number of Canberra Raiders fans were recorded that lived in Australia, in New South Wales and in the ACT. During this 24-hour period, there was no change in the size of these groups. Data regarding various demographic groups for the Canberra Raiders was also collected on June 16 and November 6, 2010. It can be found in Table 5. The gap between data collection periods is large and covers a period where a player was suspended for drink driving and the Canberra Raiders finals run.

Table 5

Facebook data regarding Canberra Raiders fan demographics

Age

Sex Education Relation Interested in
16-Jun-10

6-Nov-10

Difference: Jun 16 to Nov 6
All All All

All

All
7,980

8,940

960
All Men All All All
5,400

6,000

600
All Women All All

All


2,460

2,800

340
All Women All All Women
140

160

20
All Women All All Men

1,000


1,000

0
All Women All Married Men
200

160

-40

All

Women All Single Men
260

420

160
All Women All

In a relationship

Men
320

220

-100
All Women All Engaged Men
400

< 20

#VALUE!
All Men All All

Men


60

< 20

#VALUE!
All

Men

All All Women
3,060

3,420

360
All Men All Married

Women


440

560

120
All Men All Single Women
1,340

1,520

180
All Men All In a relationship Women

700


620

-80
All Men All Engaged Women
180

140

-40

All

All College grads All All
1,060

1,120

60
All All University of Canberra

All

All
180

160

-20
All All ANU All All
120

40

-80
All All University of Melbourne All

All


< 20

< 20

0
All All In College All All
160

160

0
All All In High School All

All


220

220

0

During this period, the number of engaged female fans engaged to men dropped to almost zero. The number of women interested in men who were married or in a relationship also dropped. The number of engaged male fans engaged to males also dropped. While it is unlikely that the controversy caused these population shifts, it is possible contributor as the Canberra Raiders may have had a net gain of zero but lost old followers and gained new followers.

The response to a controversy can also be looked at by examining the comparative growth of a team to other teams in a league. If fans connect the problem to the team, they may punish a team by removing their like or not liking the fan page at the same rate that fans of other teams like their fan page. Table 6 shows the comparative growth of the Canberra Raiders official Facebook page to other teams for the period between July 30 and November 6, 2010.

Table 6

NRL official team fan page growth

Team Name Type

30-Jul-10


6-Nov-10
Difference % Difference
Melbourne Storm Storm Man User
4,986

4,799

-187

-3.90%

Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles

Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles Page
20,241

25,401

5,160

20.31%
Newcastle Knights Newcastle Knights Page
16,470

20,775


4,305

20.72%
Canberra Raiders Canberra Raiders User
3,413

4,495

1,082

24.07%
Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks

Cronulla Sharks

Page
11,230

14,792

3,562

24.08%
Canberra Raiders Canberra Raiders Sports Team
6,269

8,292

2,023


24.40%
North Queensland Cowboys North Queensland Toyota Cowboys Page
3,208

4,279

1,071

25.03%
Brisbane Broncos Brisbane Broncos

Page


83,157

117,246

34,089

29.07%
Gold Coast Titans Gold Coast Titans Page
25,714

39,237

13,523

34.46%
Canberra Raiders Canberra Raiders Sports Team
1,255

1,945

690


35.48%
Wests Tigers Wests Tigers – Official National Rugby League Club Page
19,355

31,691

12,336

38.93%
Sydney Roosters The Official Sydney Roosters Page

Page


15,362

27,890

12,528

44.92%

The Canberra Raiders are listed three times because they have three official accounts: A user page and two fan pages. Thus, it is a little hard to make good comparisons as each experienced different growth levels. The time period is also a long one, which includes a drink-driving incident involving a player and the club’s finals run. That said, if the controversy did have an impact on short term growth, it is not readily apparent or a big one as the three Canberra accounts are not on either extreme for percentage growth. It is unlikely that the controversy had an impact on the club’s Facebook fan growth. It may still yet but that will require waiting to see if the controversy continues for another few weeks.

Facebook makes it easy to create groups and fan pages and many people do in response to controversies. One example of this is the Jason Akermanis controversy, where fifteen anti-groups were created within three days of the story breaking. Many of these groups had names that questioned his intelligence and had names that implied criticism of his views on homosexuality. By day four of the controversy, the largest group had over 540 fans. The Joel Monaghan Facebook group and fan page creation situation is similar to that of Akermanis in that fifteen groups and pages had been included. The difference is that the membership was much smaller. The top likes for an anti-Joel page is 127. The titles of the Monaghan groups also contrast to that of Akermanis in that there is not implied condemnation of zoophilia and animal abuse. The group names also do not appear to criticize his intelligence. Rather, the names involve jokes about dogs. Table 7 gives an idea as to the nature of these groups and their size as of November 6, 2010.

