I’m still working on completing my various social media totals. Today, I was poking around Twitter and I’m still surprised at the number of teams that don’t have a presence. One league I looked at was Gridiron Australia. It isn’t a major league but it involves an American sport and it peaked my curiosity. Unsurprisingly, the size of the community on social media sites is tiny.
No teams have an official Twitter presence. The extent to which a team is on Twitter involves a player being there and Tweeting about the team. The player is @fatloaf. He plays for the WA Raiders. There other largest place to find the league is on Yahoo!Groups, where there are two lists dedicated to the WA Raiders: waraiders and raidersd. Outside of these scattered networks, there are a few fans on bebo. It seems likely there are probably a few other fans dedicated to the league and these teams. If they are, they are probably on more Australian specific networks or communities dedicated to the sport.
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Tags:
ACT Monarchs,
bebo,
NSW Wolfpack,
Queensland Sundevils,
SA Fire,
twitter,
Victorian Eagles,
WA Raiders,
Yahoo!Groups Category:
Gridiron Australia,
Twitter,
Yahoo!Groups,
bebo
This is mostly a follow up to Australian Hockey League on blogger, LiveJournal, and LiveJournal clones and Another problem team is problem: Tasmanian Tigers. I finished looking at the other networks that I’ve been looking at so far: Bebo, Twitter, Facebook, and Yahoo!Groups. Given the size of this league and some of the name issues (two teams sharing names with other, bigger teams), I wasn’t surprised that the size was so tiny on these networks. There isn’t enough data to provide any sort of meaningful analysis so I’m just providing a table of the size of the communities on the aforementioned networks based on the methodology discussed in other posts.
Australian Hockey League
| Interest |
Canberra Labor Club Lakers |
New South Wales Waratahs |
NT Stingers |
Queensland Blades |
Southern Hotshots |
Tassie Tigers |
Victoria Vikings |
WA Thundersticks |
| Dreamwidth |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| DeadJournal |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| JournalFen |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| InsaneJournal |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Blurty |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Inksome |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| CrazyLife |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| scribbld |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| LiveJournal |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Blogger |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| bebo |
0 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
| Facebook |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Yahoo!Groups |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Twitter |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Total |
0 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
The AHL has zero presence that I can find on Twitter, which is a bit surprising. No one appears to even be reporting on them. They also appear to not have a presence on Facebook. Developing these two would probably help increase their overall visibility.
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Tags:
AHL,
bebo,
Canberra Labor Club Lakers,
dreamwidth,
Facebook,
JournalFen,
LiveJournal,
New South Wales Waratahs,
NT Stingers,
Queensland Blades,
Southern Hotshots,
Tassie Tigers,
twitter,
Victoria Vikings,
WA Thundersticks,
Yahoo!Groups Category:
AHL,
Facebook,
Twitter,
Yahoo!Groups,
bebo
Somewhat surprisingly, no one lists Ainslie Football Club, Belconnen Magpies, Eastlake Football Club, Queanbeyan Tigers, Sydney Swans Reserves or Tuggeranong Hawks as an interest on Facebook. On Yahoo!Groups, there are no mailing lists dedicated to AFL Canberra or its teams.
What is surprising is the comparatively large size of the AFL Canberra fan community on bebo where, when combined, includes thirteen people. That’s twelve more than the next nearest network looked at.
Of the six teams, the Tuggeranong Hawks have the most fans at six. Ainslie Football Club, Eastlake Football Club and Queanbeyan Tigers come in second with two fans each. Belconnen Magpies is fifth with one fan. The Sydney Swans Reserves are last with zero fans.
The Tuggeranong Hawks fans are the oldest, averaging 21 years of age. Eastlake Football Club is in a close second at 20.5. Ainslie Football Club and Queanbeyan Tigers have the youngest fans, with their fans being 18. When people listed their city or state of residence, everyone listed Canberra or a suburb in the ACT. In at least two cases for Tuggeranong fans, they listed Canberra and another city. The other cities included Perth and Batesman Bay. All the fans of the Queanbeyan Tigers and the Tuggeranong Hawks were male. This contrasts with Ainslie Football Club and Eastlake Football Club where their two fans were split equally amongst the two gender: One male and one female fan.
