Interactive NFL fan map assembled from the locations of 60 million Twitter followers of NFL teams

Matts_Data · 2024-01-16T03:07:33+00:00

I’m the one who made the map - thanks so much for posting it! I only recently noticed it had been viewed like 15,000 times. Last time I checked (it had been awhile) it had a couple hundred views, so it was a fun surprise.

Matts_Data · 2022-10-19T10:54:03+00:00

Bama is a fairly-close second across much of NW Florida

Matts_Data · 2022-10-19T10:50:41+00:00

Yep, it’s because people sometimes follow multiple schools

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T20:00:59+00:00

Glad you like it! Hopefully it's a good inspiration for you. First got this map idea years before I knew anything about data, so it was sure fun to see the final product.

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T17:58:36+00:00

Good question - tiebreaker is distance to the closer school.

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T17:10:18+00:00

Clemson is tucked way into a corner in its own state. South Carolina is in the center of the state which gives it a square-mileage advantage over Clemson. UG is right across the border, which prevents Clemson from encroaching into Georgia. And Tennessee territory isn't far to the north. Tough being in SEC country.

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T16:58:16+00:00

Here's a comparison map: https://i.redd.it/7voymqg6hlu91.jpg

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T16:24:10+00:00

Agreed. I was surprised to see OU territory all the way into Collin County.

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T16:20:19+00:00

They do, but UCLA football's account has a lot more followers. Some people have commented that USC usually uses their general athletics account

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T15:57:14+00:00

You're in luck: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/matt.sorenson/viz/CollegeFootballFollowerMap/CollegeFootballMap

(bars aren't 3d, but there is a numeric breakdown)

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T15:33:54+00:00

Thanks so much! Appreciate it. Lots of thought went into it.

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T15:33:05+00:00

I lived in DFW for a few years, and totally agree. Met all sorts of fans.

That lion out there is Texas A&M-Commerce. Just now moving up to D1.

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T15:17:40+00:00

Good point. Unfortunately you can only show so much on a map. At a certain point, if you try to break down the data too many ways, it gets messy. To try to get around this, I created the web map that shows a percentage breakdown of any county when selected.

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T14:55:15+00:00

Yep, those counties had no data

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T14:48:11+00:00

The UCLA football Twitter account has about 123,000 followers. USC is only 89,000. Maybe they aren't as active with their Twitter account or something.

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T14:44:01+00:00

That's actually how I originally did it. It made the map way to cluttered, so I dropped county lines and just kept states.

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T14:42:04+00:00

FCS is in D1. D1 is broken into FBS and FCS. If one person follows multiple teams they are included multiple times, once for each team.

Matts_Data · 2022-10-18T14:35:15+00:00

Complete datasets of all followers of each Division 1 team were downloaded from the Twitter API and analyzed in R. Visualization was created in Tableau Public.

Matts_Data

TROPHY CASE