Table 7

Size of Joel Monaghan related Facebook group and fan pages

Name Total members

Type

Joel Monaghan
119
Page
i deserve to play for NSW.. LOL jk im Joel Monaghan

6

Page
Joel monaghan = SICK FUCK
30
Group

Joel Monaghan Appreciation Group


135
Group
give joel monaghan a brake
8
Group
Joel Monaghan… one sick puppy!
2
Group
JOEL MONAGHAN IS A FILTHY BASTARD
2
Group
Joel Monaghan, “Go the dogs!!” 2010.
127
Group
I dont screw dogs jks im joel monaghan :L
22
Group
I hate playing the Bulldogs LOL JKS I’m Joel Monaghan
7
Group
That awkward moment when Joel Monaghan offers to walk your dog
33
Group
Joel Monaghan… Stay the F**K away from my dog!!!
37

Group

I think joel monaghan misstated his wife with his dog
1
Group
The Awkward moment when Joel Monaghan plays the Bulldogs

7

Group
joel monaghan… hate to get sucked off by a dog :/
7
Group

The Awkwardness when Joel Monaghan is Caught in a room with a dog…


5
Group
awkward moment when you walk in on joel monaghan copping head off a dog..
101
Group
lets take the dog for a walk, LOL JK im Joel Monaghan lets fuck it instead
8
Group
Joel Monaghan Loves Dogs…….. No I Mean He Really Loves Them……
2
Group

Against the backdrop of the Jason Akermanis situation, this appears pretty favorable for the Raiders and the NRL. It could be concluded that the nature of these groups is a positive for the Canberra Raiders and the NRL in that the groups do not mention the Canberra Raiders. They do not imply an activation of a moralistic fan base that could be highly motivated to cause trouble for the team. These groups also have very little reach and show that many people are uninterested in joining even for a laugh.

While the available Facebook data for this section was sparse, what is available suggests that the Canberra Raiders did not lose a fan base because of Monaghan’s actions. The community that appeared left the Raiders was one that they weren’t specifically targeting such as gay men and women in relationships. Those who were expressing anger over the situation were not doing so from a troublesome moralistic position; rather, they were doing so from a less serious perspective involving cracking jokes about having sex with dogs. Like Twitter, the Facebook situation does not look particularly good but it could be much worse.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is one of the first sources that many Australians turn to when a news story breaks. The articles on the site often provide useful background, contain brief useful summations of ongoing events and include links to find additional information. At the same time, Wikipedia is important because of its high search engine placement. While people may not be looking for Wikipedia articles, they may just stumble upon it because the result is the first or second one for the term they are searching for.

In terms of the Joel Monaghan controversy and Wikipedia, the easiest way to measure the controversy as it impacts the Canberra Raiders would be to compare the total page views and edits between the article about Monaghan and the one about the Raiders. If the controversy reflected more upon Monaghan than his team, the expectation is the page view spike would be higher for the player. This information was found at http://stats.grok.se/en/201011/Joel_Monaghan and http://stats.grok.se/en/201011/Canberra_Raiders and is visualized in Figure 5.

Figure 5. A visualize of the total number of article views using data from http://stats.grok.se/ .

In the two days prior to the story breaking, the Canberra Raider article had more views: 202 to 23 on November 1, 160 to 19 on November 2. The day that the story broke, the total article views were 984 for Monaghan’s and 162 for the Canberra Raiders’ article. At the onset, while people may have been aware that Monaghan’s actions took place during the Raiders’ Mad Monday event, they did not seek out additional information on the Raiders, like seeing if the Raiders article had a section on Mad Monday.

The Wikipedia article views data strongly suggest that people were less interested in the Canberra Raiders and more interested in Joel Monaghan. While the content on the Monaghan page includes many references to his playing for the Canberra Raiders, the page view data supports a conclusion that people were less interested in the team and their response to the controversy than they were interested in knowing what exactly Monaghan had done.

Another way of measuring interest in a topic on Wikipedia is to look at the article’s edit history. The history possibly provides two methods for analysis: Total edits per article that can be viewed as an active edit participation counter to the passive reading consumption. The other possible method would involve trying to determine the location of the edits made to both articles. The latter is possible if anonymous edits were geotagged using IP address information to establish the location. This would be useful because the Raiders are probably striving for a fan base in and around Canberra. If most negative edits are coming from inside Canberra, that would be more problematic in terms of maintaining a local fan base than if the edits were coming from outside of Australia or in Australian locations that are not traditional NRL bases. This type of analysis, while possible, is extremely unreliable; many programs that produce this information have conflicts with others in attempting to accurately identify the city that the IP address originated from. Because of these issues, that methodology will not be done in this article. The first is another matter and can easily done.

The article about Joel Monaghan was created on March 17, 2006. As of the November 5, there have been 213 total edits to the English language article about Joel Monaghan. Of these, 47 edits or 22% of all edits to the article were made on and between November 3 and November 5, dates when the story broke. There likely would have been more edits to the article except the article was locked from editing by anyone except sysops at 4:49 UTC/15:49 Canberra time on November 4. In contrast, the Canberra Raiders article saw an increase in edits but was never locked to prevent anyone from editing. Still, given the difficulties in editing, there are noticeable difference between editing volume that can be seen in Table 8.

Table 8

Total edits to Joel Monaghan and Canberra Raiders Wikipedia articles

Joel Monaghan Canberra Raiders

1-Nov

0

0

2-Nov

0

0

3-Nov

6

4

4-Nov

36

9

5-Nov

5

5

The volume of edits suggests that people were not as interested in putting information about Joel Monaghan in the Canberra Raiders article as they were in editing the article about Monaghan. The edit volume suggestions are supported by a critical reading of both articles, where the controversy is only mentioned on the article about Monaghan and not the article about the Canberra Raiders. This is good news for the Canberra Raiders because the Wikipedia article about the team appears high in Google rankings. The controversy is about Monaghan and not as much about the Raiders and their Mad Monday.