The composition of the AFL Canberra fan community is not particularly surprising, except for its youth. Fans of teams in the league are local. The population of the community is still small, especially when compared to the AFL on bebo. The gender split feels logical though I can’t clearly articulate why. Given that it exists, the data fits with other data collected.
Related Posts:
Tags:
AFL Canberra,
Ainslie Football Club,
bebo,
Belconnen Magpies,
Eastlake Football Club,
Facebook,
Queanbeyan Tigers,
Sydney Swans Reserves,
Tuggeranong Hawks,
Yahoo!Groups Category:
AFL Canberra,
Facebook,
Yahoo!Groups,
bebo
I should really focus pretty much exclusively on the NRL, the AFL, the NBL and the VFL with a minor diversion into first class cricket and the ANZ Championship. At one point, I compiled a list of some 3,500+ sports teams in Australia. Running through the top flight teams for all sports and the minors for the major sports is an exercise in overwhelming. Still, I like to look on the networks I’ve been focused on.
One of the side leagues that I’ve been looking at is Gridiron Australia, the league for American football. I had the list of teams. I check everything on LiveJournal, its clones, blogger and then bebo. At bebo, I realized I had a problem. For the Victorian Eagles, no problem. (There is one fan. He is male, 21 years old and from Victoria.) There is one person for the Queensland Sundevils. For the SA Fire? There were 40. Turns out that there is an artist named SA-fire. It also sometime short for the San Antonio Fire Department. Given that, the short form isn’t a search form that will be used. (Though one or two of the people who list SA Fire as an interest are clearly South Australia Fire team.) The long form search is the one that goes for bebo. With that search, there are only two people who list them as an interest.
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New Zealand has several professional sports teams that compete in Australian and New Zealand based leagues. The leagues that are involved with include the the A-League, ANZ Championship, National Rugby League, and Super 14. The teams include Wellington Phoenix, Northern Mystics, Southern Steel, Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic, Canterbury Crusaders, and New Zealand Warriors. The map below only includes bebo and blogger users who list the team as an interest and list a city in New Zealand as their place of residence. (I haven’t done LiveJournal and there were no fans on LiveJournal’s clones.) The city communities involved are really small compared to some of their Australian peers. Brisbane has 121 compared to Auckland’s 11. To be fair though, Auckland had fans of Australian based teams and if those were included, they’d be at 22 instead of 11. (Those 11 fans are all NRL fans of the following teams: Brisbane Broncos, Canberra Raiders, Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Gold Coast Titans.
 |
|
New Zealand
 |
18 |
 |
4 |
 |
1 |
 |
Wellington Phoenix |
 |
Northern Mystics |
 |
Southern Steel |
 |
Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic |
 |
Canterbury Crusaders |
 |
New Zealand Warriors |
|
|
Related Posts:
Tags:
Brisbane Broncos,
Canberra Raiders,
Canterbury Crusaders,
Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs,
Gold Coast Titans,
New Zealand Warriors,
Northern Mystics,
Southern Steel,
Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic,
Wellington Phoenix Category:
ANZ Championship,
bebo,
blogger
The Gold Coast Titans are a member of the National Rugby League. According to Roy Morgan Research, they are the 11th most popular NRL team in Australia. Prior to this post, I’ve looked at two current (Brisbane Broncos, Canberra Raiders) and nine defunct (Balmain Tigers, Northern Eagles, Western Suburbs Magpies, Adelaide Rams, Annandale Dales, Cumberland, Glebe Dirty Reds, Hunter Mariners, South Queensland Crushers) NRL teams on bebo. The Gold Coast Titans hold a very secure second with 138 people interested in them on bebo. The Raiders are third with 83 and the Broncos are first at 278. The Gold Coast Titans number fits with the pattern if we correlate the teams where I have bebo data and the Roy Morgan Research data:
Correlation NRL to Roy Morgan
| |
bebo |
blogger |
Facebook |
Roy Morgan |
| Brisbane Broncos |
278 |
12 |
27520 |
1259000 |
| Gold Coast Titans |
138 |
2 |
9680 |
274000 |
| Canberra Raiders |
83 |
4 |
4160 |
164000 |
| Correlation |
0.982805538 |
0.960648284 |
0.99067366 |
|
The correlation for bebo is strong that that of the pattern for blogger, though it isn’t as strong as the one for Facebook. The correlations are so strong though that it is hardly worth mentioning.
