Ozzie Sport

I’ve been some what lax with collecting data during the past month.  This morning, I decided to remedy this a bit by updating my Alexa rank list for Australian sport clubs and teams.  This is what can be found below.  (The list isn’t all comprehensive.  I tend to mostly focus on the AFL and NRL.) It is interesting to see who is doing well, especially when compared to other clubs in the same league or clubs playing in the same geographic area.

Related Posts:

• Most popular sport league/team websites in Australia
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 11)
• Most popular Australian athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (October 11)
• Most popular Australian athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (October 4)

I was curious as to which team had the most popular website in the AFL.  There are three places to get this information: Quantcast, Alexa and Compete.  Each has various advantages and disadvantages.  In this case, I chose Alexa as I can get the rank of a website in Australia.  I can’t get that information using Compete or Quantcast. Alexa has its issues and I can’t translate this into real traffic numbers but it is the best option. While doing the AFL, I wanted to look at some other teams to see how they compare.   These ranks date to today, June 5, 2010.

This list is not comprehensive.  It does not include every major team in Australia.  At some point in the future, I’ll update this list and it will be more comprehensive but just not today.  That AFL teams generally are near the top, NRL teams coming in just below them.  The NBL, W-League and A-League are scattered around in the bottom 2/3rds.  As these leagues are not currently active, that can offer a bit of an explanation.  These leagues also draw smaller crowds, which also goes to explain their comparatively low ranking.

Related Posts:

• Most popular sport league/team websites in Australia
• Alexa rank for Australian leagues and clubs
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 11)

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

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

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (October 11)
• Most popular Australian athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (October 4)
• Most popular Australian athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (version 2)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 16)

I’ve been checking the number of people who list a team as an interest across a number of social networks.  Yesterday, for networks where I had information on 215 teams I have on my list, I added together the number of people who listed a team as an interest in various leagues.  I got the following table.

Interesting to see what networks have what populations.  The WNBL is only really an interest on 2 networks while the AFL is present on every network.  These networks all have different population sizes so total numbers is really apple to oranges in some ways.  I then decided to rank the leagues by how popular they were on each network.  The most popular league ranks 1, the next most popular league ranks 2.  If there is a tie, they share the same rank.  The results of that are in the following table:

This table is a bit more interesting.  Across most networks, the AFL is the most popular league.  The NRL is the second most popular league.  First class cricket, compromising state cricket teams, is the third most popular.  The A-League and Super 14 are close behind.  When you get down near the bottom, patterns become interesting.  The WNBL is not as popular as Women’s Flat Track Derby Association.  This is largely a result of the large number of fans on Facebook.  AFL Canberra is also more popular than the VFL.  This is because of the high rank on JournalFen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attendance_figures_at_domestic_professional_sports_leagues lists the attendance by league for six Australian sports leagues in 2009.  I cannot find a better list of attendance data for Australian sports league, especially the minor leagues.  That makes the rest of this analysis a bit problematic but moving forward anyway… This data is then put into the following table:

For total number of people attending during the course of a season, it certainly seems to track with the average league rank on the social networks in this sample.  Total people and total attendance seems to track some too.  I ran the correlation to confirm these observations:

Total attendance does correlate meaningfully.  Average attendance isn’t as meaningful but the correlation is still relatively strong.  There is a relationship there.

I’ve found that similar relationships exist with American baseball teams.  The issue of course is: Cause and effect.  Does high fan attendance lead to more fans listing their teams as an interest on social media? Or does becoming interested in a team on social media sites lead people to attending games?  It feels like the first but I have no evidence either way.

Related Posts:

• Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.
• 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)
• Most popular Australian athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (October 11)

Gaia Online is an anime, role playing themed social network aimed at an English speaking audience.  According to Alexa, the site is ranked the 2,988th most popular in Australia.  Given the target audience, I was curious as to how large the Australian based sports fandom was.  I went to the search page, selected interest and then searched every team on my list.

