Posts Tagged AHL

Distribution of Australian sports fans by league and location

Posted by Laura on Tuesday, 23 March, 2010

Distribution of Australian sports fans by league and location map

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Distribution of Australian sports fans by league and location map

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Australian Hockey League on everything

Posted by Laura on Thursday, 11 February, 2010

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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Another problem team is problem: Tasmanian Tigers

Posted by Laura on Friday, 5 February, 2010

As mentioned in the earlier post, I’m focusing on a broad range of teams.  I went looking for information on the Australian Hockey League teams and first class cricket teams.  One problem that came up involved the Tasmanian Tigers.  Why?  That is a team name for a team in the AHL and for Australian first class cricket.  It isn’t particularly problematic on LiveJournal clones, where no one lists the Tassie Tigers as an interest.  It does get problematic on blogger, where two people list the Tasmanian Tigers as an interest.  Looking at both profiles, the assumption can probably safely be made that the Americans are interested in the animal, not the hockey or cricket teams.   It isn’t particularly problematic on bebo, where the only person listing Tasmanian Tigers as an interest has a cricket icon.   LiveJournal has 23 people listing Tasmanian Tigers as an interest and I have yet to go through each profile to try to guess which one they meant.  Meep.

This is another example of a problem team that makes trying to figure out the fan community size problematic.

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Australian Hockey League on blogger, LiveJournal, and LiveJournal clones

Posted by Laura on Wednesday, 3 February, 2010

Wikipedia says that the AHL is Australia’s “premier national domestic field hockey competition. Despite its non-professional nature, AHL is considered one of the strongest and most competitive national field hockey leagues in the world.”  There is a men’s and women’s league.  On the men’s side, the teams include New South Wales Waratahs, NT Stingers, Southern Hotshots, Tassie Tigers, Victoria Vikings, and WA Thundersticks.

Unsurprisingly, no one lists these teams as an interest on blogger, LiveJournal or LiveJournal’s clones.  These are niche teams for a small audience.  The sport isn’t likely to have much international interest.  The league isn’t professional.  The Australian audience on these services isn’t that big or active.  It seems unlikely that they will ever garner a community around them unless some one comes in and brings their own audience for this content.

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