When all three things are looked at together, comparative article views, edits and content, the picture looks better for the Canberra Raiders. People visiting and contributing to Wikipedia who are interested in the situation are not as interested in the Canberra Raiders. The association between the two does not appear to be high.

Wikia

Wikia is a wiki company that hosts over a million wikis. These wikis can be created for free and about any topic that a person wants. There are several wikis on Wikia that have been created about Australian sport, including a wiki about the NRL that can be found at http://nrl.wikia.com/ . This wiki is very small and only has 23 articles. Since the controversy involving Monaghan started, there have been no edits to the wiki. The situation did not inspire any members of the large Wikia family to visit the wiki and create an article about the Canberra Raiders or Joel Monaghan. This could be read as another positive for the Canberra Raiders and the NRL as the situation did not active a dormant fan base to document the situation.

YouTube

YouTube is the largest video site online. It is also the second biggest search engine online. (Hill, 2008) It is a popular site for sport fans; several teams around the world for different sports capitalize on this by having their own official accounts including the Chicago Red Stars, Real Madrid, and Perth Glory. Beyond the presence of official team accounts, fans upload many videos. Fan videos can be music videos, news clips, and video blogs. The frequency of uploads is one way to determine interest in a club compared to other teams while a controversy is taking place. A comparison between the Canberra Raiders and other NRL teams and clubs can be found in Table 9.

Table 9

Total search results on YouTube for NRL related keywords

Team

Keyword


21-Jun-10

24-Oct-10

7-Nov-10

Difference 21-Jun to 7-Nov

Difference 24-Oct to 7-Nov
Brisbane Broncos “Brisbane Broncos”
520

525

534

14


9
Brisbane Broncos “Darren Lockyer”
198

187

194

-4

7
Canberra Raiders “Canberra Raiders”

274


403

422

148

19
Canberra Raiders “Joel Monaghan”
24
Gold Coast Titans “Gold Coast Titans”
260

302

303

43

1

Melbourne Storm

“Melbourne Storm”
925

889

891

-34

2
Parramatta Eels “Parramatta Eels”
485

527

538


53

11
Parramatta Eels “Timana Tahu”
36

31

31

-5

0
Wests Tigers

“Wests Tigers”


404

464

468

64

4

The total number of new videos uploaded between June 21 and November 7 that mentioned the Canberra Raiders is 148, about 80 more than any other team. There does not appear to be a clear reason for this as when the results are looked into to see what has been uploaded during this period, there is no major topic of interest, nor are all the videos being uploaded by one or two individuals. For the period between October 24 and November 7, the Canberra Raiders topped the table with 19 new videos. The next closest club is Parramatta with 11. It is highly likely that the increase in videos relates to the controversy, though not certain as the team had elevated video totals in the prior period when compared to other clubs.

Given the mixed conclusion from video totals over time, other YouTube variables need to be looked at. On November 5, a search result total of 20 was found for “Joel Monaghan”. By November 7, this had increased to 24. This suggests that as the controversy took off, there was a significant increase in interest about Joel Monaghan. A search on November 7 for “Canberra Raiders” “Joel Monaghan” had 10 results. This means that 41.7% of all videos that mentioned Monaghan also mentioned the team he was playing for on Mad Monday. It also means that only 2.3% of all videos that mention the Raiders also include a reference to Monaghan. If the 10 results are sorted by date, six were uploaded since the controversy broke. If only the Monaghan/Raiders videos that were uploaded between November 4 and November 7 are included, than 1.4% of all videos relate to it the controversy. Of the six videos that mention the Raiders and Monaghan, the least viewed video as of November 7 had 1,589 views. The most viewed video had 17,683 views. The average total views for these six videos was 6,352. This can be compared to the 4 videos uploaded prior to the controversy, where the least viewed had 788 views, the most viewed had 4,431 views and the average views was 2,406. The audience for the controversy-related videos was 2.6 times larger than the non-controversy videos.

The additional data does not really clarify the situation. The best conclusion that can be reached is that the Canberra Raiders had an already elevated audience of people uploading videos prior to the controversy. In the period around the controversy, if the six videos that mentioned the Raiders and Monaghan were removed, the Raiders would still be the top team for video uploads. The fan base continued to upload videos and these videos continued to be viewed but at a smaller rate than the videos referencing the controversy. On the whole though, YouTube data suggests that based on pure volume and established audience, the controversy will not have an adverse effect on the team’s fanbase because the controversy uploads represent a tiny segment of the content about them. There is not the quantity of videos about it that should be a long-term concern for the club in term of its image with their fanbase.

Yahoo!Groups

Mailing lists once were one of the most popular tools for Australian sport fans to use in order to communicate with each other. They were easy to create with hosts like egroups, coollists, topica, Yahoo!Groups and Google groups. Two such lists still exist for Canberra Raiders fans: raiders and raiders82, both found on Yahoo!Groups. In the case of raiders, the list has 9 members, open membership and open posting. There has not been a new post since 2003. The controversy did not activate Raiders fans in terms of encouraging them to post. raiders82 has closed membership, requiring that the moderator approve new members. It currently has 128 members. The list had no posts on it between March 2008 and October 2010. There was one new post in November 2010. As the archives are not publicly available, what the contents are is not entirely clear but it could be assumed that the controversy inspired a fan to be less dormant in their support of the club. All things said, the controversy did not inspire much activity on this particular service. It suggests that things are not so heinous as to encourage people to condemn the team they support.