The Gold Coast Titans community is 50% male, 38% gender unknown and 12% female. The percent unknown makes it really hard to discuss the male versus female community size. And the community for the team on blogger is so small (2) that its all maleness probably doesn’t speak to the bebo community in answering the percentage question. 51 or 82.3% of the fans on bebo, where they list information so their country can be identified, are from Australia. The others are from New Zealand (10 or 16.1%) and Yemen (1 or 1.6%). There are a number of Kiwis playing on the squad which can help explain the fanbase. The person from Yemen may be an error. They list their city of residence as Tawahi, which is a city in Yemen. There are no Yemeni players on the team, but it could be an Australian who moved to Yemen, or a Yemeni who visited Australia and fell in love with the team.
Of the Australians, most (27) hail from Queensland. The remainder hail from New South Wales (20), the ACT (2), Northern Territory (1) and Western Australia (1).
44 people list their age. The mean age is 24.09, median age is 21 and mode age is 19. This is very close to the bebo Raiders with a mean age of 23.3 and the bebo Broncos mean age of 23.29.
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Tags:
Adelaide Rams,
Annandale Dales,
Balmain Tigers,
Brisbane Broncos,
Canberra Raiders,
Cumberland,
Glebe Dirty Reds,
Gold Coast Titans,
Hunter Mariners,
Northern Eagles,
South Queensland Crushers,
Western Suburbs Magpies Category:
Gold Coast Titans,
bebo
The Canterbury Crusaders are a Christchurch, New Zealand rugby team that play in the Super 14 competition. They are discussed here because the competition includes teams from Australia. For more information on the Super 14, please read Wikipedia’s article.
On bebo, there are 51 fans of the team. Because most people barracking for the team are Kiwis (77.8% or 28 of the 36 people listing a country of residence), this post will be rather brief without much analysis. In addition to the Kiwis, the team on bebo has 1 fan from Fiji, 1 from the United Kingdom and 6 from Australia. The six Australians are distributed somewhat equally in the country: 2 from New South Wales, 2 from Queensland, 1 from South Australia and 1 from Western Australia.
25 of the 51 list their age. Of these, the mean age is 28, median is 26 and mode is 18. The Queensland Reds community on bebo and LiveJournal and the Canterbury Crusaders on blurty, DeadJournal and Dreamwidth are not really big enough to compare age wise as the biggest has three people listing age. 49% or 25 identify as male, 29% or 15 people identify as female and 22% or 11 do not identify as a gender. Compared to the Queensland Reds bebo community where all 6 identify as male, this community has a huge female population.
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I’m going through my data to make sure I can easily find everything by league and city. Back on January 3, I collected data for the Perth Heat community on bebo and found 27 people who were interested in the team. If you are an Australian and don’t know who the Perth Heat are, that is understandable. The Perth based team competes in the Claxton Shield, Australia’s premiere baseball competition. The competition is a successor to the defunct Australian Baseball League.
