Ozzie Sport

Bebo is a social networking site that is popular in Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom. The site’s traffic has been down in the past year or so. It traditionally has has a fairly large contingent of Australian sport fans, with most people being fans of the NRL. It has a smaller population of fans for other sports like the AFL and NBL. There were questions regarding bebo’s viability for most of 2010, when there were rumors that the site would be shut down if it failed to find a buyer. This and a variety of other factors, such as the popularity of Facebook and YouTube, have led to a lot of once active users becoming inactive.
Despite the issues regarding inactivity, it is a site worth looking at to begin to give a snapshot of sorts back in time, to understand the size of Australian and Kiwi women’s sport fandom four years ago to a year ago, when activity levels dropped off. It might be possible to determine where these fans migrated to by looking at growth on other niche networks, which could be useful for determining engagement strategies. This data can also give an idea as to what was popular. If the comparative levels of interest on other networks are not similar, it could suggest that clubs have failed with their marketing strategies or have found a method to really engage in their audience that other clubs could benefit from.

When looking at bebo, there are a variety of ways to do that. One of the first is to use search result totals, and compare the size of the community to other teams and over time. The second way is to look at the size groups/views for videos. The third way is to look at the demographic data for people who lit the team as an interest. This will be broken down by league/federation.

Search: ANZ Championship
The ANZ Championship is the most successful women’s (semi) professional league in Australia.  It makes sense that the team would have the largest amount of interest on bebo.  While this is true,  the community size, the number of groups and videos created by these fans is still extremely limited.  (Their counterparts in the AFL often have 200 to 400 people who list them as an interest.)

Search: AWIHL
This is a niche league, where the men’s team also fail to have people who list them as an interest. If there is an ice hockey fan base in Australia, it is not on bebo.

W-League
Somewhat surprisingly, the W-League fanbase on bebo appears to be a bit larger than that of the ANZ Championship. One possible factor for this could be that the overall fan community for soccer is really large on bebo. Another contributing factor could be that the Canberra United attract male fans to the sport that a W-League team may not otherwise get because the United do not have to compete with an A-League club in their city: If you love soccer in Canberra, you support the top level competitions here. Bebo also has a community of people who uploaded videos. Soccer videos are really popular across the whole of the network. Given that, W-League fans may be part of a larger part of video uploading culture that ANZ Championship fans are removed from.

One issue at play with W-League results is that Canberra United content is easier to pull out than the Melbourne Victory, because secondary keywords are needed to differentiate Melbourne Victory W-League results from A-League results. This means that real numbers for the W-League teams could be understated. Similar issues of a sort exist for the W-League, which shares a name with an American women’s soccer competition. This could lead to an over representation when just that term is counted.

WNBL
The WNBL is the premiere women’s basketball competition in Australia. Unlike the NBL, it does not include a New Zealand team. The problem with one of the teams looked at, the West Coast Waves, is that the name is a rather common phrase and almost none of the video results look relevant to the WNBL team. This type of issue can be a huge problem for women’s (and men) sport when doing promotion and reputation management for the club’s brand beyond the players.

WNCL

The WNCL teams being looked at do not share the name issues that their WNBL counterparts share. Unfortunately, they may suffer a problem with not all results being shown as they often have names with sponsors in them. Official and player content may pull up sponsor named related names. The average fan is less likely to use them as fannish identities are not based around who sponsors them.

Search: Women’s World Cup Soccer
The Matildas are Australia’s national women soccer team. As the W-League is larger than the ANZ Championship, it is not surprising that there is a comparable elevated amount of interest in the team.

Videos: W-League
Only the W-League Canberra United team were checked. Some of the videos for the team had quite a number of views. bebo’s stagnation is quite clear when looking at this data as the number of views for all videos failed to increase between June 3 and November 26.

People: ANZ Championship
The table below includes the demographic data for people who listed ANZ Championship teams as interests on bebo. This data tends to confirm that teams have local interest and don’t have national fan bases.

People: Basketball Australia
The Australian Opals have a similar issue with a few other Australian sport teams: People could use these words but not mean the team. This makes a bit of sense, given that one of the people who list the Opals as an interest is not from Australia.

People: W-League
Some what surprisingly, the people who list a location are not from Canberra. A possible explanation for this is that Sydney bebo users are friends or family of players, who themselves may not be from Canberra.

People: WNBL
Like the ANZ Championship, most fans are from areas near where the team is based. Fans also tend to be young and there is an even mix of male and female fans, which suggests that the WNBL could grow by working to attract that male audience in communities under served by NBL teams.

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 18)
• Blogger and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport
• Most popular female Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)

And just to mix it up today and support the idea that I actually do write things, this would be a draft of some methodologies that will be headed into my appendix. A lot of it feels really simple, already gets stated inside existing chapters as I use the data and would eat up word count in my methodology in a really unhealthy way. (I’ve got about 20 of these methodologies to do. I should really do a summary about each particular site I’m using too. We’ll see. This section first.)

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Appendix A
Data Gathering Site Specific Methodologies

43 Things
User information
To get user information from 43 Things, the first step was to identify goals that related to an Australian or New Zealand based sport club.  Searching using various keywords, reading the goals that related to the keywords and determining if they related to the search accomplished this.  Once a goal was identified and people were identified as having completed the goal or intending to complete the goal, the goal was recorded on a row in a 43 Things specific spreadsheet.  In a separate column, the team and league to which the goal related to were also recorded.  After this was completed, the user pages for people with that goal were visited.  Their username, city, state, country, birthday, website, and date joined were all recorded.  The last notation to the row was to include the date that this information was gathered.
During the time that this data was gathered, 43 Things changed the information that was available on the profiles.  This was done sometime between early June 2010 and  early November 2010.  Subsequently information such as city, state, country, birthday, website were not available on user profiles.  Only data gathered prior to this time exists except in cases where the data was checked at a later date and the user’s information had previously been recorded.

Total user information
Attempts were made to benchmark the level of interest in a team by recording the number of relevant search results on 43 things.  This was done by documenting the league and team that were being searched for in a row.  After that, the keyword used for the search was recorded in the same row.  The search was then completed and the total results were recorded.  A textual analysis of the search results was conducted and the total number of relevant results was recorded.  Of those relevant results, the total number of people working to accomplish them was then recorded.  Finally, the date the search was conducted was recorded.

Alexa
Site rankings
A list of websites related to Australian and New Zealand sport was created.  This was recorded on a spreadsheet, with columns that listed the league and team that the domain featured.  For every domain on the list, the page about the domain on Alexa was checked.  The Alexa page URL for the domain was also recorded on the relevant row.  When visiting the page, the world rank was recorded.  If an Australian rank was also available, it was recorded in a separate Australian specific column.  Next, the date that this information was gathered was recorded.  After that, any notes the author had regarding the site were recorded.  This was mostly to identify the type of domain or if it ranked in a country outside Australia.  Lastly, in some cases, the paragraph of information provided by Alexa regarding the site’s traffic and demographics was recorded.

Bebo
User  information
Profile information from bebo users was gathered by running a search related to a specific team or league.  The league and team that the search was related to was documented.  Once this was done, the people search results were copy and pasted to Notepad.  The search results were then formatted for pasting to the bebo user spreadsheet. Once copy and pasted, the author attempted to convert user-inputted locations into real locations of city, state, country.  The location field results were then found in columns for city, state, country instead of a location column.  The columns that existed then were league, team, name, gender, age, city, state, and country.  A final column was added that recorded the date this data was gathered.