Conclusion

The Joel Monaghan controversy is different than a number of the other sporting controversies that took place during the 2010 NRL and AFL seasons. There were not the moralistic and human rights related issues underpinning it like there were for the Akermanis controversy and the racism controversy during the State of Origin. There was not the harm or potential to cause harm and death that there were for the alleged sexual assault by a St Kilda player or the drink-driving situation by another Canberra rugby player. There were not the illegal actions like the St Kilda player and the Canberra Raiders player allegedly did. There was not the break of unstated football rules regarding the poaching of players from rugby to Aussie rules like there was for the Israel Folau code change controversy. There was not the issue of cheating and bringing unfairness to the game that the Melbourne Storm salary cap violations had. The lack of these issues probably underscores the reasons why fans behaved online such as they did. This was a drunken act in a culture that can understand and relate to someone engaging in drunken stupidity. If other structural issues to the controversy had been at play with a similar amount of media coverage, if the Raiders had been in a bigger market and if the player had been more famous, this might have played differently, as the author’s Akermanis and Melbourne Storm controversy articles demonstrate.

Beyond the underlying variables regarding the nature of the controversy, the results suggest that the Monagahn controversy did not adversely effect the Canberra Raiders fan base in that there were few numbers that suggest the player and the Raiders were inextricably linked. On the other hand, the club did not receive a benefit from the controversy in that it did not inspire Raider fans and Canberrans to show support of the club by following them on Twitter, fanning them on Facebook, or editing articles about the team on Wikipedia and Wikia. The amount of interest about the controversy expressed in YouTube views, Tweets and views to the Monaghan page on Wikipedia suggests that there might be underlying structural image issues in places like Victoria where the NRL wants to grow its fanbase. In the end, the controversy did not hurt the team, but it did not help them.


References

Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, November 6). Facebook.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com

Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, November 6). Twitter.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twitter.com

Dutton, C. (2010, November 6). Ultimatum to Raiders: sack Monaghan or risk sponsors. The Canberra Times, 1. Canberra.

Dutton, C., & Moloney, J. (2010, November 5). Disgraced Monaghan’s career on line as prank goes viral. The Canberra Times, 1. Canberra.

Hale, L. (2010, June 14). The impact of Jason Akermanis’s comments on the Western Bulldogs’s online fanbase. Ozzie Sport. Retrieved November 5, 2010, from http://ozziesport.com/2010/07/the-impact-of-jason-akermaniss-comments-on-the-western-bulldogss-online-fanbase/

Hale, L. (2010, May 20). Online activity in the wake of the Melbourne Storm controversy. Ozzie Sport. Retrieved November 5, 2010, from http://ozziesport.com/2010/05/online-activity-in-the-wake-of-the-melbourne-storm-controversy/

Henrik. (2010, November 6). Canberra Raiders. Wikipedia article traffic statistics. Retrieved November 6, 2010, from http://stats.grok.se/en/201011/Canberra_Raiders

Henrik. (2010, November 6). Joel Monaghan. Wikipedia article traffic statistics. Retrieved November 6, 2010, from http://stats.grok.se/en/201011/Joel_Monaghan

Hill, J. (2008, October 16). YouTube surpasses Yahoo as world’s #2 search engine. TG Daily. Retrieved October 24, 2010, from http://www.tgdaily.com/trendwatch-features/39777-youtube-surpasses-yahoo-as-world%E2%80%99s-2-search-engine

nrl scandal. (2010, November 6). Google Search. Retrieved November 5, 2010, from http://www.google.com.au/search?q=NRL+scandal

Proszenko, A. (2010, November 7). Monaghan quits NRL, Shamed Raider looks to UK. The Canberra Times, 1,3. Canberra.

Search Result | Tribalytic: Social Market Research Made Simple. (2010, November 6). Tribalytic. Retrieved November 6, 2010, from http://tribalytic.com/search/?q=Monaghan

What do you want to advertise? (2010, November 6). Facebook. Retrieved November 6, 2010, from https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/

Related Posts:

Canberra and the Raiders on Twitter and Facebook

Posted by Laura on Wednesday, 15 September, 2010

Friday, the Canberra Raiders are playing the Wests Tigers in one of the playoff games in the NRL Finals. Canberrans are finally beginning to get really excited. A fair amount of this excitement is going on online. This post contains various insights into who Canberra Raiders fans are online and what they are doing. Given the time crunch, I’m only looking at Twitter and Facebook. If I have the time, I will add another post about both teams and their fans on other networks.

There is a lot of discussion about the Canberra Raiders taking place on Twitter. Not all of it is by Raiders fans. (RealBigDell of the Dragons is cheering for the Wests Tigers against the Raiders: twitter.com/RealBigDell/24269333344. ) So where are people Tweeting about the Raiders from? There are two really good tools for trying to figure this out. One is tribalytic.com and the other is Searchtastic.

tribalytic.com is Australian based allows you to search for a term and then can give you a break down by state, by klout and by wordcloud. This is an example of their results for the Canberra Raiders. According to tribalytic.com, in the period between August 14 and September 14, there were 298 tweets by 142 users that mentioned the Canberra Raiders. Of these tweets, 75 were from New South Wales, 32 were from the ACT, 25 were from Queensland and 4 from Victoria. Locals were just not chatting about the Raiders like those pesky New South Wales Rugby League obsessed people.

