Ozzie Sport

One of the things I’ve been doing recently is trying to compile a list of fans and members of groups on Facebook.  My interest in doing so is to get a general geographic idea of what teams are popular where.  I’m also interested in seeing if certain universities, colleges and high schools lean more towards one team or league.  Read to that, I’m looking at what universities, colleges and high schools could be deemed the most sports made by the total members of a network.

The problem is that Facebook does not make getting this information easy.  I manually go through the lists.  I copy/paste to notepad, format it and copy it to Excel.  Facebook drops people.  An example of this? Western Force.  It has 3,128 fans.  When I copied and pasted everything, the total people on my list was 1,927.  There is a lot of dropping going on here and I’m not certain what effect it has on the results.

These issues regarding totals are one of the most problematic aspects of trying to do any sort of demographic study of online sports fandom that is in any way accurate and capable of duplication.

If you’re interested, based on the following groups and fan pages… The NAB Northern Bullants appreciation society, Townsville McDonald’s Crocodiles, Waikato/BOP Magic Netball, 1,000 people for Tassie Tigers to offer Rana Naved-Ul-Hasan a full Contract, 10,000 people for the tassie tigers to offer Michael Hogan a contract , Aaron Edwards Fan page, ACT Brumbies, act brumbies, Adelaide 36ers, Adelaide 36ers are the greatest team of ANY kind EVER!!, Adelaide 36ers Fan Zone, Adelaide 36ers National Basketball Team, Adelaide Thunderbirds , Barbagallo Perth Heat Baseball Club, Bendigo Bombers Football Club, Bentleigh Cricket Club, Borough Boys, Borough Supporters Club, Bring Allen Iverson to the Adelaide 36ers!, Bring Dusty Rychart back to the Adelaide 36ers ~ beg, plead, grovel ;p, Cairns Taipans , Canberra Raiders, Canterbury Tactix, Carlton Blues FC, Croc Nation, Crocs to take the NBL title, Daniel Jackson – TIGER TUFF!, Eaglehawk Football Netball Club, Early 90′s Perth Wildcats appreciation group, Fire Roster, Fitzroy Reds Football Club, Frankston Dolphins Football club, FRANKSTON DOLPHINS FOOTBALL CLUB, Fremantle Dockers : Rebuilding since 1995, Fremantle Dockers : Rebuilding since 1995, Geelong Cats, Go the Perth wildcats , Gold Coast Blaze,  Gold Coast Football Club, Greeks who support Richmond F.C the Tigers, I’m a Fitzroy Reds Premiership hero, Law Hawks, Matt Johns to coach the Newcastle Knights in 2010! , Melbourne Tigers, Melbourne Tigers, Melbourne Tigers – Big V Basketball, melbourne tigers all the way in 2008, Melbourne Tigers Basketball Club, Melbourne Tigers cheer squeda east and south ends , Melbourne Tigers NBL HUMMER CHAMPIONS 2007/08, Melbourne Tigers NBL supporters, Melbourne Vixens, Melbourne Vixens, Melbourne-based Wests Tigers Fanatics, New South Wales Patriots , New Zealand Breakers, No matter how bad they are, I will still barrack for the Richmond Tigers! , North Ballarat Cricket Club, North Melbourne Football Club, North Melbourne Football Club, Northern Bullants Football Club, Northern Bullants Under 18′s, Northern Mystics, Northern Mystics Fans, Official Gold Coast Blaze, Official Perth Wildcats, Perth Wildcats, Perth Wildcats, Perth Wildcats (Catties Fans), perth wildcats fans, Perth Wildcats Wildkidz! (:, Port Melbourne Football Club, port melbourne the mighty borough fan club, Pulse Netball, Queensland Bulls, Queensland Bulls Supporters, Queensland Firebirds, Queensland Rams (ABL) Baseball, Queensland Rams Baseball, Sandringham Football Club (Zebras), SAVE OUR MELBOURNE TIGERS NBL TEAM , THIS SEASON., Save Our South Dragons:www. saveourdragons.com, SCONE THOROUGHBREDS RUGBY LEAGUE CLUB, SEABL, Selkirk Roosters – North Ballarat Football Club, South Dragons 2008/09 Nbl Champions, South Melbourne Dragons, Southern Steel, Southern Steel, SUPPORT THE CANTERBURY TACTIX WITH TIC TACS, Sydney Swifts, Tassie Tigers Hockey – Top 4 three years in a row, the fitzroy reds convention for headaches and regrets., The Melbourne Tigers Fan Group, The Official Adelaide 36ers Page, The Official Bendigo Spirit Basketball, Thunderbirds Adelaide Netball Club Appreciation Community, Thunderbirds are GO in the 2009 grand final!, TOWNSVILLE FIRE, Townsville McCafe Fire, Trent Cotchin, Victoria Aces ABL Baseball, Waratahs 2008, Werribee Amateur Football Club, Werribee Football Club , Werribee Tigers FC, West Coast Fever, West Coast Fever, Western Force, Wests Tigers NYC, WNBL – Bendigo Spirit, WNBL – Canberra Capitals, Wollongong Hawks, Wllongong Hawks, Wollongong Roller Hawks, and XXXX gold Queensland bulls!.