Videos, Groups, Band information
There are three different search tabs on bebo beyond people that have information about the community size and audience for Australian and New Zealand sport.  They are Video, Groups and Bands.  Searched related to a specific team, player or league were run.  The relationship between the searches and the league and club were recorded.  The search results were then copy and pasted to Notepad where the results were formatted so they could be pasted on to a separate bebo related spreadsheet.  Once this was done, the following headers where information could be found included type, total (fans/viewers/members), loves, profile views, group created, genre, city, state, country, uploaded, uploader, and description.   The city, state and country information was documented using the same methodology as the bebo profile information.  Finally, a column was added that included the data that this data was gathered on.

Total search results
Total search results data came by recording the search term used, and recording the team and league that connect to that search term.  Once that was done, the total results were recorded for People, Video, Music, Groups, Apps and Skins. The date the search was conducted was then recorded.  Finally, any notes regarding the search or its results were recorded.
When recording the results, in almost all cases, the total results were included.  In a few select cases, generally when the results were 20 or less, the total number of results deemed relevant were recorded.  This was deemed important for smaller sport fan communities where one or two videos or groups may represent the whole community.  An example search where this was done involved a search for “Giants Football Club” because the results picked up rugby league teams and the New York Giants.

BlackPlanet
User information
User information was gathered once a search had been conducted and resulted in a user appearing.  If a user appeared for that search, the league and team related to that search were recorded.  The user name was then recorded.  The user page was then opened and the following data was collected: Country, gender and age. Lastly, the date this information was gathered was documented.

Total user information
To gather total user information, a search phrase was thought of and recorded.  In separate columns, the league and team the search related to were recorded.  The profile search was then conducted and the total number of results were recorded.  Finally, the date the search was conducted on was recorded.

Blogger
User information
User information was gathered once a search had been conducted and resulted in a user appearing.  If a user appeared for that search, the league and team related to that search were recorded.  The user name was then recorded.  The user page was then opened and the following data was collected: Age, Gender, Astrological sign, City, State, Country. Lastly, the date this information was gathered was documented.

Total user information
To gather total user information, a search phrase was thought of and recorded.  In separate columns, the league and team the search related to were recorded.  The profile search was then conducted and the total number of results were recorded.  Finally, the date the search was conducted on was recorded.

Related Posts:

• Socceroos: A creative research data dump (part 1)
• Distribution of Australian sports fans by league and location
• The Impact of Jason Akermanis’s Comments on the Western Bulldogs’s Online Fanbase
• Data absent context can change the meaning: Did Julia Gillard hurt the Bulldogs?

This is a data dump. It is raw data that I’ve updated a bit recently. It may or may not be useful to others.

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Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 18)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 16)
• Most popular Australian athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (November 7)

Canberra has traditionally been a place that people aren’t from.  Rather, it is a place that people have traditionally moved to.  When they move, they take their sporting loyalties with them.  For that reason, there is a conflicting mess of sport loyalties in the city.  If you went to see the Sydney Swans play the Western Bulldogs at Manuka Oval this year, you could clearly see these different loyalties on display as it pertains to the AFL.  On the whole, I’ve generally found Canberrans to be pretty good with these loyalties: You can safely wear your team’s kit with out fear that some stranger is going to take the piss out of you.

The Grand Final is soon approaching.  Given the different sporting loyalties, it is interesting to see which team people in Canberra are barracking for.  Is one team more popular than another?  Do Canberran loyalties mirror national loyalties?

One way of measuring loyalty and team identification is to count how many people follow a team on Twitter.  All followers combined, Collingwood 7,381 followers, St. Kilda has 4,492 followers, Geelong has 2,153 and the Western Bulldogs have 1,554.  When Twitter followers for each team are filtered by location using time zones and user listed location, you can get an idea as to how many Canberrans are followers of the various teams playing in the Grand Finals:

It isn’t that big of a surprise that Collingwood is number one. Roy Morgan Research had them as the most popular Melbourne based team in 2009.  Beyond that, Canberrans on Twitter buck the popularity trend.  Roy Morgan has Geelong at number 2.  On Twitter, Canberrans are the least likely to follow Geelong.  Roy Morgan had the Western Bulldogs last.   Canberrans had them at third.  Overall, when compared to total number of followers for a team, Canberrans don’t  always follow the national patterns.  Again, Geelong and the Western Bulldogs are the ones that don’t match: More people follow Geelong on Twitter but more Canberrans on Twitter follow the Western Bulldogs.  It looks like Canberrans, who don’t have their own AFL team, follow a different drummer than the one that beats on a national level.

Another way to measure team loyalty and team identification in Canberra is to use Facebook.  Facebook says that there are 198,500 users who live in the ACT and 175,900 people who live within 50 miles of Canberra.  What Grand Finals teams do Canberrans like?

Well, not the Western Bulldogs, that’s for sure.  Canberran fans on Facebook much more clearly follow the national patterns as established by Roy Morgan.

Other social networks exist and Canberran sport fans are present on them.  One such network is LiveJournal (and its clones).  There are a number of fans on it who list their teams as an interest on their profile:   4 for Collingwood,  22 for Geelong,  16 for St. Kilda and 23  for the Western Bulldogs.  When broken down by city and state, there are two fans from the ACT who list Geelong as an interest and one fan who lists the Saints as an interest.  This pattern for the ACT does not mirror the pattern for the whole of LiveJournal.  It also doesn’t follow the pattern for team fandom size as identified by Roy Morgan Research.

Over on 43 things, there is one Canberran who has a goal related to an AFL team.  It just isn’t a team in the finals.  (The Canberran has a goal of buying a Sydney Swans jumper.)  On bebo, there are 18 people identified as being from the ACT who list an AFL team as an interest, four of which list a Grand Finals team as an interest.  Two support Collingwood, one supports Geelong and one supports St. Kilda.  This pattern mirrors the national one as established by Roy Morgan Research.  On Blogger, there are four people from the ACT who list an AFL team as an interest.  Of these four, only one lists a finals bound team: Geelong.

What does tell us?  Canberran AFL fans are most likely to be found on Facebook.  Their support of their clubs is similar to the national club support though there are differences.    Different social networks attract Canberrans fans of different teams.  It shouldn’t be that hard to find a like minded fan who will support your team if you’re here for the game.  The easiest time of doing that will probably be for Collingwood Supporters but Bulldog fans shouldn’t be that worried either.  Just go on Twitter Doggies fans and reach out to your fellow Canberrans.

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

Related Posts:

• Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)
• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups (November 23)
• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups

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.

Related Posts:

• Data dump: Australian sport on bebo
• 43things.com and Perth based sport clubs
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 18)

This was originally written on June 14, 2010. It has not been edited since then. There may be some grammatical errors and citation related issues.

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The Impact of Jason Akermanis’s Comments on the Western Bulldogs Online Fanbase

On May 20, the Jason Akermanis says gay AFL players should stay in the closet backlash started in response to his column in the Herald Sun. (Akermanis, 2010) The media covered the story on television, in print and online.  AFL fans discussed it on Twitter, created protest pages on Facebook, wiki articles were updated and a lot of people posted about it on the blogosphere.  Management within the AFL and the Western Bulldogs felt compelled to speak out against Jason’s comments.  People talked of reporting Jason to the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity commission.

