Ozzie Sport

I’ve been data collecting again. In this case, I was updating my Facebook group and fan pages member totals. Eventually, this will all be written up and include an analysis of some patterns that exist. In the meantime, I feel the need to share of this data as the results… surprised me.  I was curious as to which Australian team had the most popular official Facebook page.  Bearing in mind that outside the AFL and NRL, my inclusion list is limited and that not every team has an official page… This list should not be considered all comprehensive.  Still, it gives a fairly good idea of what may be going on Facebook:

Related Posts:

• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups
• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups (November 23)
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 11)

I’m a little obsessed with foursquare data at the moment and I’m doing this a little early.  I’ll probably update this on Tuesday with a new post after the St. Kilda Monday night match.  At the moment though, based on the two completed games so far this week and last week, this post answers what team has the largest community of Foursquare users.  The surprise is how Collingwood hasn’t run away with this.

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 sport league/team websites in Australia
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 1)

Back on March 25, 2010, I collected data regarding the number of fans of the official AFL team Facebook fan pages.  It has been a while and I was curious as to which team had the most growth since the last time I looked.  Did any team do a really good job picking up fans?  Does that have any connection to how well the team did?  (There are a whole bunch of other potential factors.  I just haven’t looked at them.)  The team at the top of the ladder for Facebook fan growth is the Essendom Bombers.  The team at the bottom of the ladder is the Adelaide Crows.  Teams not included didn’t have official pages on March 25, 2010.

Is there a correlation between a team’s performance so far this season based on their ladder position and the number of new fans?  No, the correlation is -0.04002 where the Sydney Swans and Brisbane Lions get zero new fans as they do not have a fan page.   If those two teams are removed, -0.10666.  That still is completely random.  The cause for the big increase in fans is not dependent on team performance; other factors must explain the increase in fans.

Related Posts:

• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups (November 23)
• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups
• Most popular AFL and NRL teams on Facebook
• AFL on Facebook

I’ve been obsessed with foursquare for about a month now.  I love it because I like the idea of earning things, like badges.  It gives my social media experience more meaning as a result.  (It doesn’t really, I just think it does because I’ve earned these badges.)  In May, I shall be seeing an AFL game in Canberra and I really want to check in to the stadium because yay! More checkins.  This peaked my curiosity as to how many people had already checked in to this venue (Answer?  None.)   and in to other AFL stadiums across the country.  Today, I got a list of AFL stadiums from austadiums and then searched for the facilities with those names on Foursquare.  Having done that, I got the following chart, which not surprisingly shows the most checkins at Melbourne based AFL stadiums.

For clarification, if a line is blank and has no url, I searched for the location in the city listed on austadiums and nothing appeared. Duplicate entries appear when there were duplicates for the same location. Type includes the default listing. If no type is listed, none provided on the listing.

Apparently, Essendon was heavily promoting people checking into the MCG on Foursquare on ANZAC day so that people could get the Swarm badge. That could also account for the really high numbers of the Melbourne Cricket Grounds.

Related Posts:

• Notes on AFL/NRL foursquare sporting venues in Australia
• NRL ovals, fields and stadiums on foursquare
• Foursquare and the AFL
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts

What’s the most popular AFL team on Facebook?  That really does depend on how you measure it.

The following table has a column for total people listing a team as an interest, total number of members of the largest fan page dedicated to a team, total number of fans of the largest page dedicated to a team and the grand total.  This information was collected in the past three days.

And then I completed this and realized the biggest fan pages I had?  They weren’t the official ones.   Time to get the official ones, where the total fans are much bigger, and then update.

Green: Indicates official Facebook fanpage has the most fans.
Blue: Indicates a page not linked on the official page has the most fans.
Red: Indicates an official Facebook fanpage was not found to be linked to on the Club’s official site.
Black: AFL does not link to an official page for the team.

Fixed. As an American, I’m used to professional team names being City Mascot. When I search, this tends to be my default mode of searching. It can screw up results and I have to remember to search all variations to make sure this doesn’t happen. When I was just looking for biggest, I didn’t. Woe. But anyway, these results should hopefully be a bit more accurate. I went to every team’s official site that was linked on the AFL’s site. On the official site, I looked for their official Facebook fanpage accounts. Then I took that information and added it to the above table to get a more accurate picture. If an unofficial fanpage had more fans than the official one? I left the unofficial one. I’ve color coded that chart to make easy to see where I did that.

