I’m slowly trying to get through bebo, like I went through blogger. I didn’t do these communities earlier because on the whole, bebo communities are bigger. (I’m putting off LiveJournal even longer because they are about the same size as bebo and each individual profile needs to be viewed get year of birth and location.) This posts looks at the people who list the Canberra Raiders as an interest on bebo. The Raiders are National Rugby League team that were founded in 1982. On bebo, 83 people list the team as an interest.
Of these 83, 11 are female (13%), 51 are male (61%) and 21 do not list a gender (25%). 44 list their age. They have an average age of 23.38, median age of 21 and mode of 19. This is about 10 years younger than their counterparts on blogger where 5 people list their age for a 34 and median age of 32.5. (This supports and argument made earlier that there may be age related factors for where a team’s fans congregate.)
46 of the 83 list their place of residence. Most Raiders fans are Australian, with 42 from the country. In addition, there are 3 fans from New Zealand and 1 from the United Kingdom. 41 of the 42 Australians list a location where their state of residence can be figured out. 20 are from New South Wales, 10 are from the ACT where the Raiders are based, 9 are from Queensland, 1 is from Victoria and 1 is from Western Australia. The 10 people from the ACT are the largest total following of any team on any network that I have examined so far. The second closest total is 5 for the Cronulla Sharks on LiveJournal. Of the 20 from New South Wales, several are from towns outside Sydney where they might do not have an NRL team. They include one person each from Batemans Bay, Dubbo, Gilgandra, Harden, Tullibigeal and Stockton, and two from Tumut. That representation inside New South Wales lends a bit more of a regional feel than if just the ACT is looked at though that much (17 total if Stockon, north of Sydney, is ignored). The problem with the ACT is the population tends to sometimes view itself as more transient than in other parts of the country. This could imply that the team should have a wider fan base as people take their love of the team with them when they leave… or more narrow as people who are fans only become fans and only maintain their fannishness for a team while they live in the ACT. It is hard to tell.