From a marketing perspective, Akermanis’s opinions were perceived as damaging to the sport and league.  The Western Bulldogs have an association with VicHealth and the Gay and Lesbian Health Association and Akermanis’s comments seemed to contradict and undermine that support. (Walsh, 2010)  The possibility of negative backlash may not have been apparent to the team prior to the article being published as, according to the Sydney Star Observer, team management signed off on the column. (Noonan, 2010)   The size of the backlash and efforts to try to address it can probably be best evidenced by the suspension of Akermanis from the playing field and talking to the media.

Unlike the Melbourne Storm controversy, Akermanis’s comments do not give the appearance of having activated his personal fan base and the fan base for the Western Bulldogs.  There were no media reports of pastors speaking out on Akermanis’s behalf.  His teammates did not support him.  The media did not dismiss his comments, excusing them because of his otherwise excellent on field performance.  Perhaps had Akermanis made these comments in a different country, his comments would have had the potential to be less damaging to the club he played for.  There is also a general view, at least in the United States, that sport teams are run by conservatives who maintain traditional family values.  The assumption is often that sport fans reflect those same values; those that do not chose to follow other popular culture products like movies, television and video games.   If the fanbase for the AFL had actually reflected those underlying assumptions, the situation could have been much more easily ignored and have had the potential to be much less damaging.

The question is how damaging was the situation for the Western Bulldogs online?  How can this be measured? Did the team lose the potential to grow their audience when compared to other AFL teams as a result of Akermanis’s comments?  Who supported Jason and who did not?

The measurement question is probably the most difficult one to address.  Unlike the Melbourne Storm situation, this does not involve a team: The situation involves a specific player.  Liking or adding the team as an interest cannot necessarily be seen as supporting or condemning Jason Akermanis.  People could like the team because they suspended Akermanis for his comments. It is much harder to attribute page views to Akermanis and/or Western Bulldogs supporters who want to find out the situation in order to justify or reaffirm their allegiances.  Almost none of the media coverage and very few people on Twitter indicated that the fanbase was activated in defense of the team and Akermanis.  Thus, a default assumption for any data is that publicity of the situation will activate a larger audience to be against both the club and Akermanis unless contextual evidence suggests otherwise.

Given the measurement difficulties, this paper will nonetheless try to determine how the online community responded to the Jason Akermanis situation and how this reflects back on the Western Bulldogs.  This will be done by looking at Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, bebo, Alexa and a few selected sites.

Facebook
Facebook is the most popular social network in Australia.  Facebook’s advertising data says that there are over nine million users from Australia using the site.  (1)  The following of some Australian based sport teams and leagues are quite large.  The official fan pages for the Queensland Maroons, Brisbane Broncos, Socceroos, AFL and Essendon Bombers all have more than 50,000 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 on network was inevitable.   There are several Facebook metrics that can be looked at to ascertain how the controversy effected the Western Bulldogs and Jason Akermanis.  The first way is to compare the relative growth of the Western Bulldogs’ total fans on their fan page compared to other teams during the same page.  A second way is to examine comparative growth of groups that supported Akermanis versus those that condemned his views.  The third way is to compare demographic and geographic distinctions between fans that support Akermanis, people that condemned Akermanis’s views and Western Bulldogs fans.

If the Jason Akermanis controversy hurt the Western Bulldogs on Facebook, it should have resulted in a loss or slower growth in terms of total and percentage of new fans on Facebook when compared to other teams. Data was collected between March 25 and June 10, 2010 regarding the size of the official Facebook fan pages for several AFL teams. (2)

Table 1

In the period between May 3 to May 30, the Western Bulldogs were in the middle of the teams for number of new fans with 1,453. This was almost three times as many as the bottom ranked Geelong Cats who had 519 new fans in that period and a third of new fans of the top ranked Collingwood Magpies who saw an increase of 4,150 fans. An argument could be made that period had too much time preceding it that could have lessened any potential loss with earlier gains. Thus comparing the period between May 30 and June 5 migh be more helpful as Akermanis was suspended on June 1. That new brought additional attention to the column that led to his suspension. During this period, the Western Bulldogs ranked seven out of nine for total new fans with 213 people liking them. This number may not be that accurate as not all teams that had performed worse than them in the previous period were included in this sample. The better comparison could be between May 3 and June 10, 2010 as it is larger and includes the initial controversy and the suspension use. That data set is also more complete. During this longer period, the Western Bulldogs finish in the middle with a gain of 1,812 fans. This compares to the Carlton Blues who on top with 5,185 new fans and the Geelong Cats who are on the bottom with 657 new fans. All of this supports the idea that, when compared to other team’s growth, the Western Bulldogs were not hurt by the controversy.

Another way of looking at this data is to compare percentage growth of new followers. This number compares a club’s ability to get new followers relative to their own performance as opposed to all AFL fans. Using this number, the Western Bulldogs saw the most growth in the period between May 3 and May 30 with a 22.8% increase. The next highest performing club was the Carlton Blues with 19.5%. The Western Bulldogs growth is impressive when compared to the Essendon Bombers who had 4.5% growth, the St. Kilda Saints who had 3.7% and the Adelaide Crows who had 2.1% growth. In the period between May 30 and June 5, the Western Bulldogs were second only to the Gold Coast Football Club: The Bulldogs had a 3.2% increase in new fans compared to the Gold Coast’s 44.9%. The Western Bulldogs saw .8% more growth to the next highest team, the Richmond Tigers who had 2.4%. The Bulldogs percentage growth was roughly 6.4 times as much as the bottom teams, Essendon, St. Kilda and Adelaide who saw between .5 and .7% growth. For the period between June 5 and June 10, the Western Bulldogs finished second for highest percentage growth. The only team that outperformed them was Greater Western Sydney, another expansion team who had just made a lot of news with their signing of Israel Folau. With the exception of the Gold Coast, all teams had one or more percent less growth than the Western Bulldogs. For the overall period between May 3 and June 10, the Western Bulldogs finished on top with 26.9%, 1.1% more growth than the number two team of Carlton and well above that of the last place performer Adelaide who had 3.3% growth in fans on Facebook. Given these numbers where the Bulldogs led in percentage growth on Facebook, it is hard to argue that the Jason Akermanis controversy hurt their Facebook strategy. It might be argued that the team was able to effectively capitalize on Akermanis related traffic on Facebook and their website to convert some fringe fans into Facebook fans.

Beyond the total fans of official pages, there are other interesting metrics that can explain the fan response to the Jason Akermanis controversy. One involves the creation and growth of Facebook groups and fan pages: Facebook easily allows users to create them and they do. Some of the fastest member growing Facebook groups and fan pages are created to get media attention for an issue, to help people spread the word about breaking news and share knowledge, to express disgust with actions taken by institutions or to express allegiance with a person or organization in response to negative publicity. Once the catalyst for the event is out of the news, many of these groups face stagnant growth and become irrelevant having been abandoned by their creators.

