Ozzie Sport » Claxton Shield http://ozziesport.com Looking at sport in Oz from a social media and web perspective Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:07:16 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Perth sport fandom size http://ozziesport.com/2010/08/perth-sport-fandom-size/ http://ozziesport.com/2010/08/perth-sport-fandom-size/#comments Mon, 16 Aug 2010 02:19:29 +0000 Laura http://ozziesport.com/?p=706 I feel guilty as I’m kind of posting as I do with out any particular pattern. Anyway, I looked at Google.com.au and friendster (both of which have a load of garbage unrelated results) and recorded the totals for number of results for each team. I also did that bebo, care2 and blogger. (I also did ecademy and blackplanet but results were 0 the whole way through.) I’ll see if I feel like exploring and recording the size of the Perth sport fandom some more. The following table includes the results so far. If you have methodology questions, let me know.

43things.com Bebo – Groups Bebo – People Bebo – Videos Blogger Care2 – Blogs Care2 – Petitions Friendster – Groups Google Total Minus F & G Total
AFL West Coast Eagles 3 44 300 120 24 8 2 1006 273,000 501 274507
A-League Perth Glory FC 0 19 28 79 5 8 0 1072 325,000 139 326211
AFL Fremantle Dockers 5 17 85 18 10 1 0 12 116,000 136 116148
Super 14 Western Force 0 17 54 52 2 3 0 1005 196,000 128 197133
Claxton Shield Perth Heat 0 0 27 0 0 0 0 869 35,700 27 36596
WNBL West Coast Waves 0 2 5 18 0 0 0 1006 36,400 25 37431
Sheffield Shield Western Warriors 0 3 17 3 0 0 0 1004 20,700 23 21727
NBL Perth Wildcats 0 1 3 4 1 0 0 556 33,600 9 34165
WAFL Perth Demons Football Club 0 2 7 0 0 0 0 944 17,100 9 18053
S.G. Ball Cup Western Australia Reds Rugby League Club 0 0 4 2 0 0 0 371 19,600 6 19977
Australian Rugby Championship Perth Spirit 0 1 4 0 0 0 0 1078 10,300 5 11383
WNCL Western Fury 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 1010 85,700 3 86713
WAFL Claremont Tigers Football Club 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 297 13,200 3 13500
AHL WA Diamonds 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 345 7,560 3 7908
WNBL Perth Lynx 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 326 4,440 3 4769
Gridiron Australia Perth Blitz 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 484 2,110 3 2597
WAFL East Fremantle Sharks Football Club 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 1002 83,100 2 84104
WAFL West Perth Falcons Football Club 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 1069 32,700 2 33771
WAFL East Perth Royals Football Club 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1071 95,300 1 96372
WAFL Subiaco Lions Football Club 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 333 3,660 1 3994
ANZ Championship West Coast Fever 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1006 99,900 0 100906
WAFL South Fremantle Bulldogs Football Club 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1003 88,300 0 89303
Western Australian Suburban Turf Cricket Association (WASTCA) Subiaco Marist Cricket Club 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1002 17,400 0 18402
WAFL Peel Thunder Thunder Football Club 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 680 14,200 0 14880
State Basketball League (Western Australia) (SBL) Perth Redbacks 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 266 12,200 0 12466
State Basketball League (Western Australia) (SBL) Goldfields Giants 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 191 6,710 0 6901
WAFL Swan Districts Swans Football Club 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 614 2,440 0 3054
AHL SmokeFree WA Thundersticks 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3,020 0 3020
Gridiron Australia Perth Broncos 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 277 670 0 947

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]]> http://ozziesport.com/2010/08/perth-sport-fandom-size/feed/ 0 Perth Heat on bebo http://ozziesport.com/2010/01/perth-heat-on-bebo/ http://ozziesport.com/2010/01/perth-heat-on-bebo/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:33:19 +0000 Laura http://ozziesport.com/?p=151 I’m going through my data to make sure I can easily find everything by league and city.  Back on January 3, I collected data for the Perth Heat community on bebo and found 27 people who were interested in the team.  If you are an Australian and don’t know who the Perth Heat are, that is understandable.  The Perth based team competes in the Claxton Shield, Australia’s premiere baseball competition.  The competition is a successor to the defunct Australian Baseball League.

Of the 27 people, 15 are female (56%), 11 are male (41%) and 1 does not list a gender (3%).  This 50% female is unique on bebo, with the only other teams looked at so far having that percentage are the female New South Wales Swifts and Central Pulse.  I don’t know enough about baseball in Australia to know why this is so.  I might speculate that the bebo fans may be women related to or involved with men playing on the team.  For Australian rules football in the United States, where the game is not a major one, a lot of the attendees and people interested in teams like the Chicago United, many of the fans are female and connected to the team in some way.  That could account for it.  It may also be something like American expats could be more female and looking for a local team to cheer for that reminds them of home.

The average age of the 19 fans who list their age is 26.5, median age is 27 and mode age is 29.  Fans of the team aren’t that old and look a bit older than some other communities on bebo.

The Perth Heat have an international fanbase on bebo and Twitter:

Perth Heat on Bebo and Twitter

  Barbagallo Perth Heat Barbagallo Perth Heat
Country bebo Twitter
Australia 7 32
Ecuador 0 12
Ireland 4 4
Netherlands 0 4
New Zealand 8 0
United Kingdom 2 0
United States 0 36
Total 21 88
% Australia 33% 36%
% Ecuador 0% 14%
% Ireland 19% 5%
% Netherlands 0% 5%
% New Zealand 38% 0%
% United Kingdom 10% 0%
% United States 0% 41%

When I originally did the Twitter table, I thought shenanigans were at play because of the large number of international fans.  Given the bebo data, that Twitter data does not look as questionable.

On bebo,7 Australians identify their state of residence.  (Or it can be easily figured out based on the city they live in.)  Six are in Western Australia and one is in Tasmania.  The Tasmanian is a bit surprising but otherwise, a regional team has a regional audience.  Seems pretty logical.

Of all the networks looked at so far, the largest fanbase for this team is on Facebook with 800, then Twitter with 35 and bebo with 27.  The other services like blogger, LiveJournal and its clones have no other fans.  Bebo’s community is thus the smallest of the existing communities, but also the one with the most easily accessible demographic data.

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]]> http://ozziesport.com/2010/01/perth-heat-on-bebo/feed/ 2 Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom http://ozziesport.com/2010/01/based-on-data-to-date-biggest-australian-sports-fandom/ http://ozziesport.com/2010/01/based-on-data-to-date-biggest-australian-sports-fandom/#comments Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:46:26 +0000 Laura http://ozziesport.com/?p=76 The following chart is based on the data gathered for posts to date.  It is intended to give a general idea as to the comparative size of various sports fandom communities to each other.  Blanks indicate that no data regarding that team on the service has been gathered; it does not indicate a size of zero for that particularly service.  If you would like specific data regarding a team on a service to understand where that number of coming from, please comment or e-mail me at laura[at]fanhistory[dot]com.  I am more than happy to explain it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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]]> http://ozziesport.com/2010/01/based-on-data-to-date-biggest-australian-sports-fandom/feed/ 5 Claxton Shield on Twitter http://ozziesport.com/2010/01/claxton-shield-on-twitter/ http://ozziesport.com/2010/01/claxton-shield-on-twitter/#comments Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:16:39 +0000 Laura http://ozziesport.com/?p=33 The Claxton Shield is the premiere competition in for baseball in Australia.  It is organized by the Australian Baseball Federation and includes the Perth Heat, Victoria Aces, New South Wales Patriots, Queensland Rams teams.  The competition is the one of the main things that has been consistent in the baseball community with two leagues having become defunct.

Looking around, the Australian baseball community does not appear to have a stronghold on social networks like bebo,blogger or LiveJournal.  They do however have a small presence on Twitter: The extent of which is the account run by the Perth Heat.  The team has 35 followers.  Twitter Analyzer seems a bit off with their count for where followers come from for the team.  It says that the Heat have 36 American followers, 4 Dutch followers, 4 Irish followers, 12 followers from Ecuador and 32 followers from Australians.  Stats like those are why I have a huge problem with Twitter Analyzer but I’m not sure what tool does a better job at counting.  The Perth Heat do a fairly good job at updating regularly, providing scores, links to updated rosters and their social profiles elsewhere.  (They link to their Facebook fanpage, where they have 1,110 fans.)  The one thing they don’t do particularly well is interact.

It seems like Twitter would be a great potential tool for Claxton Shield and its teams to market itself as Twitter ranks 12th in Australia according to Alexa.  Second tier sports should definitely contemplate using it, in combination with YouTube and Facebook, to promote themselves so they can reach a wider audience.  People can accidentally find their content through @ replies, retweets, related videos that can help develop more organic interest in them.  If Australia is ever going to get another league like ABL and IBLA and have it be successful, this sort of thing needs to be done.

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