That AFL has used Collingwood’s first win for the season to introduce a new app that delivers the results from Magpies games. The app, known as “Facebook”, claims to deliver the results from Collingwood games more quickly than any of the score-based AFL apps.
Coincidentally, the app has actually been around for over a decade, not that that has ever stopped the nation’s leading football code from pushing out something as “new”. And by being an American idea and business, Facebook ticks another major condition of AFL compliance.
Despite mild to rampant cynicism surrounding the introduction of the app, the AFL’s thinking behind the move is actually backed by scientific evidence. An independent study into the social media behaviours of footy fans across the AFL has provided a telling insight into the commonalities amongst supporters of certain teams.
The study, entitled “Footy fans to avoid on social media”, revealed that Collingwood supporters were 578% more likely than fans of other clubs to jump on social media and announce a win from their team. Researchers behind the study claim that even they were surprised by the results. Lead researcher Kelvin Solomon said, “Based on anecdotal evidence, we expected the Magpies to rank very highly, but a differential of that size was truly staggering.”
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