While it is not possible to date the creation of a group, the Akermanis controversy likely resulted in the creation of a number of fan pages and groups. These groups have names such as Jason Akermanis, you are a MORON!, Jason Akermanis: Homophobe and complete fuckwit!, Jason Akermanis is a homophobe., Jason Akermanis is a dick, Jason Akermanis Is Totally Gay, Only Homophobes think Jason Akermanis is a homophobe!, Jason Akermanis should be locked and gagged in a closet!, Don’t you hate it when you’re in the shower and Jason Akermanis comes in?, Jason Akermanis is a homophobe., Jason Akermanis is a F*ckwit, Jason Akermanis Can’t Drive A Race Car, JASON AKERMANIS’S “IQ OF A PLANT”, Jason Akermanis slept with me, Jason Akermanis is a coward, and for people who wanna see Jason Akermanis shove his head up his own Ass. There are a number of pro or neutral Akermanis groups on Facebook. They likely predate the controversy. They include groups named Jason Akermanis, Jason Akermanis Biography, Jason Akermanis Autobiography, The Battle Within by Jason Akermanis, jason akermanis is amazing!, The Jason Akermanis Appreciation Society, Jason Akermanis is a legend, Jason Akermanis handstand appreciation society, and Jason Akermanis for Brownlow 2008. (3)

Some of the anti-Akermanis groups saw relatively impressive levels of growth. Jason Akermanis is a homophobe. is one of the most popular anti groups. It had 126 members on May 20 and had 547 members by May 24. Membership levels stabilized and it had only 627 members by June 12. Don’t you hate it when you’re in the shower and Jason Akermanis comes in? had 171 fans as of May 22. By May 30, it had 482. Most of the other anti-Jason groups sampled had smaller total populations and smaller membership increases. Some of the anti groups were deleted during this period. One such group was Jason Akermanis Is Totally Gay, which had one member when checked on May 20 and was deleted some time between then and June 10. Jason Akermanis: Homophobe and complete fuckwit! had 118 members on May 20 before being removed from Facebook by May 22.

The pro and neutral Akermanis groups in the sample were all smaller than the two largest anti-Akermanis groups as of June 12, 2010. A pro-Akermanis group ranked third for the total number of fans. In comparison to the anti-Akermanis groups, the growth rate was much smaller. The Jason Akermanis Appreciation Society went from 454 members on May 20 to 469 on June 12. Jason Akermanis is a legend saw no growth during that period, continuing to have 201 total members. Jason Akermanis handstand appreciation society saw a growth of one, going from 88 to 89 during that period. Jason Akermanis at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/107712129252191 is the group that probably saw the biggest percentage increase of clearly established fan pages. It went from 56 fans on May 20 to 165 on June 12. Jason Akermanis at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/301148780410 went from 307 fans on May 20 to 382 on June 12. Growth levels for the pro and neutral groups are level compared to the anti groups. The data suggests that people did not respond to the Akermanis controversy by rushing out to assert their support of him and his views by joining communities about him on Facebook. The data also suggests that the anti-sentiment regarding Akermanis was not sustained for a long period of time and that people were not scared to affiliate with Akermanis, despite people’s negative attitudes towards him.

Another way of evaluating the effect of the Akermanis controversy on the Western Bulldogs is to compare the characteristics of Western Bulldog fans, Akermanis supporters and Akermanis detractors. Facebook shows the network membership for people who belong to many groups and fan pages, which allows such a comparison to take place. On June 13, 2010, a list of all the members of the Western Bulldogs official fan page was pulled. While Facebook shows the page as having 6,819 fans, it only provided names and network membership for 3,343 people. Of these fans, 188 or 5.6% belonged to a network. A membership list for Jason Akermanis is a homophobe. (4) was also pulled. As of June 13, 2010, the group had 627 members, of which Facebook lists 428. Of the 428, 28 or 6.5% belong to a network. A membership list for The Jason Akermanis Appreciation Society was pulled. As of June 13, the group had 469 members of which 337 were on the member list. Of these, 27 or 8.0% belonged to a network.

Networks are Facebook created groupings that early in the site’s history allowed people to easily filter content to people who shared an affiliation with other users. These networks cover three broad general categories: Places of employment, secondary schools and high schools. The pro-Akermanis people belong to thirteen networks not shared by detractors or Western Bulldogs fans. That means 48% of Akermanis fans do not belong to a network that is shared by Western Bulldogs fans and highly suggests that Akermanis’s fanbase largely is independent of the Bulldogs. Eight anti-Akermanis fans or 27% of that population belong to networks not represented by the Western Bulldogs or Akermanis supporters. This suggests that Akermanis detractors likely come from with in the Western Bulldogs fanbase.

The differences between Akermanis detractors and Western Bulldogs fans are really clear when network membership is sorted by type (secondary school, university, company) and then tabulated. (5) 78.6% of all Akermanis detractors that list a network belong to a university related one. This compares to 50.0% for Akermanis supporters and 48.6% for Bulldogs supporters. Bulldog supporter network membership suggests that the club’s goal of building a barracker base from the working class has been successful. The pattern of network membership may also suggest that Akermanis detractors are older than the club’s current supporter base. Given these two conditions, the Bulldogs are likely to be unaffected by the detractors as they represent a demographically distinct group that the club is not marketing to.

Twitter
Twitter is a popular microblogging platform. Many teams, players and fansites have established a presence on the site. Australian sport fans are also actively using Twitter to discuss their club’s performance, celebrity athlete related gossip and to find other sport news.

There are several possible ways to monitor the impact of the Akermanis controversy as it pertains to Western Bulldogs. Sadly, the most important Twitter metrics are not accessible as the author did not get the data in the moment. (6) These include total number of followers before and after the controversy for the official account and total number of tweets featuring certain keywords. The counting the total number of Tweets by the official account was also not done, as it was believed that this data would not have meaningful results. Unlike the Melbourne Storm controversy, the focus was on a player where the media and fan attention appeared to be on him to the exclusion of his club. Given that, the Bulldogs did not have to respond or change their practices in their official fan communication channels and monitoring their Tweet volume would be unlikely to provide any insight into the fan response to the controversy.

As the three of the most popular Twitter metrics are not available or not relevant, the question is what other metrics can be used? One Twitter analysis tool that can be useful in this case is Twitter Venn. (7) The service creates Venn diagrams based on keywords that a user selects. The service uses Twitter’s search API to find Tweets that mention the two or three teams the user selected, determines if the terms were used together or independently, counts the total Tweets and then creates the Venn. (Clark, n.d.) Using this service on June 11, a Venn diagram (Figure 1) was created. The keywords chosen were based on the goal of trying to exclude irrelevant tweets, such as people talking about their pet Bulldogs or other teams named the Bulldogs. Phrases such as gay, homosexual and homophobic were also not included as their usage extends beyond this controversy and would pick up a lot of irrelevant data.

Figure 1. Twitter Venn. This Venn diagram generated by Twitter Venn demonstrates the lack of overlap between use of Akermanis and Western Bulldogs.

On Twitter, people who mentioned Jason Akermanis did not mention his club affiliation, instead referencing the AFL, gay and other words that indicate the controversy involving the column he published. Based on this, it can be concluded that on Twitter, Akermanis’s comments did not result in rage directed at his club.

Wikipedia
Wikipedia is one of the first sources of information that many people turn to when a news story breaks. Articles on the site often provide background information and context to an event, and include a summary and links of breaking news. Wikipedia also has an excellent search engine optimization. When people go to Google or other search engines to find out what is happening, Wikipedia often appears as the first, second or third result. Thus, an increase in an article’s views should be expected when controversy happens.

In terms of the Jason Akermanis and Wikipedia, the way to measure the controversy as it impacts the Western Bulldogs would be to compare the total page views between those two articles. If the controversy reflected more upon Akermanis than his team, the expectation is the page view spike would be higher. The chart below contains traffic information to those two articles for the period between May 1 and June 8, 2010. (8) To give perspective to Akermanis’s situation as it pertains to athlete interest connecting to club interest, data for the Israel Folau, Brisbane Broncos and Western Sydney Football Club articles have been included on the chart. (Figure 2)

Figure 2. Article Views on Wikipedia by Date. Graph shows total views of selected Wikipedia articles between May 1 and June 10, 2010.