The list of teams on my list include: Collingwood Magpies, Carlton Blues, Queensland Maroons, Melbourne Victory, Brisbane Broncos, West Coast Eagles, Essendon Bombers, NSW Blues, Parramatta Eels, Adelaide Crows, Melbourne Storm , Wests Tigers, St. Kilda Saints, Sydney Swans, Fremantle Dockers, New South Wales Blues, Richmond Tigers, Sydney Roosters , Gold Coast Titans, Pretoria  Bulls (Northern Bulls), St. George Illawarra Dragons, Victorian Bushrangers, Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, Johannesburg Lions, South Sydney Rabbitohs , Newcastle Knights , Brisbane Lions, Adelaide United, Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles, Geelong Cats, North Queensland Cowboys , Durban Sharks (Coastal Sharks)(Natal Sharks), New South Wales Waratahs, Sydney FC, Canberra Raiders, Penrith Panthers, North Melbourne Kangaroos, Melbourne Demons, Central Cheetahs (Vodacom Cheetahs), Western Australia Force (Western Force), New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors), Wellington Hurricanes, Port Adelaide Power, Adelaide 36ers , Hawthorn Hawks, Central Coast Mariners Football Club, Brisbane Roar (Queensland Roar), Newcastle Jets, Perth Wildcats , Western Bulldogs, ACT Brumbies, Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs , St. George Dragons (defunct), Perth Glory, Melbourne Vixens , Australian Diamonds (national team), Canterbury Crusaders, Balmain Tigers (defunct), Gold Coast Football Club, North Sydney Bears (defunct), Barbagallo Perth Heat, Gold Coast United, South Australia Bite, Western Sydney Rollers, Wellington Phoenix, Illawarra Steelers (defunct), North Queensland Fury FC, Melbourne Tigers , Cape Town Stormers (Western Stormers)(Vodacom Stormers), Wollongong Hawks , Queensland Reds, Waikato Chiefs, South (Melbourne) Dragons, Australian Boomers, Tassie Tigers (Tasmanian Tigers), Townsville Crocodiles , Sydney Olympic , Cairns Taipans , Queensland Firebirds, Perth Blitz, South Australian Redbacks (Southern Redbacks), Western Suburbs Magpies (defunct), New South Wales Swifts (Sydney Swifts), Northern Eagles (defunct), Melbourne Rebels, WA Raiders, Box Hill Hawks , Casey Scorpions , North Ballarat Roosters , Auckland Blues, Sydney United , Australian Flames (national team), New Zealand Breakers , Queensland Bulls, Old Xaverians , Adelaide Thunderbirds , West Coast Fever, Sydney Kings , Mountains Kariong Cricket Club, East Bentleigh Cricket Club, Sydney Tigers , Penrith City Outlaws (UWS Outlaws), Gold Coast Blaze , Preshil Cricket Club, Western Warriors, Sydney Windies Cricket Club, Manly United , Otago Highlanders, Dandenong Jayco Rangers (Dandenong Rangers), Jinnah Cricket Club, Petersham RUFC Netball Club, ACE Netball Club, Orcas Netball, Australian Opals, Brisbane Bullets, Logan Thunder, Port Melbourne Borough , Fitzroy Lions, Newtown Jets (defunct), Alberton Cricket Club Inc., Australian Institute of Sport, Highett Cricket Club, Werribee Tigers , Gold Coast Seagulls (defunct), Canberra Capitals, Tuggeranong Hawks, Cumberland (defunct), Melbourne Phoenix , West Sydney Berries , Central Pulse , Gold Coast Chargers (defunct), Wollongong Wolves, Adelaide Lightning, Belconnen Magpies, Gold Coast Giants (defunct), Northern Bullants , Southern Steel , Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic, West Sydney Pirates, Adelaide Rams (defunct), Ainslie Football Club, Eastlake Football Club, New South Wales Waratahs, Perth Lynx, Queanbeyan Tigers, SA Fire, Sydney Uni Flames, Townsville Fire, UTS Gridiron, West Sydney Razorbacks , Western Reds (defunct), Bendigo Spirit, Fitzroy Reds, Newcastle Rebels (defunct), Northern Mystics , NT Stingers, Old Melburnians , Perth Orioles , Perth Reds (defunct), Queensland Sundevils, Tassie Tigers, Victoria Aces, Victorian Eagles, Victorian state team, Wollongong Mustangs, ACT Monarchs, Adelaide Thunder, AIS Canberra Darters , Annandale Dales (defunct), Bankstown City Lions , Bendigo Bombers , Blacktown City Demons , Bondi Raiders, Bonnyrigg White Eagles , Brisbane Spinning Bullets, Bulleen Boomers, Canberra Labor Club Lakers, Canterbury Tactix , Coburg Tigers , Collegians Football Club , Collingwood Magpies , De La Salle Old Collegians , Frankston Dolphins , Geelong Cats , Glebe Dirty Reds (defunct), Hunter Jaegers , Hunter Mariners (defunct), Marcellin Old Collegians , Marconi Stallions , Melbourne Kestrels , New South Wales Patriots , Northwestern Predators, NSW Wolfpack, Old Brighton Grammarians , Old Scotch , Old Trinity Grammarians , Perth Wheelcats, Queensland Blades, Queensland Rams, Rockdale City Suns , Sandringham Zebras , South Coast Wolves , South Queensland Crushers (defunct), Southern Hotshots, St Bedes/Mentone Tigers Football Club , Sutherland Seahawks, Sutherland Sharks , Sydney Swans Reserves, Sydney University Lions, University Blues , Victoria Vikings, WA Thundersticks, Wenty Leagues WheelKings, Williamstown Seagulls , and Wollongong Roller Hawks.