Searchtastic is a Twitter search engine that allows results to be exported to Excel. The Excel export includes profile information about the person who Tweeted. It sadly doesn’t pull up all search results for every tweet ever made on a subject. My experience is that it tends to pull up the 50 most recent. On the night of September 14 and the morning of September 15, I did a number of Raiders related searches, exported the results to Excel, combined all the tweets and removed the duplicates. I was left with a list of 443 unique tweets. (Some of these 443 were removed after it was determined that content wise, they had nothing to do with the Canberra Raiders. The total was brought down to 438.) (46 of these tweets date from between November 2009 and August 2010. The rest are from September 1, 2010 and after.) After this, using the location field, I figured out where those tweets originated from. 181 of the remaining Tweets were from an identifiable Australian state. 105 were from New South Wales, 53 from the ACT, 18 from Queensland and 5 from Victoria.

The ratio between New South Wales based Raiders Tweets and ACT based Tweets is 2.3 on Tribalytic and 1.9 on Searchtastic. The two are pretty close and suggest that people in the New South Wales are twice as likely to tweet about the Raiders as people in the ACT. We Canberrans just don’t Tweet about our team as much as outsiders do.

As a random point of fact, there were 22 people from the ACT who tweeted about the Raiders. The average person from the ACT who tweeted about the Raiders from the Searchtastic sample? They follow an average of 281 people, median of 91 and mode of 22. They are followed by an average of 222 people, median of 83. They have made an average of 1,346 total tweets, median of 718. The most “popular” person tweeting about the Raiders is @markparton with 1,632 followers. He is followed closely by @abcnewsCanberra who has 1,611 followers. (The contrast between the two is huge. @markparton follows 1,843 people. @abcnewsCanberra follows 0.)

The Tweeting habits of those New South Wales Raiders tweets? There are 58 of them. They are very different than your Canberran tweets. They have on average 1,335 followers, follow an average of 324.7 people and have made an average of 4,440.3 Tweets. Canberrans look much less active and less popular in comparison.

Another way of looking at location on Twitter is to see where people who follow the team are from. I’m interested in finding out if Canberrans support their local side or if, in this particular Finals game, Canberrans actually support the opposition, Wests Tigers. Following is an active way of showing support and sentiment is likely to be positive. Otherwise, why follow the team? The over representation of the NSW based tweets could be explained away as most of the competition in the NRL is based there; fans of other teams are likely to mention the team they are playing against. Added to that, the population base which NSW based teams draw from is much bigger.

To find out ACT based Twitter loyalty to the Raiders and Wests Tigers, I got the profile information for everyone following @RaidersCanberra and @Wests_Tigers. These accounts are the official accounts for the teams. The Raiders have 870 followers compared to the Wests Tigers 2,305 followers.

Of the Wests Tigers followers, only 25 or 1% of their followers are from Canberra. And by Canberra, I mean Canberra. None of the Wests Tigers followers from the ACT put information in their location that could identify what suburb they are from. This contrasts to the Canberra Raiders where 137 or 15.7% are from the ACT. 9 of those 137 list an identifiable suburb: 1 from Belconnen, 1 from Bruce, 1 from Conder, 1 from Fyschwick, 1 from Gungahlin, 1 from Phillip, 1 from Stirling and 2 from Tuggeranong. On Twitter, Canberrans are much more likely to follow the Raiders than the opposition. So while we might not be Tweeting about our team, we are following them.

Sadly, we just don’t appear to be following our team like New South Wales people follow our team. Where there are 137 from the ACT following the Raiders, there are 198 from New South Wales. That accounts for 24.6% of all Raiders followers. Those New South Wales people Tweet more about our team and they follow our team more than we do.

Wests Tigers fans also appear to be more from the state is based than the Raiders: 35.6% of Wests Tigers followers are from New South Wales. Our 24.6% doesn’t appear as impressive.

Focusing on New South Wales is not turning out to be fun. Indicators seem to suggest that they tweet more than Canberrans do and are more likely to follow the home team.

Let’s take a brief look at our Canberran based followers of both the Wests Tigers and the Canberra Raiders. These two groups are not similar in their Twitter usage patterns. Raiders fans have an average of 130.8 followers compared to 48.2 for the Wests Tigers. Canberra Raiders fans from the ACT update more often: 662.7 average updates compared to 104.8 for Canberran based West Tigers followers. Raiders fans have more friends with 199.2 people they follow on average. This compares to ACT based West Tigers followers who have an average of 121.2 people they follow. Canberrans Raiders fans are more likely to appear on lists, appearing on an average of 6.8 lists. ACT based West Tigers fans? On average only 1.2 lists. The indicators are that our Raiders fans are much more engaged with Twitter.