Of the 27 people, 15 are female (56%), 11 are male (41%) and 1 does not list a gender (3%). This 50% female is unique on bebo, with the only other teams looked at so far having that percentage are the female New South Wales Swifts and Central Pulse. I don’t know enough about baseball in Australia to know why this is so. I might speculate that the bebo fans may be women related to or involved with men playing on the team. For Australian rules football in the United States, where the game is not a major one, a lot of the attendees and people interested in teams like the Chicago United, many of the fans are female and connected to the team in some way. That could account for it. It may also be something like American expats could be more female and looking for a local team to cheer for that reminds them of home.
The average age of the 19 fans who list their age is 26.5, median age is 27 and mode age is 29. Fans of the team aren’t that old and look a bit older than some other communities on bebo.
The Perth Heat have an international fanbase on bebo and Twitter:
Perth Heat on Bebo and Twitter
| |
Barbagallo Perth Heat |
Barbagallo Perth Heat |
| Country |
bebo |
Twitter |
| Australia |
7 |
32 |
| Ecuador |
0 |
12 |
| Ireland |
4 |
4 |
| Netherlands |
0 |
4 |
| New Zealand |
8 |
0 |
| United Kingdom |
2 |
0 |
| United States |
0 |
36 |
| Total |
21 |
88 |
| % Australia |
33% |
36% |
| % Ecuador |
0% |
14% |
| % Ireland |
19% |
5% |
| % Netherlands |
0% |
5% |
| % New Zealand |
38% |
0% |
| % United Kingdom |
10% |
0% |
| % United States |
0% |
41% |
When I originally did the Twitter table, I thought shenanigans were at play because of the large number of international fans. Given the bebo data, that Twitter data does not look as questionable.
On bebo,7 Australians identify their state of residence. (Or it can be easily figured out based on the city they live in.) Six are in Western Australia and one is in Tasmania. The Tasmanian is a bit surprising but otherwise, a regional team has a regional audience. Seems pretty logical.
Of all the networks looked at so far, the largest fanbase for this team is on Facebook with 800, then Twitter with 35 and bebo with 27. The other services like blogger, LiveJournal and its clones have no other fans. Bebo’s community is thus the smallest of the existing communities, but also the one with the most easily accessible demographic data.
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The Central Pulse are a New Zealand based team in the Australian/New Zealand based ANZ Championship, the premiere netball competition in both countries. Because the presence of Australian teams, it is being covered by this blog.
There is a small community of people listing the team as an interest on bebo. It consists of four people. Of these four, all are from New Zealand and all are female. These two are not surprising given that this a female athletic team and the team is based in New Zealand.
The average and mean age of the three fans listing their age is 21.6 and 21 respectively. This sample of three is the largest of all the other teams looked at on social networks so far. With samples of one, the New South Wales Swifts community on LiveJournal, and the Melbourne Phoenix on blogger are both older at 22 and 32. With samples of one, Adelaide Thunderbirds on bebo, and New South Wales Swifts on bebo are younger at 18 and 20.
Considering the population size of Australia compared to New Zealand, the most surprising thing about this bebo data is that the community is so big at 4 compared to Australian teams with 1.
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There are only two fans of the team on bebo, so this almost doesn’t deserve a post of its own. Nonetheless, it gets one. The Fitzroy Lions were one of the original teams in the Victoria Football League. In 1996, they merged with the Brisbane Bears to become the Brisbane Lions. Through a series of events, the Fitzroy Football Club replaced their mascot, the Lion, merged with the University Reds and became known as the Fitzroy Reds and now play in the Victorian Amateur Football Association. That history explains why the Fitzroy Lions have a message board dedicated to them on Yahoo!Groups that dates back 2000. Of the two fans on bebo, only one lists profile information: Male, 45 and from Perth, Western Australia.
As their incarnation as the Fitzroy Reds, they lack fans listing them as an interest on bebo, all LiveJournal clones, blogger. There are no Yahoo!Groups dedicated to the team. The only place where they have a some one listing them as an interest on LiveJournal. That person has not updated in 213 weeks and is from Melbourne.
People appear uninterested in defunct teams or small, amateur teams of which the Fitzroy Lions are both.
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