Related Posts:

• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups (November 23)
• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups
• Most popular AFL and NRL teams on Facebook
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 11)

Yesterday, I made a post about the most popular Australian athlete, league and team related Twitter accounts.

On Twitter, @anthonyalsop pointed me to a list of Australian athletes on Twitter he had created.  I had missed quite a few on his list and some of those accounts led me to lists where I found additional athletes, teams and leagues.  All told, I added about 61 new rows of data.  There are a few repeats from yesterday’s list as I updated some numbers.  (Historical twitter growth for athletes would be interesting to look at and there are tools for just that.  It is a project for a different day. Maybe.)  There doesn’t appear to be much change.

Things to remember with this list: It does not include athletes who do not play for team based sports.  Swimmers, golfers, tennis players, surfers and race car drivers are not on the list.  It also does not include Australian athletes playing for teams outside of Australia.  This includes cyclists (who are probably the most popular Australian athletes that I can find) as they often compete for teams outside Australia.  It does not include Australian NBA and WNBA players.  It also does not include retired Australian athletes, unless they are now involved in a management role with a specific team.  National teams are included but players are generally sorted by their other playing affiliation. This list does include athletes and teams from outside Australia when the league has teams from other countries.  Thus, South Africa is represented with its Super 14 teams and New Zealand is included with a variety of teams in leagues such as the NRL, Super 14 and the NBL.

Updated this list on the 11th to include the Australian Opals thanks to a comment by @SportingSheilas.

Related Posts:

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

An updated version of this list can be found at Version 2: Most popular Australian athlete and team related Twitter accounts by total followers.

This is sorted by total number of followers. If an account is tagged (unofficial), it indicates that it is not the official account; it belongs to management, a player or a fansite.  The list includes teams from most of the major sports leagues in Australia.  Teams that play in those leagues that are not from Australia have also been included.  Players were only counted as belonging to a team if they currently play for it.  (Some players that are on NRL player lists have gone to play in Europe.  They aren’t included.)  The date that the information was collected is also included as these numbers actively change over time.  If some one/team/organization is listed twice, it is because the data was collected on multiple dates.

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 clubs and teams on Twitter

Based on the somewhat data I have so far from Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal and its clones, blogger and bebo, the Melbourne Victory are one of the most popular teams in Australia.  They are only behind Collingwood Magpies, Carlton Blues, and the  Queensland Maroons.  A lot of this is attributed to the 46,620 people who list the team as an interest on Facebook and 1,432 people following the team on Twitter.

So far, only 28 teams have been looked at on blogger and here, the Victory fall in the middle of the pack with only 11 people listing them as an interest.  Most of the sampling on the network has involved the AFL and Queensland based teams.  Teams ahead of the Victory include Sydney Swans, Collingwood Magpies, West Coast Eagles, Adelaide Crows, Brisbane Broncos, Brisbane Lions, Geelong Cats, and the Western Bulldogs.

What does this small community look like?  Of the eleven, nine list their country of residence.   Of these nine, eight are Australians and one is likely an Australian who is currently traveling the United States.   Of the nine Australians, seven list their state of origin and they are all from Victoria, six listing Melbourne as their home and one listing St. Kilda as theirs.  This is a team that draws, at least on blogger, from where it is based and does not have a larger, national following.

Seven people list their age.  For mean, median and mode, age is the same: 22.  This is a relatively young fan community, especially when compared to a few of the AFL team communities on blogger.  The community is also a more likely to be male with 6 people identifying as male, 3 identifying as female and 2 not identifying.  Between the Adelaide Crows, Brisbane Broncos, Brisbane Bullets, Brisbane Lions, Carlton Blues, Collingwood Magpies, Essendon Bombers, Fremantle Dockers, Geelong Cats, Hawthorn Hawks, Melbourne Demons, and North Melbourne Kangaroos communities, only the Carlton Blues, Collingwood Magpies and Geelong Cats communities have a smaller female fanbase.

It will be interesting to see how this community eventually compares to other A-League teams on the network.

Related Posts:

• Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 1)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)

This post continues to look at the historical activity level of AFL fans on Yahoo!Groups.  This time, the focus is on the North Melbourne Kangaroos.

If you look at the North Melbourne Kangaroos category on Yahoo!Groups, you will find ten groups.  Of these, six of these are actually dedicated to the team.  They are northmelbournekangaroos, themightyrooboys, nmfc, mightyrooboys, northkangaroosclub and thenorthmelbournefc.  With the exception of themightyrooboys which was created in 1999, all the lists were created in 2000.  The average total membership membership is 24.  The lists all have open membership and have an ongoing spam problem.