For Australian professional sport on Twitter, there appears to be a pattern for showing team support or interest in a team by following three hashtag patterns. They are #goTEAMMASCOT, #TEAMNAME, #LEAGUETEAMTEAM. This method of tagging was mostly pushed by AFL teams. The NRL appears to have embraced it less. (This is largely a result of different levels of engagement. On the whole, AFL teams engage more. NRL teams are more likely to use their official Twitter account as a place to export their RSS feeds. The AFL has official game tags. The NRL does not.) Still, some fans have followed the formula to make it worth looking at. For the Canberra Raiders, two standard hashtags appear to be used the most frequently: #canberraraiders and #goraiders. (The still aren’t used all that frequently. Tribalytic’s #NRL data says that for the September 1 to September 14, Canberra was mentioned in 9.42% of all tweets tagged with #nrl. No Raiders related hash tags are on the top 50 list of words used.) The #goraiders tag is problematic during the finals season: This hashtag is shared with fans of the Oakland Raiders. The data on tribalytic suggests it isn’t used period but looking through TwapperKeeper, there are Canberra Raiders references in there made by myself and CountryRL. In any case, this tag isn’t as popular as #canberraraiders. Since September 10, there have been at least 24 Tweets using this tag. The most popular user of this tag since that date is @KayLaYvette, who has used it 13 times. Beyond that, 3 others used it twice. 5 others have used it once. People using this hash tag aren’t using it to post links. Twitter said that 25% of all Tweets contained links. For this hashtag, only 12.5% of tweets contained a url. 67% of Tweets with the #canberraraiders hashtag also included the #NRL hashtag. Raiders fans don’t appear to be using this Tweet when chatting with eachother on Twitter as there aren’t any interactions associated with it. That theme mentioned earlier about how people outside Canberra were dominating as fans? Of the 24 posts using this hashtag, 9 were geotagged. The geotag didn’t originate in Canberra. Rather, the geotags put the tweeter in England. Poor Raiders.

That’s enough of Twitter. (I’m avoiding the temptation to do sentiment analysis.) Let’s move on to Facebook. Facebook has fewer tools than Twitter and some of the data is much harder to access than Twitter data. Thus, the level of analysis is less.

The first question is how many Canberra Raiders are there on Facebook in Australia? Facebook says 7,860. Of these, 1,180 are in the ACT and 4,340 are in New South Wales. In comparison, there are 29,380 Wests Tigers fans on Facebook in Australia. 480 are from the ACT and 19,980 are from New South Wales. Like Twitter, if you’re in Canberra, you’re more likely to support the home team. Also like Twitter, New South Wales Raiders fans outnumber fans in Canberra.

11,780 of the Wests Tigers fans are female. 2,180 of the Raiders fans are female. The Wests Tigers have a lot more female supporters (40.1%) than we Raiders fans do (27.8%). This isn’t bad news. This is good news. At the grounds, Raiders fans should be able to be louder and really bring in that home field advantage. Long term, also great news: The Raiders have a great opportunity to grow their fan base. The Wests Tigers don’t have that as they have a much more gender equal fan base.

1,080 of Canberra Raiders fans on Facebook are college graduates. 2,840 of West Tigers fans are college graduates. Here, Canberra is better, where better is defined by having a college education: 13.7% to 10.7%.

How welcoming are both teams to the GLBT community? 500 Wests Tigers fans identify as women interest in women and 100 Wests Tigers fans identify as men interest in men. The Canberra Raiders have 120 fans who identify as women interested in women and 40 fans who identify as men interested in men. Using this measure, both teams are about equal: 2% of their fanbase are gays, lesbians or bisexuals.

The official Wests Tigers fan page can be found at www.facebook.com/WestsTigers.com.au and the Canberra Raiders page can be found at www.facebook.com/Canberra-Raiders. The total number of likes and comments were recorded for the 25 most recent official posts on the feed. For the Raiders, that takes posts back to August 21. For the Tigers, this takes them back to July 1. (The Raiders appear to be much better at updating their Facebook page. The Tigers are importing their posts through their RSS feed, which is itself imported through Facebook. The Raiders in contrast post almost nothing through an RSS feed to their Facebook page.) On average, the Canberra Raiders get 22.75 likes per post and 17.04 comments per post. The Tigers in contrast get 30.54 likes per post and 32.16 comments per post. This looks like a win for the passion of West Tigers fans, except for the fact that 23,391 people like the Wests Tigers page and 1,710 people like the Canberra Raiders page. On average, 1.33% of Raiders fans like a post and 1.00% respond to a post. For the Wests Tigers, an average of 0.13% like a post and 0.14% comment on a post. Clearly Raiders fans are much more willing to interact with the club. Go Raiders fans. This is clearly the platform where we’re engaging with the team. (It is probably helped by the fact that the club is engaging back. This isn’t the case for either on Twitter.)

In conclusion, the Raiders fanbase appears to be contain more people from outside the territory than in. The community on Facebook and Twitter is smaller than that of the Wests Tigers. The Raiders do have a larger fanbase in Canberra and the ACT than the Wests Tigers have. While our fan base might be smaller, we are more likely to engage with the team on a percentage basis than Wests Tigers fans are. The reasons for some of the numbers on both fandom sides have to do with how the Raiders and Tigers chose to engage with their fanbase online. If anyone changed their strategy to be even more interactive, their fan base could kick the other one’s butt in terms of expressing their passion for the team.

Most of the raw data referenced in this post can be found at csv.ozziesport.com/.