It is not a short list.  (At the same time, it isn’t all that comprehensive. It only includes about 215 teams of the over 3,000 various teams I know exist in the country.)  I found only seven teams had people eleven total who listed a team as an interest.  The teams included 4 from the NRL, and 1 from the AFL, A-League and Super 14.  Gaia Online is different in league representation that FaceBook, blogger, Twitter, LiveJournal and its clones, where the AFL dominates.

The teams represented on Gaiai Online include Brisbane Broncos (1), Parramatta Eels (1), Sydney Roosters  (3),  Sydney FC (2), Canberra Raiders (1), Western Bulldogs (1), and ACT Brumbies (1). The 11 team interests listing include 9 people using 10 accounts.

If the duplicates are taken out, the network is the youngest where age can easily be determined.   The average of all users on Gaia Online is 18.5.  This compares to 24 on bebo, 26 on LiveJournal and its clones, 28 on orkut, and 29 on blogger.

Three people list their city of residence.  Two of those are in New South Wales and one is the ACT.  This could explain the favoring of the NRL.   Everyone who lists a country of residence lists their location as Australia.  This is also unique when compared to other networks because except for the smaller LiveJournal clones, there is some one from another country who is a fan of an Australian based team.

Four people list their gender: Three female and one male.  This ratio is nearly inverse of what bebo and blogger are where 66% of bebo users listing an Australian team as an interest are male and 70% of blogger users are male.

Gaia Online’s unique audience has an impact on the type of Australian sports fans on it.  They are younger, more New South Wales based and much more female.

Related Posts:

• Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 11)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 16)

I have spent about three hours looking through various lists to find official NBL twitter accounts, NBL fansites, and accounts for NBL management and players.  NBL lists on Twitter are a bit different than comparable lists for say the A-League and even the Claxton Shield.  They contain a lot more fans of a team, players that used to play in the NBL  (but have gone to Europe or the US), sports management students, and journalists.  It looks like if you mention the NBL, some people will add you to the list.   To make sure I found actual player accounts on those lists, I compared names on accounts to the NBL player list and the Wikipedia player list.

I recorded if it was the official team account, or an unofficial account.  Unofficial accounts are player, management or fansite accounts.  I also recorded the number of followers an account had.  Who are the most popular players on Twitter?  What are the most popular teams?

One thing that surprised me was that not every team had an official account.  It seems like they should have one, if only to squat on it to protect their future potential assets.

