Ozzie Sport

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

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

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

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Distribution of Australian sports fans by league and location map

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Distribution of Australian sports fans by league and location map

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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.”

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

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

WNBL on Bebo and LiveJournal by Australian city

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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:

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