The Jason Akermanis controversy did not result in increase in attention for the Western Bulldogs: Total page views by date have a correlation of .280, which suggests that interest in the two is not related. This is much different than the situation that exists for Israel Folau and Greater Western Sydney: The two articles move in tandem in terms of total article views by date with a correlation of .943. (9)

There are two other aspects of Wikipedia worth analyzing as they pertain to understanding the fan community’s actions in response to the controversy. One is the total edits. The second is the location of those edits. For total edits, controversial and high visibility stories tend to lead to an increase in editing. For less controversial news stories, where there isn’t much new information and the topic is not one people are passionate about, there tend to be fewer peaks in editing. Below is a chart (Figure 3) that compares the total number of edits to the Jason Akermanis, Western Bulldogs, Israel Folau and Greater Western Sydney articles.

Figure 3. Total Edits Between May 1 and June 8, 2010 for Selected Wikipedia Articles.

The Jason Akermanis controversy resulted in people editing the article about him. The total number of daily edits does not mirror total number of daily edits to the Western Bulldogs. This continues to suggest that people viewed Akermanis’s actions independently of his club. This contrasts with the Israel Folau situation, where the total number of edits appears to be a bit more connected.

The Western Bulldogs are based in a Melbourne suburb. An argument could be made that the Western Bulldogs should be concerned about maintaining or developing a fanbase in their local area; they do not need to worry about the fan community outside their geographic home. The only way to measure the local fan community response on Wikipedia expressed by editing an article is to use geolocation for IP addresses that have edited an article. As the total edits by date chart shows, there have been very few edits to the Western Bulldogs article since the Jason Akermanis controversy broke. Of the five edits made to the Western Bulldogs article, two edits have been made by users who have not logged in and have a visible IP address. Neither of these edits references the controversy. Both edits are from Melbourne. (10) This suggests that the controversy did not impact their local fanbase.

The edit history for the Jason Akermanis article stands in stark contrast to the Western Bulldogs article. It has a lot more edits and almost all of the non-logged in edits involved editing the article to reference the stay in the closet controversy. There were 29 total edits made by 14 non-logged in users. Of these edits, four are from Melbourne, one each from Camberwell and Sandringham in Victoria, two are from Adelaide, three are from Sydney and three are international. Only 42 percent of the edits to the Jason Akermanis article originate from the Western Bulldog’s geographic home. Determining what this means is more problematic. The most obvious conclusion is that the offended population were geographically dispersed and were more interested in the topic because of the homophobic aspects than because of their interest in Akermanis and the Western Bulldogs. These edits should not be seen as being committed by a base who will punish the Western Bulldogs by not watching games on television or in person.

Bebo
Bebo was a popular social networking site in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Its popularity has slipped in the past year but there is still a large population of AFL fans on the site. It probably ranks amongst the top ten most popular social networks inside Australia
Bebo allows people to search for keywords and interest that appear in people’s profiles, in videos, descriptions of bands, groups, applications and skins. For profiles, the general assumption is that people do not update interests listed on them regularly after they register. Doing so generally requires a strong desire to associate or disassociate with a person or organization. This desire has to overcome general antipathy towards updating. Thus, interest levels remain relatively stable unless something happens that causes a huge emotional response.

What does this mean for the Western Bulldogs? Did the Jason Akermanis situation reach that point, causing people to want to associate or disassociate with the team? As of March 17, there were 93 people who listed the Western Bulldogs as an interest. (11) By June 8, 2010, this number had increased to 95. There does not appear to have been an attitude shift that causes many people to want to change their public allegiances. The small increase may mean something when compared to Melbourne Storm who saw zero interest listing growth during a similar period prior to and after a major controversy. (Hale, 2010)

While no bebo video data is available for the Western Bulldogs prior to June 9, video data is available for the Brisbane Lions. On May 1, 2010, a search was done of videos on bebo for the “Brisbane Lions.” This is a team that Jason Akermanis played for. On that date, there were 74 videos which mentioned the Brisbane Lions. Three of these videos referenced an Australian soccer league team. The rest were about the AFL team. Of these 71 videos, only one contained Akermanis in the title or description. As of May 1, it had only eleven views. When the video viewing statistics were check on June 9, 2010, there were still only 11 views: The Jason Akermanis controversy has not translated into people seeking out video content on bebo featuring him to watch.

There are no groups about Jason Akermanis. This contrasts to Facebook, where there are several that cover several different views of the player. The Jason Akermanis did not inspire anyone on bebo to create any anti-Jason group, which suggests either antipathy towards the situation or fans not being particularly active on bebo any more.

The only other large player/club controversy that occurred during this time period involved Israel Falou, who switched from the NRL and Brisbane Broncos to the AFL and Greater Western Sydney. To put Jason Akermanis’s fan community as it related to the Western Bulldogs on bebo into context, it is worth comparing the two players. The following data was gathered on June 8, 2010.

Table 2

Bebo interests suggest that Israel Folau is much more important to the Brisbane Broncos fan community than Jason Akermanis is. Jason Akermanis’s comments look like, based on these numbers, that they would have less potential to harm the club than Israel Folau’s desertion to the AFL.

Website Traffic and Demographics
There are primarily three services which track website traffic. They are Alexa, Quantcast and Compete. (12) Each one has something different to offer in terms of how they measure and information they provide about a site. None of these sites are perfect in that they cannot convey a completely accurate picture of a website’s traffic or the demographic composition of visitors to the site. Despite these deficiencies, using their data can begin to give an idea to the fan response by looking for traffic movement out of sync with other teams and if there was a major difference in audiences visiting the Bulldogs site.

Alexa ranks websites based on the amount of traffic they get. It measures traffic using a user-installed toolbar coupled with other data. (13) (alberto, 2009) They can differentiate traffic based on nation and will provide ranking information by country for sites that get a majority of their traffic from specific countries. Their data is also updated daily. This makes them more useful than Compete and Quantcast in that Alexa provides information about Australian sites and updates daily so that daily traffic patterns can be examined.

On June 5, June 8 and June 9, 2010, the international and Australian ranking on Alexa was recorded for all official AFL club websites. (14) This is not ideal, as it does not include traffic prior to and immediately after the Jason Akermanis situation. Still, it can provide a picture of what was happening 16 days after the incident broke, a few days after news of Akermanis’s suspension was announced.

Table 3.

The only team with less traffic to their site is Greater Western Sydney, a team that has not started playing in the AFL yet. While only three of the seventeen teams saw an increase in Australian traffic ranking from June 5 to June 9, (15) the decrease in rank between those dates for the Western Bulldogs was the most extreme: It dropped almost 2,000 places. This suggests that something is going on to depress traffic to the Bulldogs when compared to other teams.

Quantcast and Alexa both provide demographic information about visitors to a site. Quantcast can directly measure a site’s traffic and build a better demographic picture if a site inserts Quantcast’s code into their site. (Quantcast Corporation, 2008) Quancast’s data tends to be American centric and does not always provide a picture of international visitors unless a site is Quantified. Alexa’s demographic data comes from a survey users complete when they install the toolbar. (alberto, 2009)

Bearing in mind that the Quantcast’s description is based on American visitors, the site characterizes visitors to the Western Bulldogs’s site (16) as female, middle aged, Hispanic, have children, make between $30,000 and $60,000 a year and are college graduates. This information was based on all of May 2010, including the nineteen days before the controversy broke out. Alexa, which has much more data from Australian users, characterizes visitors to the Western Bulldogs site as generally between the ages of 18 to 24, male, college graduates, childless and visiting the site from work.

