Super League Twitter II

The first post on this blog (there hasn't exactly been many) was a rip off of blogs I've seen analysing how MLB / NFL teams use Twitter, so I did the same for Super League. My first post for some months now re-visits this data and I think there is some interesting findings.

2011 appeared to be the year that rugby league started to take Twitter more seriously, as well as Twitter perhaps becoming more mainstream. I must admit I thought Twitter became mainstream around the time I started using it, at the time of the 2010 General Election. Before that, I had a vague idea of what Twitter was, but I was afraid of use it.

2011 was the first time I remember Twitter being a main source for players to get their points across, Joey Barton is a prime example in the world of football; but Keith Senior's tirade when the licensing debacle was announced was big news. Rugby league also gets bigged up on Twitter by a wide range of 'celebrities', though mainly scouse footballers. 2011 is probably the first time I remember rugby league trending topics... Widnes, Keith Senior, Rangi Chase, Rob Burrow, Ganson and probably more.


The growth in the numbers of followers has been staggering, the worst performing club being Harlequins - almost doubling their followers. Wakefield had a 595% increase in followers, albeit starting from a low base. Leeds and Wigan both added over 5,000 followers and continue to be the most followed Super League clubs with over 8,000 each.

Comparing the number of tweets per week for the 2011 season (or between Feb 8th and Oct 26th) shows that usage amongst Super League clubs has increased massively except for Bradford. One statistic I haven't done is to compare Twitter followers to the club's respective average crowd - I would assume Bradford would be near the bottom of that too.

Overall, Hull KR has the most tweets per week but for 2011 that honour goes to St Helens.