I looked at the lists to determine when these lists had legitimate posting, added up the monthly totals across all six lists and generated the following chart:

The community was at its most active when it started.  There were two small season drops during the off season with the community all but disappearing after the 2002 campaign.  This some what resembles the pattern for the Essendon Bombers, though that community had more overall activity and a more extreme drop off in posting.  It looks like this particular service was never embraced by fans of the team as one of their early means of communicating.

In order to find out legitimate posting periods for nmfc, I had to join the list.  The list has 35 members at the moment. On topic posts to the list ended in January 2002.  Spam posting started in August 2004.  I decided to get membership demographics for the list since membership gave me access to a member list.  Of the 35 members, only one listed their age or gender (57, female) and no one listed their location.  (She joined during a period of legitimate posting.) Of the 35 members, thirteen or 37% joined during the period of legitimate posting.  Four members or 11% joined in the period where there was no posting.  Eighteen members or 51% joined during the period of only spam posting.  That’s a big problem for any sort of attempts to revive the list.  It is also a big problem for Yahoo!Groups and could explain why people who love mailing lists eschew their service.  It also makes it hard to legitimately get demographic data off the service, unless the assumption is made that all people joining after the period of spam content are actually spammers and their demographic data can be ignored.

Related Posts:

• Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom
• The AFL on Yahoo!Groups
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
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The following chart is based on the data gathered for posts to date.  It is intended to give a general idea as to the comparative size of various sports fandom communities to each other.  Blanks indicate that no data regarding that team on the service has been gathered; it does not indicate a size of zero for that particularly service.  If you would like specific data regarding a team on a service to understand where that number of coming from, please comment or e-mail me at laura[at]fanhistory[dot]com.  I am more than happy to explain it.

Leagues with teams at the bottom include AFL, AHL, A-League, Claxton Shield, Gridiron Australia Nationals, KFC Twenty20 Big Bash, NBL, Rugby League/State of Origin, Victorian Amateur Football Association.  The AFL’s expansion team puts one of their teams in the bottom 10.  Soccer teams, baseball teams, American/Gridiron football, basketball, netball, rugby union, ice hockey, rugby league and Australian rules football are at the bottom.  Some of these sports can be accounted for because of they are not popular sports in the country.  Others can be accounted for because the teams are part of secondary leagues and competitions.  It will be interesting to see how and if popularity shifts as more data is added from additional networks.

Edited to add: This post mostly came about as I needed to take a break from gathering Yahoo!Groups data.  The directory currently is not working for me.  It limits my ability to data gather as a result.  Two of the big things in terms of moving a team up or down the above list are Facebook and Twitter.  Facebook has a lot of voids and that’s easy enough to fill in.  I did that.  Things at the bottom didn’t change much but things at the top really did change with four clubs above the 40,000 fans threshold.

Given the huge leaps there, I cannot really foresee the top order changing much, especially as the Twitter data is already there. The other social networks out there just do not have populations to provide an audience that size. Facebook claims that 7,680,420 people are from Australia on its service. When 50,000 list their interest as the Magpies or the Blues, well, that’s .6% of all Australians on Facebook. Or put another way, 3 out of every 500 Australians on the site list one of those two teams as an interest. For a sports team, that seems really high and about on par for the most popular sports team in other countries. (The New York Yankees have about 785,000 fans for an American population of about 101,468,000 on Facebook. That puts the percentage at about .7%.)

Yahoo!Groups doesn’t have a large population. While bebo is popular in Australia, it doesn’t provide numbers even close to this. The only way to get numbers that large are to find community specific sites which require registration.

More edited to add: One of the things I did not realize with the various data sets I’ve been compiling is that about a third of the teams in the National Rugby League aren’t included. My bad. Most of my focus has been on the AFL. Hence, the oversight. I’ve compiled that again and rather than update with a third image, just going to say that there have been no major shake ups. The Brisbane Broncos remain on thop. The St. George Dragons are at the bottom with 240 fans. Second to last are the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs with 1,580. No team really has the big number of fans that the AFL has.

More editing: I normally tried variations of a team’s name for Facebook to make sure I get the highest number.  In the case of St. George Illawarra Dragons, I goofed and got the one that listed 240.  When I used St Geoergillawarra Dragons combed with St. George Illawarra Dragons, I got 9,200.  This change will show up in any future data analysis.  The collection date has always been changed to today just so I know when I got that number.

Related Posts:

• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 11)
• One week Twitter change for Australia/New Zealand sport related accounts
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (December 1)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)