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.
Related Posts:
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:
Tags:
A-League,
AFL,
AFL Canberra,
ANZ Championship,
bebo,
First class cricket,
LiveJournal,
NBL,
NRL,
NSW Premier League,
Rugby League/State of Origin,
Super 14,
Victorian Amateur Football Association Category:
A-League,
AFL,
LiveJournal,
NBL,
NRL
Perth Glory are an A-League team from Western Australia. The name is also shared with the W-League team, an affiliate team for the professional women’s team. There are thirteen people who list the team as an interest. Unlike the Adelaide United, there is a bit less localization of the fanbase: Four are not from Western Australia. (One does not list a country of residence.) Two are from New South Wales, one is from Victoria and one is from the United States. There is also a bit less range in ages of fans compared to Adelaide United fans on LiveJournal. Of the three who list their year of birth, all list 1987. Despite the lack of range, the average age is still comparable: 1987.3 versus 1987. The blogger community on Perth Glory is older by about three years than the LiveJournal community at 26.5.
Related Posts:
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:
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.
Related Posts:
Tags:
AHL,
bebo,
Canberra Labor Club Lakers,
dreamwidth,
Facebook,
JournalFen,
LiveJournal,
New South Wales Waratahs,
NT Stingers,
Queensland Blades,
Southern Hotshots,
Tassie Tigers,
twitter,
Victoria Vikings,
WA Thundersticks,
Yahoo!Groups Category:
AHL,
Facebook,
Twitter,
Yahoo!Groups,
bebo
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.
Related Posts:
I should really focus pretty much exclusively on the NRL, the AFL, the NBL and the VFL with a minor diversion into first class cricket and the ANZ Championship. At one point, I compiled a list of some 3,500+ sports teams in Australia. Running through the top flight teams for all sports and the minors for the major sports is an exercise in overwhelming. Still, I like to look on the networks I’ve been focused on.
One of the side leagues that I’ve been looking at is Gridiron Australia, the league for American football. I had the list of teams. I check everything on LiveJournal, its clones, blogger and then bebo. At bebo, I realized I had a problem. For the Victorian Eagles, no problem. (There is one fan. He is male, 21 years old and from Victoria.) There is one person for the Queensland Sundevils. For the SA Fire? There were 40. Turns out that there is an artist named SA-fire. It also sometime short for the San Antonio Fire Department. Given that, the short form isn’t a search form that will be used. (Though one or two of the people who list SA Fire as an interest are clearly South Australia Fire team.) The long form search is the one that goes for bebo. With that search, there are only two people who list them as an interest.
Related Posts:
The New South Wales Blues are first class cricket team based at the Sydney Cricket Grounds. According to Wikipedia, they compete in most of the major cricket tournaments in the country. There is a small community interested in the team on LiveJournal and its clones with 17 people list the NSW Blues as an interest and 2 on JournalFen. This isn’t particularly big for LiveJournal, 101 people list the Sydney Swans as an interest and 100 people list the West Coast Eagles as an interest in comparison. The teams sits between the Carlton Blues at 18 and the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks at 16.
Of the two people on JournalFen, only one lists their year of birth: 1975. Of the 17 on LiveJournal, ten list their year of birth. On LiveJournal, the mean year of birth is 1986.4, median is 1987.5 and mode of 1992. This is pretty close to the Sydney based Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs community on LiveJournal where mean is 1985 and median is 1987. No other Sydney based teams where I have this data for other networks are as close to the team age wise.
Most fans are Australian with both JournalFen people listing the country as their place of residence and 14 of the 17 on LiveJournal being from Australia. Of the other three, one does not list a country, one is from Canada and one is from New Zealand. Of the Australians on JournalFen, one is from New South Wales and one is from the ACT. On LiveJournal, 2 are from the ACT, 8 are from New South Wales and 2 are from Victoria. All but one of the people from New South Wales list themselves as being from Sydney; the one who doesn’t is from Gosford, which isn’t that far from Sydney.
Related Posts:
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.
Related Posts:
Tags:
AHL,
blogger,
Canberra Labor Club Lakers,
CrazyLife,
DeadJournal,
dreamwidth,
Inksome,
insanejournal,
JournalFen,
LiveJournal,
New South Wales Waratahs,
NT Stingers,
Southern Hotshots,
Tassie Tigers,
Victoria Vikings,
WA Thundersticks Category:
AHL,
DeadJournal,
Dreamwidth,
InsaneJournal,
JournalFen,
LiveJournal,
blogger
I’m playing with Microsoft MapPoint. It is pretty awesome, except for the fact that some smaller cities don’t register. Anyway, I finished compiling the location of all fans of ANZ Champship teams on bebo, blogger, LiveJournal and LiveJournal clones. Interest in this particular competition is small compared to the NRL, AFL and A-League. For a few people, fans didn’t list a city which makes getting an accurate idea of where fans are difficult. Two cities didn’t appear as they were really, really rural so they were excluded. I took this data and the output was the following map.
 |
|
Australia Test by City
 |
2 |
 |
1 |
 |
Adelaide Thunderbirds |
 |
Melbourne Vixens |
 |
New South Wales Swifts (Sydney Swifts) |
 |
Northern Mystics |
 |
Southern Steel |
 |
Sydney Swifts |
|
|
The map has that limited perspective because there were no Queensland based fans. That includes people who just listed state, not city. The same situation existed for Western Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and Northern Territory.
Related Posts:
Tags:
Adelaide Thunderbirds,
ANZ Championship,
bebo,
blogger,
LiveJournal,
Melbourne Vixens,
New South Wales Swifts,
Northern Mystics,
Southern Steel,
Sydney Swifts,
Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic Category:
ANZ Championship,
Central Pulse,
Melbourne Vixens,
New South Wales Swifts