All told, there are 3,297 people of the 34,057 people included list a network.  There are 1,078 unique networks. If Facebook wasn’t dropping things, the total people included would be 61,340. Given that, the following networks are the most popular:

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)

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

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)

I’ve not really spent much time looking for fan communities for Australian sports teams on Facebook.  This is for a couple of reasons.  First, the data from Facebook’s Advertising Target Selection is often subject to wild fluctuations in the course of small periods of time.  In the case of one search, there was a 200 person drop in ten minutes on a sample size of about 3,000.  That’s pretty significant and calls into  question all the data.  The second reason is that it is hard to get data out of Facebook’s Advertising Target Selection.  For LiveJournal, bebo and blogger, I might not be able to get all a user’s info but I have enough that I can easily tell you that the average Northern Territory fan of a team is this age.  I can identify specific individuals and in some cases make educated guesses about the reliability of the data.    With Facebook, all I get is a number based on the selection.  If I want to find out how many female fans there of the Brisbane Lions from Queensland, I have to make a number of selections to get that number.  (But I only get that based on city for Facebook, not state.)  If I want to find out how many male fans there are, I have to go back to Facebook and make another series of selections.  I can’t do that with in the context of my own data set compiled / exported from Facebook.  This makes it really impossible to compile a complete listing of data in a timely manner.  If I want to find out how many 18 year olds are fans of the Canberra Raiders, I have to make that selection one at a time.  Aggravating.

Still, I wanted an idea of what is going on with Australia’s sports fandom on Facebook in terms of location and demographics.  What I thus have is a load of random data.  (Random data is random.) I tended to focus on cities and teams, with both chosen mostly at random. I can’t find an easy way to display or map this so the table is located below for you to look at.

Before that, some things I found interesting in this data:

• Brisbane Roar’s male fans are double the amount of their female counter parts.
• Brisbane Roar fans also to be single with 420 married compared to 180 married.
• The Perth Wildcats don’t have a fanbase in the Northern Territory or Tasmania.
• Queensland Maroons have 40 fans in Rockhampton, Queensland compared to the 8,100 fans they have in Sydney.
• New Zealand’s Canterbury Crusaders have the same fan community size, 80, in Sydney as the do in Cranbourne.
• The Melbourne Vixens are the only netball team to be listed as an interest from the Tasman ANZ Championship teams.
• St. Kilda is more popular than the Sydney Swans in Adelaide.
• Essendon Bombers are more likely to be college graduates than currently in high school.  At least for those on Facebook.
• In the AFL, the Essendon Bombers are more popular than the Geelong Cats, Hawthorn Hawks, North Melbourne Kangaroos, Richmond Tigers, St. Kilda Saints, and Sydney Swans for all Australians on Facebook.
• The Adelaide Crows are more popular in Brisbane than in Perth.
• Between the Perth Wildcats, Parramatta Eels, St. Kilda Football Club, Penrith Panthers, South Sydney Rabbitohs , Sydney Swans, and Wests Tigers, the mot popular teams in Hobart is St. Kilda with the Sydney Swans coming in second and the Parramatta Eels coming in third.
• Darwin only has 4,360  people from the city on Facebook.  Between, Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, Gold Coast Titans, Geelong Cats, Perth Wildcats, Hawthorn Hawks, Newcastle Knights, Parramatta Eels, St. Kilda Football Club,South Sydney Rabbitohs, and Wests Tigers, no teams has more than 20 fans in the city and the 50 mile area around it.
• In Perth, the Perth Wildcats are more popular than the Perth Glory.

Edited to add on January 9, 2010: 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:

• 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 athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (October 11)
• Most popular Australian athletes, clubs, leagues and sport organizations on Twitter (October 4)

This post is a series of posts looking at the size of Australian sports leagues on LiveJournal and its clones. Two earlier posts were Australian Football League on JournalFen and Australian Football League community on DeadJournal. These posts acknowledge that the communities aren’t very big and in the grand scheme of things, this is not very meaningful in terms of understanding sports communities in Australia.

Australia’s second major sports league is the National Rugby League.  It is popular in different parts of the country than the Australian Football League., with more fans of and teams in the NRL hailing from Queensland than the AFL.   In terms of LiveJournal clones, it is interesting to compare the two communities in terms of size and state location.

For the AFL, JournalFen has a total of four fans for the league and specific teams.  The National Rugby League in comparison has zero fans who list it or specific teams as an interest on JournalFen.  JournalFen also has no communities dedicated to the league or a team.  This particular LiveJournal clone has always catered a bit more towards media fandom and it has a small community, with only 85 accounts having posted an entry in the last 24 hours.

The community on DeadJournal for the NRL is larger than the one on JournalFen.  The general interest in the league, expressed by listing NRL as an interest, was smaller than that of the AFL on DeadJournal;  5 people versus 13 people.

Of the five people who list the NRL as an interest, three list a year of birth or make it easy to determine, based on their profile description, their year of birth.  The years were 1987, 1988, 1989.  Four of the five listed the state they lived in: Three live in New South Wales and one in Queensland.  None of these accounts have been updated recently.  The most recent was 188 weeks, or a little over 3 and a half years ago.

There are a several fans for specific NRL teams on DeadJournal.  This small community of six people is twice the size of the team specific interest for the AFL.  The most popular team on DeadJournal is the Newcastle Knights, with four people listing the team as an interest.  Newcastle Knights fans list their years of birth as: 1986,1986, and 1987.  One person does not list a year of birth. Three people list their state of residence: Two are from New South Wales and one is from Queensland.  These fans haven’t updated recently with the most recent update 265 weeks ago.  Two other teams have people listing them as an interest: The Melbourne Storm and the South Sydney Rabbitohs.  Both these teams have one person listing them as an interest.  The Melbourne Storm is from Victoria, was born in 1987 and last updated 203 weeks ago.  The South Sydney Rabbitohs fan does not list a year of birth or state of residence; they last updated 388 weeks ago.

The NRL community on both JournalFen and DeadJournal is smaller than that of the AFL.  The small NRL community is based more in New South Wales than the AFL community on both services.  They are inactive and probably not relevant in any grand scheme of thing for determining the size and shape of both leagues online communities.

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
• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups (November 23)