Related Posts:

  • No Related Posts

Sport allegiances out on the Great Barrier Reef

Posted by Laura on Wednesday, 11 August, 2010

One of my favorite hobbies when out and about is to look at people’s shirts, hats, jackets, backpacks and scarves to see what sport teams are represented. It can be really interesting. (Clothes say a lot about a person at times. And sport related clothing can to. Why people wear things can involve a conscious fashion decision, because they visited the place where the team is based, because they want to be affiliated with the team or a city, in order to have conversations, because their team is winning, etc.) In Canberra, you’re just as likely to see a Hawthown Hawks as you are the Brisbane Broncos or the All Blacks as you are to see the Canberra Raiders or ACT Brumbies. It makes the game of sport clothing watching a bit more fun.

Yesterday, I went out on the Great Barrier Reef. (Went out with Quicksilver based in Port Douglas. They have a trip that does not require snorkeling or scuba diving. Boat holds 440 people. Not a small sample.) The variety was rather interesting with no repeats. The only team represented that seemed out of place was South Africa’s football team and I was wearing that shirt.

That said, the following teams were all represented once:

  • Melbourne Storm
  • Hawthorn Hawks
  • South Sydney Rabbitohs (the guy wearing it immediately hit the bar after getting off the boat)
  • Hong Kong Rugby 7s
  • Cabonne United (Rugby league team from NSW)
  • USC Trojans
  • South African national football team
  • Boston marathon  (Not a team but still a major sporting event)
  • Canberra Raiders
  • Boston Red Sox
  • X-Games (not a team but a sporting event)
  • Chicago Bears

After I got out, I spotted a kid in the marina wearing a North Queensland Cowboys shirt.  I couldn’t tell if he was on the boat or not so on my list of places I have seen jerseys, I put it with the marina rather than the reef.  Anyway, I’m not sure exactly what to make of this list.  I know there were Kiwis and Dutch and Germans and English and Spanish speakers and Koreans aboard.  I could hear their accents and see them reading printed material in the language or some one would ask them where they were from and they would say.  I just didn’t see sport clothing.  I don’t know if the  Western Australians and South Australians weren’t on board or just weren’t wearing sport related stuff for their teams.  I thought the Victorians were supposed to be more sport mad but not really represented here.  The USA was represented with a fair representation of teams and events.

Related Posts:

Canberra Raiders data

Posted by Laura on Wednesday, 30 June, 2010

I’m a little late with this so I figured I would have a new top level post rather than edit my existing post.  If you wanted to see the data I presented the Canberra Raiders, it is available here in PDF format. It includes some Foursquare data, Gowalla data, Facebook data, Twitter data and some general NRL data.

If you want similar data related to a specific club, let me know and we can see if we can work out some sort of arrangement.  I’d love to be able to talk to more Canberra based professional, state and national teams.

Related Posts:

An interview with Ben Pollack from the Canberra Raiders

Posted by Laura on Thursday, 24 June, 2010

On Wednesday, June 23, 2010, I had the pleasure of talking to Ben Pollack and another staff member at the Canberra Raider.  I really appreciated the opportunity to talk to them as it was provided additional insight into how sport clubs view fandom and social media. I’ve tried to convey as accurately as possible what they have told me based on my memory and I asked their permission to reference them in my blog and paper while I met with them.

If you’re not familiar with the Canberra Raiders, they are a Rugby League team that competes at the top level in the National Rugby League in Australia.  They are based in Australia’s capital, Canberra, and play their home games at Bruce Stadium.  The NRL has a profit sharing scheme, where revenues are shared between all teams.

My purpose in talking to them was to help provide background knowledge for my literature review and to generally enhance my understanding of Australian team sport as it may apply other parts of my research.  Going in, I had four questions I wanted answers to.  These questions were:

1. How do you define fandom?
2. How do you reach out to the fan community?
3. How much influence does league management provide in terms of defining fandom and how to engage in outreach?  Do they give guidance on social media policies?
4. How much do other sports, teams and leagues play a role in development and implementation of concepts related to fan engagement and social media?

The Canberra Raiders define fandom very broadly as people who barrack for them and who attend games.  Their goal is to have this definition encompass all ages, both genders and across the demographic spectrum.  They focus on the Canberra area. They want to take interest in the club and translate that into getting people into the stadium, with bums on seats.  They did not mention trying to get fans to watch on television or buy their merchandise.  It may be something that they define as fandom but I did not follow up to ask about that.

When I inquired about the regional aspect in the NRL helping teams by enabling them to develop a local fanbase, they said that this worked a lot in their favor as the Canberra area was very supportive of the team.  This may not be as true for some of the Sydney based teams where there is much more market overlap and a few teams play at the same venue.  There, clubs need to market more towards traditional understandings of who composes their fanbase.  Sydney based teams are much like many of the Melbourne based AFL clubs in this regard.

I had some data from Facebook that said that there were roughly twice as many UCanberra students and alumni who were fans of the club compared to ANU.  I asked them why their fanbase was stronger at the University of Canberra, if it had to do with different cultures or possibly class related affiliations that each university has.  The club responded that they thought they probably had more fans at UC because the university has a well-known sport program and tends to attract more sport fans than ANU.

I had some bebo related geographic data.  It showed that there were a number of fans from the Brisbane area.  I asked the Raiders if they could explain that.  They told me that this geographic fanbase dates to the club’s founding, when several of the players came from Brisbane.  The club has managed to maintain this fanbase in Queensland over time.