Related Posts:

• Version 3: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• 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)

I’m not doing much of an analysis here as I’m still gathering data.  One difference between these two leagues that I see right off the bat is the type of presence.  For the A-League, there are a number of accounts created by fans dedicated to teams.  There are a few player and coach accounts for the A-League but not many.  The fan based accounts are just bigger, have more followers and appear more important to the fandom.

In comparison, the NBL appears to have a large number of players on Twitter.  In some cases, the players appear to be at have decided to have staked out their own user name, if only to have it.  Some engage but many don’t have images.  A few have their tweets protected.  Most don’t have branded backgrounds or even list that they are playing in the NBL.

That’s a big difference.  Is this a result of league policy regarding the use of social media?  Or is it a difference in sports culture, where NBL basketball players are say modeling NBA players and A-League players are emulating their European and America peers who appear to be less active on social networks?

Related Posts:

• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Australia Sport Census: Most popular leagues in Melbourne on Twitter
• 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)

I finally finished compiling a list of LiveJournal and clones users who list various teams as an interest. The issues in doing this and other maps have been discussed in earlier posts. Not all cities are picked up by the software, not everyone lists the city they live in are two of the big ones. People can list multiple teams in the same league as interests (and thus be counted twice) or the same team as an interest across multiple clones (again, counted twice).

While teams from many leagues were looked at, not all those teams had people listing them as an interest and where the individual listed their city of residence. The following leagues did though: AFL, AFL Canberra, A-League, ANZ Championship, First class cricket, NBL, NRL, NSW Premier League, Rugby League/State of Origin, Super 14, and Victorian Amateur Football Association. To make the map more readable, some of the least represented leagues were left off the map.

The following map was created using MapPoint:

Play by City 220 15 1 AFL A-League NBL NRL Super 14

The map clearly shows a geographic preference in New South Wales for the NRL.  Victoria clearly prefers the AFL.  The rest of the country tends to also support the AFL.  The pattern of geographic distribution for fans of these leagues appears to fit patterns I have seen described elsewhere.  It will be interesting to see if these patterns hold for bebo.

Related Posts:

• 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)
• Most popular Australian athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (October 11)
• Most popular Australian athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (October 4)

Adelaide United is a soccer team that plays in the A-League.  On LiveJournal, 10 people list them as an interest.  The community on LiveJournal is very regional.  All 10 people list Australia as their country of residence.  Of the nine who list their state of residence, all are from South Australia.  Of the five who list their city of residence, all are from Adelaide.   The extreme regional pattern of no or little fans outside their state of origin is comparable to blogger where zero fans are outside of SA and on bebo, where 5% or one fan is from outside SA.  This pattern of regional based fanbases is one that appears to extend for much of the A-League that I’ve looked at so far.

Only three list their year of birth: 1985, 1987, 1990.  Their average year of birth is 1987.3 and median year of birth is 1987.  This puts their average age of 23 at slightly older than the United Fans on bebo (20) and younger than the United fans on blogger (26).  This pattern of age group ordering going like has been pretty well established in earlier posts.

The range for most recently updating on LiveJournal is between 1 week and 284 weeks or five and a half years ago.  Four have updated in the past month. Two have updated between between 18 months and 24 months ago.  The remaining four updated between 3.5 and 5.5 years ago.

The fanbase isn’t particularly large any sort of wider conclusion.  It will be interesting though to see if this pattern holds for the rest of the A-League on LiveJournal.

Related Posts:

• Adelaide United on bebo
• Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom
• Data dump: Australian sport on LiveJournal and its clones
• Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy

I’m still looking at the NBL and this time, I’m looking at people interested in the teams on Facebook.   Today, using the Create Ad page, I set the variables for all with the exception of the country.  That I set for Australia.  I got the following table:

NBL on Facebook

There aren’t any particular patterns here that can be readily explained such as higher interest in teams from non-major leagues existing outside of Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales.  (Melbourne’s A-League team is first, with Adelaide in second, Sydney in third, Perth in fourth and Brisbane in fifth.)

Related Posts:

• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 11)
• 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)