The Geelong Cats and North Melbourne Kangaroos are closest to the Western Bulldogs in terms of amount of traffic. They are also based in the same metro area. Thus, it makes sense to compare their audience with the of the Bulldogs to determine if the there are demographic differences between the clubs that could be attributed to a shift in viewing habits as a result of the Akermanis controversy.

Quantcast characterizes visitors to the Geelong Cats site (17) as female, extremely young, Asian, having no children, making between $30,000 and $60,000 a year and being college graduates. Quantcast characterizes North Melbourne Kangaroos website visitors (18) as being split evenly amongst both genders, teenaged, Asian, having kids in their household, affluent and possessing a graduate degree.

Alexa characterizes Geelong Cats website visitors as being between 18 and 24, male, having a graduate degree, having children, and visiting the site from bother home and work. Alexa characterizes North Melbourne Kangaroos visitors as between 18-24, male, having a college degree, childless and visiting the site from home.

There does not appear to be a demographically homogenous group visiting the websites of all three clubs. The major difference appears to be the racial make up of visitors, with the Western Bulldogs over representing in Hispanics. It would be difficult to make a claim, based on available website demographic data, that the Akermanis situation changed the composition of the fanbase.

43 Things, Blogger and Other Small Networks
While smaller and less influential sites like 43 Things, Blogger and BlackPlanet have tiny populations, they are worth monitoring as they can often be one of the first signs of a major public relations problem online that can no longer be controlled. Twitter and Facebook can often be very temporal: Things happen in the moment and are quickly forgotten. Those sites are not set up to record fan responses. Other sites, either because they are inactive, allow for longer posting, have greater visibility to people outside the network the content exists on or because influential fans from those networks may have greater crossover to a wider selection of sites, can hurt a club or league’s reputation. The content does not go away. There are influential people on some of those sites that can spread the message to a totally different audience with a different demographic profile. Also, when you’re talking to some one in a much smaller group, there tends to be more trust and greater potential for people to believe what their friends are saying. While a person reading one hundred tweets by nominal acquaintances may be able to forget and move on as things move so fast, in a one on one environment, the chances are the smaller group may have bigger problems letting go and moving on.
43things is a goal setting site that is relatively popular in Australia. Prior to the Jason Akermanis controversy, there was one goal related to the Western Bulldogs: See the Western Bulldogs win the grand final. One person was trying to accomplish this goal. Since the controversy, there has been no change in people creating new goals related to the club, nor in the number of people trying to accomplish the existing goal. There have been no goals, either positive or negative, created related to Jason Akermanis. This mirrors the non-action taken by Brisbane Broncos, Israel Folau and Greater Western Sydney fans who added no goals in response to the change in code news for Israel Folau.

BlackPlanet is a small social network marketed at African Americans in the United States. It has a small community of Australians on it. The major sport league that Australians are interested on the site is the NRL. Prior to and after the controversy, no one listed the Western Bulldogs as an interest. After the controversy, no one updated their profiles to include Jason Akermanis as an interest.

Blogger is a blogging site powered by Google. It is one of the more popular free blogging services in Australia. Users can create a profile on the site, which is used to link their different blogs and comments on one page. The profile page includes an interest field that users can fill out. As of January 16, twelve people listed the Western Bulldogs as an interest. This number only changed by one as of June 4 and June 8, 2010, with 13 people listing the team as interest. No one listed Jason Akermanis as an interest on blogger as of June 4, 2010. It is unlikely that the Jason Akermanis situation resulted in any behavioral change in terms of public allegiances shown on profiles for the Western Bulldogs.

Care2 is a small social network marketed at people who want to make the world a better place. It hosts blogs, groups, discussions, personal profiles, petitions and photos. Care2 has a small population of Australian sport fans using it. As the site is geared towards making a difference and addressing social problems, it is a bit surprising that Akermanis does not show up when searching (19) site profiles, discussions, groups or petitions. As of June 11, the Western Bulldogs are only mentioned four times in blogs and only included on one person’s profile. While this data was gathered three weeks after the controversy, it seems unlikely that with no mentions of Akermanis, the small community on Care2 turned against the team. ecademy is a niche social networking site that is an alternative to LinkedIn for professionals. With no earlier benchmarks, a June 11, 2010 profile search (20) turned up similar results to Care2: No one listed the team or Jason Akermanis as an interest on their profile. It is unlikely that the controversy had an impact on the small AFL community on the site.

Wikia is an extremely popular wiki hosting company (21) that allows anyone to freely create a wiki. They are home to three small wikis dedicated to the AFL and Australian rules football. (22) These wikis are small and not very comprehensive. Two were created prior to the controversy and one was created after it. None have had any edits to the Western Bulldogs or Jason Akermanis article. Coincidentally, there have been no edits related to Israel Folau and Greater Western Sydney. The Wikia community for the AFL was clearly not activated in response to the Akermanis or Folau situations. This suggests that the community is either inactive or more interested in historical on field play rather than off field player antics.

Conclusion
Based on fan behavior online, Jason Akermanis’s comments did not help the player build his personal brand. He upset some fans in the short term, and motivated people to create long time reminders of views that they consider problematic. Very few fans rushed to his defense by affiliating with him or creating groups to defend his position. While the controversy may be problematic for Akermanis, the controversy was less problematic for his club, the Western Bulldogs. Fans did not link the club and player on Wikipedia or Twitter. People did not remove their Western Bulldogs interest on sites such as Blogger or change their behavior goals on sites like 43 Things. Inactive Bulldogs fans were not motivated to become active in order to express disgust for the team. The people that had problems with Akermanis were demographically distinct from Bulldogs fans on Facebook. The controversy harmed Akermanis but it did not harm his team’s image.

References
Akermanis, J. (2010, May 20). “Stay in the closet, Jason Akermanis tells homosexuals.” Herald Sun. Newspaper. Retrieved June 7, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/stay-in-the-closet-jason-akermanis-tells-homosexuals/story-e6frf9ix-1225868871934

alberto. (2009, July 13). “How are Alexa’s traffic rankings determined?” Alexa. Retrieved June 8, 2010, from http://www.alexa.com/help/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17&sid=70b7eee4fd8d92a4f74c66e3680d1275

Clark, J. (n.d.). “Twitter Venn.” Twitter Venn. Retrieved June 11, 2010, from http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterVenn/view.php

Hale, L. (2010, May 20). “Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy.” Ozzie Sport. Retrieved June 9, 2010, from http://ozziesport.com/2010/05/online-activity-in-the-wake-of-the-melbourne-storm-controversy/

Noonan, A. (2010, May 27). “AFL closet furore continues.” Sydney Star Observer. Newspaper. Retrieved June 7, 2010, from http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/2010/05/27/afl-closet-furore-continues/25965

Quantcast Corporation. (2008, June 28). “Cookie Corrected Audience Data, Leveraging Multiple Data Sources to
Calibrate Unique Cookie, Machine, and People Counts in a Direct-Measurement Media Economy.” Quantcast. Retrieved June 9, 2010, from http://www.quantcast.com/docs/display/info/Cookie+to+People+Translation+Overview

Walsh, C. (2010, May 21). “Aker’s viewpoint bizarre: Roos.” The Australian. Retrieved from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sport/akers-viewpoint-bizarre-roos/story-e6frg7mf-1225869370860