The club primarily reaches out to their fanbase using traditional advertising: Newspapers, television and mail outs.  They have a member list and every week they send out a newsletter to their members.  The newsletter contains injury information, game summaries and information on any special deals that the club has.  They do some outreach on social media, but that is primarily confined to Facebook.

The NRL is a huge influence in how the club handles their website and their social media.  The league requires that clubs post certain types of web and video content every week.  This includes a match report and the post-game press conference.  The NRL has incentivized clubs to try to draw traffic to their websites; at the end of the season, revenues earned by the clubs on their sites are distributed to the clubs.  According to the Raiders, the league brought in Bernie Mullin to help it develop a plan regarding their online activities.  The NRL also guides clubs by encouraging them to push to increase their membership.  Some of this push is based around the idea of local clubs and increasing attendance at local grounds and keeping that local identity.

The Canberra Raiders thus use social media as a way to drive traffic to their site.  Based on our conversation, I did not get the feeling that using social media to develop a fanbase was a goal unto itself.  Rather, I was left with the impression that social media was a tool to drive traffic to their site to help increase their revenue.

The NRL does watch other leagues to see what they are doing in terms of social media.  The Raiders do less of this and spend less time developing their own social media strategy.  This is largely because the Raiders feel the NRL has better resources and more money to handle this.  The Raiders also do not have much time to do this on their own.

One of the major areas where the team has acted regarding social media is in giving in their players training in the use of social media training.  The Australian Federal Police conducted this training.  Details about the training can be found on the club’s website at www.raiders.com.au/default.aspx?s=article-display&id=27038 .  This was something the club felt was important because a number of their players are on Facebook.  Some have 2,000 to 3,000 friends, many of whom they do not know personally.  There have been a number of high profile incidents involving players getting negative media attention as a result of their comments on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter; they want to avoid that.  In general, the club advises players to be careful, not to talk about the team and to keep things personal.  The club does not ban the use of it and the NRL is aware of these problems and is encouraging training.

After getting my questions answered, I asked the Raiders about specific aspects of their social media strategy and asked the club if they had any questions based on the data packet I had provided.  The club does have an official Facebook page and Twitter account.  Ben is most familiar with Facebook, which is one of the reasons they use it more than Twitter.  The club’s original Facebook strategy involved creating a user account, friending people and trying to convert these friends into fans of the official fanpage.  The conversion rate was very low and they did not find it very effective in accomplishing their goals.

They are not entirely certain how Twitter fits into their social media strategy and there is a question of how they chose people to follow.  (Compared to other teams in the NRL, they follow almost no one.)  They were interested in increasing their number of followers but were not certain how to do it.  They also did not think that anyone had replied to them or reTweeted them, though this could be a result of not being familiar enough with the site.

We also discussed Foursquare and Gowalla, how they were used and if it was worth it for the team to explore using them.  They were unsure in this regard, as their time is limited.  If it is the next big thing, it might be worth them investigating.

I asked the club about their web traffic, citing some traffic data from Compete.  They said that a number of teams in the NRL share names with other sport teams.  In the case of the Canberra Raiders, it is the Oakland Raiders.  During the season for the other team, they often see an increase in traffic from US based visitors who mistakenly find their site.

I asked if the club had considered using YouTube.  They had.  One of their ideas involved uploading preview clips to Youtube, with attached notices that the full clip could be viewed on their site. They were not certain of the potential ROI and in the end did not use it.  I then asked them if visitors could embed official Raiders videos on their own blogs.  They were not certain but said that fans could definitely link to their videos.

While social media is a big potential audience for the club, most of their dedicated fans online congregate on a message board not controlled by the club.  They do monitor it and find it occasionally to be a concern because of that lack of control.  The club is aware of the fact that the media also monitor this message board and occasionally use it to generate less than favorable story ideas about the site.

In preparation for talking with the Canberra Raiders, I completed an overview of the size of the online community for the team.  If you are interested in this document, please contact me at laura[@]fanhistory[dot]com or my university e-mail address, laura.hale@ucanberra.

One of their ideas involved uploading preview clips to Youtube, with attached notices that the full clip could be viewed on their site.  I then asked them if visitors could embed official Raiders videos on their own blogs.

Related Posts:

NRL and official facebook fan page fail

Posted by Laura on Tuesday, 6 April, 2010

The NRL could really learn a lesson from the AFL for Facebook. Having looked through most of the official sites to try to find official Facebook pages, I’ve made the following observations:

  • The South Sydney Rabbitohs site links to the Facebook page for the Canberra Raiders.
  • The St. George Illawarra Dragons and New Zealand Warriors sites links to Facebook.com, not to their fanpages.
  • Several teams do not have Facebook fanpages.
  • The Melbourne Storm and Canberra Raiders have user pages with limited public profiles.
  • The Melbourne Storm user profile is for the team’s mascot.

These patterns suggest that the NRL is behind the ball with their use of social networking.  Social networking is important tool for building a fanbase, selling merchandise, etc.  There is a correlation between attendance at matches and the size of a team’s online social networking fan base.  I’m not certain what factors lead to this and the variables could be totally independent but either way, they need to improve their fan engagement.

(The links were found on the NRL hosted team sites.  These are not official team sites but are official NRL league pages.)

Related Posts:

Australian sports fandom on Gaia Online

Posted by Laura on Thursday, 11 March, 2010

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: