Ozzie Sport

Gaia Online is a role playing network that has a number of social networking components. It is relatively popular in Australia and tends to cater to a teenaged audience. This type of audience may be a desirable for Australian and Kiwi women’s sport because reaching them may encourage participation in those sport and help improve women’s fitness. Beyond that, getting a younger audience can help insure the continuity of the team’s fandom by having fans who can pass on those allegiances as they get older. At the same time, younger fans likely will need to bring friends or family to attend competitions. This means a potential to maximize ticket sales.

An Australian and Kiwi sport community does exist on the Gaia Online. It is just relatively small and focused on soccer, rugby union, rugby league and Aussie rules.

Given the tiny size of the Australian and Kiwi sport population for men, it is hardly surprising that when profile interests were searched, no one was a fan of women’s sport.

Related Posts:

• Flickr and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport
• Friendster and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)
• More popular Australian (and Kiwi) sport related Facebook fanpages and groups

Flickr is a photo sharing site owned by Yahoo. According to Alexa, it is the 36th most popular site on the Internet and 30th most popular in Australia. Flickr has made it easy for people to upload their pictures on the move by creating mobile applications that allow sharing from phone’s camera.

To get an idea for the popularity of Flickr in Australia and New Zealand, a search was done for Australia in the pictures search section. It had 5,856,165 results. A search for Sydney had 2,678,431 results. A search for New Zealand had 2,136,668 results. The interest in taking pictures of both countries is high.

Interest in sport is also high. A search for all the AFL teams results in around 200 to 500 images each. There are several groups on Flickr specifically dedicated to the league and its teams. The generic term surf Australia has 73,441 results, demonstrating that interest goes beyond traditional professional sports and into niche sport and participation sports. Sport organizations inside Australia have begun to realize its value: Canoeing Australia has set up its own Flickr account to upload pictures.

Why are picture sites like Flickr important? What can they tell us about Australian and Kiwi women’s sport? They are important because they help grow the visibility of the sport. Well composed, beautiful pictures can help really sell sport in a way that text, the primary method of sharing on most of the sites referenced so far, cannot. This visibility could translate into ticket and event sales: These women play so beautifully I should check them out in person. Beyond that aspect, Flickr can also help identify what type of content that people are interested in based on the type of pictures they take. This group can thus be catered to more by creating events or providing similar content on a team or athlete’s internet stream. If there are a lot of event pictures, have a meet up for Flickr and Picassa users during a practice session where they are invited to take pictures of athletes in motion. If there are a lot of pictures that are like head shots and traditional promotional images, then a consideration should be made to include more of that content and make it available where online users can access it. Both of these require a bit of content analysis but a most people will be looking at only only team or a few athletes, this becomes much more feasible.

Pictures can also be useful in terms of identifying potential employees. If there are one or two people who take beautiful pictures, they might be worth contacting to see if they can be brought in in an official capacity. Their work sells the team or athlete already, but by doing that, you help add validation to their work which might get them a bigger audience. This in turn can lead to increased visibility for the team or athlete as each party gets the benefit of the other’s audience.

Beyond the issues above, another way of understanding photographer interest in women’s sport involves the total search results, which when compared to other teams can be useful. It gives another perspective on the comparative interest amongst the more creative classes of Internet users and the kind who get out into the real world to engage in the things that they love. Group results and total members to those groups provides perspective on the total comparative audience for the work of photographers.

The table below includes data from all the total search results found by searching Flickr for total number of images related to a keyword. It is sorted by league and then team. It highlights the popularity of swimming in Australia, though the search results rarely refer to Swimming Australia sanctioned events or Australian swimmers who compete internationally. The W-League results are extremely high and undoubtedly include pictures from the American league with the same name. When looking at individual teams, it appears that the ANZ Championship, W-League and WNBL all have comparative levels of interest. The Australian Women’s Ice Hockey League has zero results and there is obviously much less interest in it.

The table below includes the results when searching for groups related to Australian and New Zealand women’s sport. The total search results is small and there are no relevant groups. This suggests a couple of possible things. First, that while people are interested in taking pictures of women’s sport, they do not see their primary interests being focused around organizing people around women’s sport. Second, being photographers of specific women’s sport is not part of their internalized identity in such a way that they need to continually affirm it. Third, that Flickr may not have a large audience for specific Australian and New Zealand women’s sport that the upload totals might suggest is there.

Related Posts:

• Blogger and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport
• Most popular female Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)
• Most popular female Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 18)

ecademy is a small social network for business professionals that is an alternative to LinkedIn. It has a small number of people connected to Australian sport. In using and evaluating ecademy, it should be looked at from the perspective of using it liked in: Developing a network of employees, volunteers and athletes who can help network with other professionals to bring in an audience of potential sponsors and higher income bracket fans.

Given the nature of ecademy, the total number of people who have clubs listed in their profiles should not be gauged as a representation of fandom on the network. Rather, it should be looked at as industry professionals who want to be affiliated with the club or league.

One of the challenges involved with measuring membership on ecademy is that team sport names may not be the name of organization that runs the club or league. This could possibly exclude some people actually connected to them. For example, in the W-League, most teams are run by the state football associations, not by a specific organization with the club’s name in the title.

The table below gives an idea as to the historical size of the Australian and Kiwi women’s sport community on the network.

Related Posts:

• Flickr and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport
• Blogger and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport
• 43 Things and Australian women’s sport
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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 (November 24)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 18)
• 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)

bebo, blogger, LiveJournal and LiveJournal clones all have relatively small communities when compared to Facebook. It bothers me sometimes because to understand the size and shape of the online fan community on popular social networks almost requires looking at the site if I want to be accurate. The data you get from the advertising information is interesting but limited. Looking at fanpage and group membership is even more limited but at least you can get names and a better feel for location. I decided to do that for ANZ Championship teams. (There are just too many NRL and AFL and even NBL related groups for me to want to tackle at the moment.) I found the following list of groups and fan pages:

Some of these groups have as many as 1,000 members and some have as few as 13. I went looked at the membership list, found the people who belonged to specific networks, identified the location of that network and then created a map based on those. Some cases, like for corporations, have no city specific location and some of the schools on the list are affiliated with bigger towns near them. The map below differs a fair bit from the similar map for to the one for bebo, blogger and Facebook. The major difference? Regional fannishness is much, more more apparent on Facebook.

ANZ Championship on Facebook 40 6 1 Adelaide Thunderbirds Canterbury Tactix Melbourne Vixens Northern Mystics Queensland Firebirds West Coast Fever

ANZ Championship on Facebook 40 6 1 Adelaide Thunderbirds Canterbury Tactix Melbourne Vixens Northern Mystics Queensland Firebirds West Coast Fever

Related Posts:

• ANZ Championship fandom location on LiveJournal, bebo and blogger
• ANZ Championship on Facebook
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 18)

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:

• ANZ Championship on Facebook’s fanpages and groups
• ANZ Championship on Facebook
• Flickr and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport
• eBay.com.au and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport

New Zealand has several professional sports teams that compete in Australian and New Zealand based leagues.  The leagues that are involved with include the the A-League, ANZ Championship,  National Rugby League, and Super 14. The teams include Wellington Phoenix,    Northern Mystics,     Southern Steel,     Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic,    Canterbury Crusaders, and  New Zealand Warriors.  The map below only includes bebo and blogger users who list the team as an interest and list a city in New Zealand as their place of residence.  (I haven’t done LiveJournal and there were no fans on LiveJournal’s clones.)  The city communities involved are really small compared to some of their Australian peers.   Brisbane has 121 compared to Auckland’s 11.  To be fair though, Auckland had fans of Australian based teams and if those were included, they’d be at 22 instead of 11.  (Those 11 fans are all NRL fans of the following teams: Brisbane Broncos, Canberra Raiders, Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Gold Coast Titans.

New Zealand 18 4 1 Wellington Phoenix Northern Mystics Southern Steel Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic Canterbury Crusaders New Zealand Warriors

Related Posts:

• Based on data to date: Biggest Australian sports fandom
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 24)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 18)
• Most popular Australian (and New Zealand) sport related Twitter accounts (November 16)

The ANZ Championship replaced the Commonwealth Bank Trophy as the premiere netball championship in 2008. There are ten teams in the competition, five from Australia and five from New Zealand.  They are:

• Adelaide Thunderbirds

• Melbourne Vixens

• New South Wales Swifts

• Queensland Firebirds

• West Coast Fever

• Canterbury Tactix

• Central Pulse

• Northern Mystics

• Southern Steel

• Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic

With the exception of the Melbourne Vixens, no one lists these teams as an interest on Facebook.  The New Zealand based teams also lack a fan base inside New Zealand’s Facebook community. The Melbourne Vixens have 840 people listing them as an interest on Facebook.  I’ve looked at some of the segmentation of this audience and generated the following data which can give you a better idea of the fanbase for this netball team that actually has a fanbase on Facebook, as determined by people listing them as an interest.

One of the things that surprised me in this little data set is that for fans aged 40 to 49, most of the fans are male.  I’m not sure why this is.  Female fans of the team also look to be overwhelming heterosexual.  For a female sports team, this does surprise me a bit as I would have thought that the percentage would have been a little higher.  The fanbase also appears to be a bit older: High school athletes do not appear as interested in the team, which suggests interest in the team may develop as fans get older and are less likely to participate in the sport themselves.

Related Posts:

• Flickr and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport
• ANZ Championship on Facebook’s fanpages and groups
• ANZ Championship fandom location on LiveJournal, bebo and blogger
• eBay.com.au and Australian/Kiwi women’s sport