Footnotes

1. Facebook’s advertising page is located at https://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ .  As of June 11, 2010, it said that there were 9,300,240 people from Australia.
2. The urls for the fan pages in this sample are https://www.facebook.com/adelaidecrows, https://www.facebook.com/AFL, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Brisbane-Lions/21301860172, https://www.facebook.com/OfficialCarltonFC, https://www.facebook.com/collingwoodfc, https://www.facebook.com/Essendon, https://www.facebook.com/fremantlefootballclub, https://www.facebook.com/GeelongCatsInsider, https://www.facebook.com/GoldCoastFC, https://www.facebook.com/teamgws, https://www.facebook.com/hawthornfc, https://www.facebook.com/MELBOURNEfc, https://www.facebook.com/northkangaroos, https://www.facebook.com/portadelaidefootballclub, https://www.facebook.com/Richmond.FC, https://www.facebook.com/stkfc, https://www.facebook.com/sydneyswans, and https://www.facebook.com/pages/West-Coast-Eagles/38862387223, https://www.facebook.com/Western.Bulldogs
   .
3. The following is a complete list of URLs for Jason Akermanis related Facebook fan pages and groups that the author looked at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/107712129252191, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/105738419448658, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/373300971735, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/376142636801, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis/301148780410, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-Biography/106142142741832, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-Autobiography/106446502709782, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-you-are-a-MORON/109009685810123, https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Battle-Within-by-Jason-Akermanis/110570445624262, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-Homophobe-and-complete-fuckwit/105067262872425, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=124872100865630, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118380594866779, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118537708183794, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118573961511057, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=344061166761, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20900401086, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10308061363, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19647855868, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=128825660465576, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16522463154, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=109095775801131, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18564050741, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21877556009, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=123972501889, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=107444465957654, https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=38642639632, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-slept-with-me/115552025153010, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-is-an-idiot/125326927493237, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jason-Akermanis-is-a-coward/105337389512086,  and https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dont-you-hate-it-when-youre-in-the-shower-and-Jason-Akermanis-comes-in/124465230905493 .
4. The group can be found at https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118380594866779 .
5. The following table lists the network, the type of network and the total members from the three different groups looked at.
   

   Network	Type	Supporters	Detractors	Bulldogs	Total
   Victoria AU	University	2	1	15	18
   Monash	University	2	8	7	17
   University of Melbourne	University	2	1	13	16
   RMIT	University	0	0	15	15
   State Government of Victoria	Company	0	0	11	11
   Deakin	University	0	2	8	10
   La Trobe University	University	2	0	7	9
   Westbourne Grammar School	Secondary school	0	0	4	4
   Bendigo Senior Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	3	3
   Curtin	University	0	2	1	3
   Haileybury College	Secondary school	1	0	2	3
   MacKillop College	Secondary school	1	0	2	3
   St. Paul’s College	Secondary school	0	0	3	3
   University of Sydney	University	0	2	1	3
   Catholic College Bendigo	Secondary school	0	0	2	2
   Essendon Keilor College	Secondary school	0	0	2	2
   Hoppers Crossing Secondary College	Secondary school	1	0	1	2
   Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar School	Secondary school	1	0	1	2
   James Cook	University	0	1	1	2
   Methodist Ladies’ College	Secondary school	0	0	2	2
   National Australia Bank	Company	0	0	2	2
   St. Bernard’s College	Secondary school	0	0	2	2
   Sunbury College	Secondary school	0	0	2	2
   Swinburne	University	0	0	2	2
   Telstra	Company	0	1	1	2
   UNSW	University	1	1	0	2
   Whitefriars College	Secondary school	0	0	2	2
   Academy of Mary Immaculate	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   ANZ	Company	0	0	1	1
   Australian National	University	0	0	1	1
   Bacchus Marsh College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Ballarat & Clarendon College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Ballarat High School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Benedictine IL	University	0	0	1	1
   Binghamton	University	1	0	0	1
   Bowness High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Box Hill High School	Secondary school	0	1	0	1
   Braemar College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Burnside State High School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Cairns State High School	Secondary school	0	1	0	1
   Catholic Regional College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Central Queensland	University	0	0	1	1
   Chairo Christian School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Charles Campbell Secondary School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Charles Darwin	University	0	0	1	1
   Charles Sturt University	University	1	0	0	1
   Chelmer Valley High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Clonard College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Computer Sciences Corporation	Company	0	0	1	1
   Copperfield College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   De La Salle College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Elsevier	Company	0	0	1	1
   Emmaus College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Esperance Senior High School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   FedEx	Company	0	0	1	1
   Firbank Grammar School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Ford Motor Company	Company	0	0	1	1
   FRANCE 24	Company	0	0	1	1
   Geelong Grammar School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Gisborne Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Governor Stirling High School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Griffith	University	0	1	0	1
   Guilford Young College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Gymnase de Beaulieu	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Heathfield High School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Hellyer College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   IESEG School of Management	University	0	0	1	1
   Illawarra Sports High School	Secondary school	0	1	0	1
   John Willcock Senior High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Jones Lang LaSalle	Company	0	0	1	1
   Kantonsschule Büelrain	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Karingal Park Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Keilor Downs College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   KPMG	Company	0	0	1	1
   Launceston College	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Lowther Hall Anglican School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Macquarie	University	0	0	1	1
   Melbourne High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Merrimac State High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Metso	Company	1	0	0	1
   Mildura Senior College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Mincom	Company	0	0	1	1
   Mirrabooka Senior High School	Secondary school	1	0	0	1
   Mount Carmel College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Mowbray College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Nazareth College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Newcastle	University	0	1	0	1
   Newcomb High	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Northern Beaches Christian School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Norwood Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Nowra Christian School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Nowra High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Optus	Company	0	0	1	1
   Padua College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Patterson River Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Presentation College Windsor	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Sacred Heart AU	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Sacred Heart College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Salesian College Rupertswood	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   San Diego State	University	0	0	1	1
   Smithfield State High School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   St Albans Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   St. Aloysius College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   St. Thomas	University	0	0	1	1
   Star Of The Sea	Secondary school	0	1	0	1
   Star of the Sea College	Secondary school	0	1	0	1
   Strathmore Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   T. D. Williamson	Company	0	0	1	1
   Tasmania	University	0	0	1	1
   The British School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   The Friends’ School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   The Peninsula School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Trinity Catholic School	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   University of New England	University	0	1	0	1
   University of Peradeniya	University	0	0	1	1
   University of Zimbabwe	University	1	0	0	1
   UT Arlington	University	0	0	1	1
   UWA	University	1	0	0	1
   Webber Academy	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Wellesley	University	0	1	0	1
   Westpac Banking	Company	0	0	1	1
   William Angliss Institute of TAFE	University	0	0	1	1
   Wodonga Senior Secondary College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Wycheproof College	Secondary school	0	0	1	1
   Total	Secondary school	12	5	80	97
   Total	University	13	22	82	117
   Total	Company	1	1	26	28
   Total	26	28	188	242
   Percentage	Secondary school	46.2%	17.9%	42.6%	40.1%
   Percentage	University	50.0%	78.6%	43.6%	48.3%
   Percentage	Company	3.8%	3.6%	13.8%	11.6%

