Ozzie Sport

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

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

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I’ve been data collecting again. In this case, I was updating my Facebook group and fan pages member totals. Eventually, this will all be written up and include an analysis of some patterns that exist. In the meantime, I feel the need to share of this data as the results… surprised me.  I was curious as to which Australian team had the most popular official Facebook page.  Bearing in mind that outside the AFL and NRL, my inclusion list is limited and that not every team has an official page… This list should not be considered all comprehensive.  Still, it gives a fairly good idea of what may be going on Facebook:

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The Townsville Fire are a WNBL team.  Like the Bendigo Spirit, there is a small community of people who have uploaded videos featuring the team on YouTube.  Both have three people who have uploaded a total of four videos.  There is one person in common between the two groups: bbax222.  The other two people are timtufuga and Ambalina1989.  timtufuga has uploaded a number of videos featuring WNBL teams.  Ambalina1989 has not.   Three of these videos were posted during 2009/2010 season: 1 in October, 1 in November and 1 in December.  The last video was uploaded in March 2008 and features the team’s dance squad.  The four videos that were uploaded have had very few views.  The most watched video is TOWNSVILLE McCAFE FIRE: Rachael Flanagan (interviewed by Jes ) and it has 60 less views than the most popular Bendigo Bombers video.  So far, people just don’t seem to be keen on watching or uploading WNBL videos to YouTube.

The YouTube community again appears to be one of the biggest outside of Facebook.  (Bebo has two people who list them as an interest.)  The Facebook community size is again not based on people listing the team as an interest (important if you are a team and wanting to direct advertising at them) and is instead based on group and fanpage size.

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The Bendigo Spirit are a WNBL team based in Bendigo, Victoria. There aren’t many videos featuring the team on Youtube. I’ve found a total of four uploaded by three people. Of these four videos, two were uploaded in June 2008 and two were uploaded in October 2009. Dates for video uploading thus appear random or likely coincide with the start and end of the WNBL season.  The two June videos were uploaded by an account that was probably created by the team, where no one as logged into it in the past three months. The other two videos were uploaded by two different individuals.  Both of those individuals were interested in Australian basketball: Luuuc who has a lot of NBL videos and bbax222 who has a lot of Australian national basketball team videos and WNBL related videos.  The most views for a video was BENDIGO BANK SPIRIT: Kelly Wilson with 171 one views as of March 25, 2010.   It was uploaded by bbax222.

Demographic data for these YouTube members is sparse.  All that is really known is that all three are based in Australia.  This contrasts a fair bit to some other Australian teams and social networks where people outside the country make up part of the community.  This YouTube uploading community also accounts for the largest population of Bendigo Spirit fans I’ve found on the networks I’ve looked at so far: There is one account on MySpace and one account on bebo. (There are two fan pages for the team on Facebook.  One has 165 members and the other has 83 members.  I just count Facebook people based on the number of people listing a team as an interest, not based on fan page membership.  And after looking at one of those pages, they do have an official Twitter account with 20 followers.  Go follow the Bendigo Spirit on Twitter! Support women’s sport!)

Given that the biggest community of people appears to be on YouTube and that YouTube is the second biggest search engine out there, it would probably behoove the Spirit to go back to using YouTube more actively.

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Distribution of Australian sports fans by league and location map

I’m trying to make a map of Australian sports fandom across various social networks.  This is going to take a long time and require a long explanation to understand exactly what you’re seeing.  This map isn’t intended to be all comprehensive.  I’m still collecting data and will likely continue to collecting data for a long time.    That’s why a long explanation is needed.

Country League Rugby: Group 21 is represented exclusively by the Facebook group SCONE THOROUGHBREDS RUGBY LEAGUE CLUB. Location was identified the location of the school network members listed themselves as belonging to.

For the NWBL, amongst the social networks I’ve checked so far, only You!Tube had people who listed the league.  And that was one person.  There were several people on Facebook who belonged the Wollongong Roller Hawks group and listed a network which I could affiliate with a city.

The AHL is represented by a Facebook group for the Tassie Tigers and three people on bebo. There were no fans on LiveJournal’s clones or blogger.

The AFL includes full data from 43things, bebo, blogger, eacademy, Daniel Jackson – TIGER TUFF!, Law Hawks and No matter how bad they are, I will still barrack for the Richmond Tigers! groups on Facebook, Gaia Online (but no one was an AFL fan who listed a city), LiveJournal and its clones, only Collingwood from MySpace profile search, only Brisbane Lions, Collingwood Magpies and Carlton Blues from orkut, only the scrapheap_afl mailing list on Yahoo!groups, and only the Geelong Cats on YouTube.

For the NRL, the following Facebook groups were included: Matt Johns to coach the Newcastle Knights in 2010! , Wests Tigers NYC and Melbourne-based Wests Tigers Fanatics. Only the Brisbane Broncos were looked at on 43things. Every team was searched for on bebo, blogger, Gaia Online, LiveJournal and its clones. The sample is much smaller than the AFL. (Though the community on bebo is much larger than AFL community on bebo. It might sort of make up for that.)

WNBL totals came from YouTube, MySpace, eacademy, bebo and LiveJournal clones.

For the NBL, only the Brisbane Bullets were looked at on 43 things. On Facebook for the NBL, unlike for most leagues looked at, an attempt was made to find every group connected to the team. Thus, the following groups and fanpages are represented: Townsville McDonald’s Crocodiles, Adelaide 36ers, Adelaide 36ers are the greatest team of ANY kind EVER!!, Adelaide 36ers Fan Zone, Bring Allen Iverson to the Adelaide 36ers!, Bring Dusty Rychart back to the Adelaide 36ers ~ beg, plead, grovel ;p, Cairns Taipans , Croc Nation, Early 90′s Perth Wildcats appreciation group, Gold Coast Blaze, Melbourne Tigers, melbourne tigers are the best team, Melbourne Tigers Basketball Club, Melbourne Tigers cheer squeda east and south ends , Melbourne Tigers NBL HUMMER CHAMPIONS 2007/08, Melbourne Tigers NBL supporters, New Zealand Breakers, Official Perth Wildcats, Perth Wildcats, Perth Wildcats, Perth Wildcats (Catties Fans), SAVE OUR MELBOURNE TIGERS NBL TEAM , THIS SEASON., Save Our South Dragons:www. saveourdragons.com, South Dragons 2008/09 Nbl Champions, South Melbourne Dragons, The Melbourne Tigers Fan Group, The Official Adelaide 36ers Page, Townsville McDonald’s Crocodiles and Wollongong Hawks. If this was done with other clubs and leagues, the representation for the AFL and NRL would probably be much, much bigger. Every team was looked at on bebo, blogger, LiveJournal and its clones. It also includes members of melbournetigers on Yahoo!Groups.

For the VFL, only the Geelong Cats and Coburg Tigers were checked. On MySpace, Frankston Dolphins , Sandringham Zebras , Werribee Tigers , Collingwood Magpies and Geelong Cats were checked. All teams were checked on LiveJournal and its clones, blogger and bebo.

A-League is represented by a search of all teams on bebo, blogger, LiveJournal and its clones. Orkut was searched for Melbourne Victory fans. It might not show up on the first version of this map because after about seven layers, the mapping software gets slow.

Distribution of Australian sports fans by league and location map

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After I finished with my Yahoo!Groups look at the WNBL, I decided to look at the WNBL on other services.  They included LiveJournal, bebo, orkut, blogger, Facebook, Dreamwidth Studios, InsaneJournal, Crazylife, scribbled, JournalFen, blurty,  and DeadJournal.   Only LiveJournal and bebo had people listing a WNBL team as an interest.  Some of these teams have corporate names and possibly spelling variations.    We tried to use those variations to make sure that everyone who included them as an interest was included.  With the Australian Institute of Sports WNBL team, it is possible that some individuals aren’t interested in the team but rather the Institute itself.  (Which is pretty cool based.) The following table was produced when the search was completed:

The places were then put on a map.  The only hiccup was Noosa, Queensland.  It was skipped.  The United States was also left off because it seemed likely that those fans were not fans of the team, but rather the Institute itself.   The map seems to reinforce the idea from earlier posts that Australian sports teams largely come out of a regional fan base.

WNBL on Bebo and LiveJournal by Australian city

WNBL on Bebo and LiveJournal by Australian city 3 2 1 0 Adelaide Lightning Australian Institute of Sport Canberra Capitals Logan Thunder Perth Lynx Sydney Uni Flames Townsville Fire

Regarding Facebook, I did check them using their advertising data that pulls from people’s interest lists.  There were none.  In fact, no one even listed the WNBL as an interest on Facebook.  There may be a number of Fan pages and groups on Facebook dedicated to these teams but this doesn’t look at them, just like when doing interest based research, I don’t look at LiveJournal or bebo groups.

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I badly hadn’t looked at the WNBL until I found a few accounts for teams and players on Twitter. The teams weren’t on my list and I had no data for them. There are no fans listing teams as an interest on LiveJournal clones or on blogger. There are a few people who list teams as interests on LiveJournal and bebo. I’ll eventually get around to posting that data. First, I wanted to look at Yahoo!Groups.

There are no mailing lists dedicated to any specific team. There are two dedicated to the WNBL. They are wnbl and pastandpresentwnblplayers. Both have three members.  The second has never had a post made to it.  The first has only had one post.

While there are no lists dedicated to specific teams in the WNBL, there are several mailing lists dedicated to Australian female basketball players.  One such list is tullybevilaqua. Another is laurenjacksonrules.  Neither of these lists are currently active.  (Both are being over run by spam and have been for years.)  The lists don’t highlight the player’s career in the WNBL but rather seem to focus on the athlete playing in US’s WNBA.  Given that, it is hard to slot these player based lists by team.

I’m not entirely certain what it says about Australian women’s basketball that there is an absence of lists for teams but not for players.  Did mailing lists predate a greater emergence of the WNBL?  Are people more interested in star athletes than in any sort of team allegiance?  Is the focus on Australian players who made it into the WNBA more of an issue of Australian pride in players who made it on a big stage? It could be all of those.

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