6. Data regarding the comparative size of total Twitter followers for the Western Bulldogs was initially gathered on June 1, almost a week after the controversy first started.  Twitter follower counts for other official club accounts were not recorded on that.  This further hampers the ability to make comparisons between teams.
7. Twitter Venn is located at http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterVenn/view.php .
8. Article view information is provided by http://stats.grok.se/ .
9. The correlation between the Brisbane Broncos article and the Israel Folau article is .155.  The relationship between page views for each article is close to random.
10. whatismyipaddress.com/ was used to determine the geolocation of IP addresses.
11. This number came from visiting http://www.bebo.com/c/search? , clicking on the people tab and searching for “Western Bulldogs.”
12. Compete is not being looked at here because they have not updated their data to include May.  They also do not provide free demographic details about visitors to sites that they track.
13. It is important to note that this tool does not measure direct traffic to a site.  Rather, it involves sampling traffic to the site to get an approximate for this his compares to other sites.
14. The list of Alexa pages checked include: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/afc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/afl.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/lions.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/carltonfc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/collingwoodfc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/essendonfc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/fremantlefc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/gfc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/teamgws.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/hawthornfc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/melbournefc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/kangaroos.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/portadelaidefc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/richmondfc.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/saints.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/sydneyswans.com.au , http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/westcoasteagles.com.au , and http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/westernbulldogs.com.au .
15. There are almost certainly cyclical patterns to the checking of AFL club websites: People check them on game and around game day to keep up with the team.  They are unlikely to check club websites when there is no club news and teams are not playing.
16. The Quantcast information is from http://www.quantcast.com/westernbulldogs.com.au#demographics
17. The Quantcast information is from http://www.quantcast.com/gfc.com.au#demographics
18. The Quantcast information is from http://www.quantcast.com/kangaroos.com.au#demographics
19. The url for the search that was confused is http://www.care2.com/find/site#q=%22Jason+Akermanis%22 .
20. The ecademy search can be found at http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=member&q=%22Western+Bulldogs%22&op=Search+People
21. As of June 11, 2010, Alexa ranks Wikia as the 312th most popular site on the Internet.  Compete estimates that the site gets around 3.2 million visitors a month.
22. The wikis are http://afl.wikia.com/wiki/Australian_Football_League_Wiki , http://aussierules.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page , and  http://aflpedia.wikia.com/wiki/AFL_Wiki .

Related Posts:

• Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy
• A social media/web snapshot of Collingwood, Hawthorn and Port Adelaide
• Which AFL team do Canberrans support in the Grand Final?
• Data absent context can change the meaning: Did Julia Gillard hurt the Bulldogs?

I’ve been busy collecting all sorts of bits of random, creative data for the Socceroos in the lead up to the World Cup.  There is a whole lot more that I want to get but I’ve only so much time.  And time is what is holding up my ability to do an analysis prior to the World Cup regarding what some of this data could mean.  I figured I would share it so that others like you might use it to do your own analysis.  Just a word of caution: Random data is random.

43 Things
This data was checked again on June 12, 2010. These are all the questions where people mentioned Socceroos. They were found by searching 43 Things for Socceroos.

Alexa
I’ve been getting data for other sport teams since early May. It took me a long time to consider adding this one…

Bebo
I wanted an idea as to the demographic make up of fans. Bebo data is often the easiest to get. (And it didn’t close down like it was rumored to have on June 1 if AOL didn’t find a buyer. Yay!) The other benchmark is for the change in total people listing them as an interest or related keyword.

Changes in interest listing on bebo

Black Planet
It isn’t entirely surprising that no one lists the team as an interest on Black Planet.

Blogger
At some point, I will get demographic data off blogger…

Care2
Included the All Whites. They tend to pick up a lot of irrelevant data.

Compete
Tracking your traffic… only limited information, and month by month. If you pay, you get access to better data. I can’t afford it so limited is what you get.

Related Posts:

• Appendix A: Data Gathering Site Specific Methodologies (draft 1)
• Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 18)

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

Related Posts:

• A social media/web snapshot of Collingwood, Hawthorn and Port Adelaide
• Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom
• Most popular AFL and NRL teams on Facebook
• Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy

This is an observation as I work through formatting the Penrith Panthers on bebo list.  It appears that some (three that I’ve found so far) NRL fans on bebo are using player last names as their location.  I’ve not really seen this for other teams on other networks so it is interesting.  I wanted to note it as when I finish formatting, that will be removed.  … Along with people who list their location as “My girlfriend’s bed” and “Anywhere I can crash.”

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)
• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups (November 23)
• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 18)

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:

WNBL fans on bebo and LiveJournal

Service	Team	Username	Last updated	Gender	Age	Year of Birth	City	State	Country
bebo	Adelaide Lightning	Olivia Smith		Female	31		Adelaide	South Australia	Australia
LiveJournal	Adelaide Lightning	t2incorporated	171 weeks ago			1988	Brisbane	Queensland	Australia
LiveJournal	Adelaide Lightning	abster7	265 weeks ago				Adelaide	South Australia	Australia
bebo	Australian Institute of Sport	Rayno Ellis
bebo	Australian Institute of Sport	Chris Roper		Male	22		Sydney	New South Wales	Australia
bebo	Australian Institute of Sport	Blair H		Male	21		Bendigo	Victoria	Australia
bebo	Australian Institute of Sport	Sam Pickett		Male	25		Noosa	Queensland	Australia
bebo	Australian Institute of Sport	Lieke Schaap		Female	18
bebo	Australian Institute of Sport	Daniel Walker
bebo	Australian Institute of Sport	Ben Hall		Male	25		Adelaide	South Australia	Australia
bebo	Australian Institute of Sport	Lauren Jackson		Female	28		Albury	New South Wales	Australia
LiveJournal	Australian Institute of Sport	erg_grrl	183 weeks ago				Los Gatos	California	United States
LiveJournal	Australian Institute of Sport	x_roxysnow82_x	282 weeks ago				Dundee	Illinois	United States
bebo	Bendigo Spirit	Lisa Clark
bebo	Canberra Capitals	Lauren Jackson		Female	28		Albury	New South Wales	Australia
LiveJournal	Canberra Capitals	beloved_zara	1 week ago						Australia
LiveJournal	Canberra Capitals	amyfoxyfox	2 weeks ago			1990
LiveJournal	Canberra Capitals	the_seether_is	130 weeks ago			1984	Brisbane	Queensland	Australia
LiveJournal	Canberra Capitals	kristenvealfan	176 weeks ago			1982	Canberra	Australian Capital Territory	Australia
bebo	Dandenong Jayco Rangers	Vanessa Lacey
bebo	Dandenong Jayco Rangers	J-E-S-S
bebo	Logan Thunder	Loganthunderisda		Male			Logan	Victoria	Australia
bebo	Logan Thunder	Logan Thunder - Mens DLeague		Male
bebo	Logan Thunder	Laura Mc Dermott		Female	22		Lismore	New South Wales	Australia
bebo	Logan Thunder	Patty
bebo	Logan Thunder	Scotty		Male			Logan	Victoria	Australia
bebo	Logan Thunder	Emmyy
bebo	Logan Thunder	Leisa C
bebo	Perth Lynx	Tash Nichols		Female	18		Perth	Western Australia	Australia
bebo	Perth Lynx	Liam Dunn Kellock		Male			Perth	Western Australia	Australia
bebo	Sydney Uni Flames	Vlad Alava		Male
LiveJournal	Sydney Uni Flames	lelak	8 weeks ago			1975	Sydney	New South Wales	Australia
bebo	Townsville Fire	Rebecca		Female	20		Townsville	Queensland	Australia
bebo	Townsville Fire	Reece Dowleans		Male	21		Townsville	Queensland	Australia

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.

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.

Related Posts:

• Socceroos: A creative research data dump (part 3)
• Distribution of Australian sports fans by league and location
• Australian Hockey League on blogger, LiveJournal, and LiveJournal clones
• Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom