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+---- Thread: *League Engagement by the Numbers (/showthread.php?tid=21672)
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*League Engagement by the Numbers - bex - 04-26-2020
Hiya! I'm Bex and I spend way too much time thinking about the league. I suppose that's a good thing, since I'm sort of in charge. I became commissioner of the league in the early part of January, but haven't taken a step back to look at how the league is doing on an actual numbers level. It can feel like it's on fire all the time as I work with Head Office to keep things running as smoothly as possible, but I felt the need to break down the league's activity and engagement over the last few months.
There are a lot of ways to take a look at the league's growth. I wanted to take a deep dive into the numbers behind different areas of community engagement that I have the ability to collect. In deciding the bounds that I would examine, I decided to look at just this year, 2020. I define my weeks by the league activity checks, meaning our first week of data spans from December 29th, 2019 through January 4th, 2020. Data was collected on April 25th from between 4 pm Eastern and 10:30 pm Eastern. Some numbers may now be slightly out of date. I also may have miscounted slightly, but if you'd like to go back through and check my work, you are more than welcome to.
Activity Checks
The easiest way to see the league's growth and activity without doing any digging is our handy dandy activity checks. What it's measuring is in the name, how convenient!
Week - Date - ACs
Week One - Dec 29 - Jan 4 - 178
Week Two - Jan 5 - Jan 11 - 189
Week Three - Jan 12 - Jan 18 - 214
Week Four - Jan 19 - Jan25 - 194
Week Five - Jan 26 - Feb 1 - 178
Week Six - Feb 2 - Feb 8 - 190
Week Seven - Feb 9 - Feb15 - 181
Week Eight - Feb 16 - Feb 22 - 359
Week Nine - Feb 23 - Feb 29 - 276
Week Ten - Mar 1 - Mar 7 - 293
Week Eleven - Mar 8 - Mar 14 - 279
Week Twelve - Mar 15 - Mar 21 - 264
Week Thirteen - Mar 22 - Mar 28 - 273
Week Fourteen - Mar 29 - Apr 4 - 302
Week Fifteen - Apr 5 - Apr 11 - 261
Week Sixteen - Apr 12 - April 18 - 295
Week Seventeen - Apr 19 - Apr 25 - 305
Let's look at the movement in the context of the season schedules.
End of S19 and S20 Offseason
This is when we see some amount of increase due to recruitment, with our first drop off occurring in the transition from preseason to the first week of games. The increases up to this point would be from our partnerships with Major League Redditball and Fake College Football.
Week One to Week Two: +11
Week Two to Week Three: +25
Week Three to Week Four: -20
S20
Season Twenty in the league was fairly standard, with the notable difference of the recruitment push that came from our continued partnership with r/nfl in Week Eight.
Week Four to Week Five: -16
Week Five to Week Six: +12
Week Six to Week Seven: -9
Week Seven to Week Eight: +178
S21 Offseason
We see the loss of our first wave of r/nfl friends as that off-season boredom takes hold. After the first drop off, some seem to return, but not quite enough.
Week Eight to Week Nine: -83
Week Nine to Week Ten: +17
S21
Week Ten to Week Eleven: -14
Week Eleven to Week Twelve: -15
Week Twelve to Week Thirteen: +9
Week Thirteen to Week Fourteen: +29
Week Fourteen to Week Fifteen: -41
S22 Offseason
As the offseason hits, we go through another round of recruitment, this time through various subreddits. We see a small bump to our overall numbers that replaces some of the end of season losses we saw in S21.
Week Fifteen to Week Sixteen: +34
Week Sixteen to Week Seventeen: +10
Now, that's a fun thing to see! Our AC numbers are overall increasing, and haven't dipped below 250 in 10 weeks! But there's so so so much more to the community than simply completing an activity check.
Youtube
Our games are streamed on youtube every weeknight through the regular season, with a host of offseason streams for awards and draft streams. Watching this content is a big part of our community. We're here for the little dots that move across the screen. So let's take a dive into the numbers on our youtube channel. Red denotes off-season and stand-alone weeks denote Ultimus Week.
Week One - Dec 29 - Jan 4 - 310 Views - 41.3 Hours Watch Time
Week Two - Jan 5 - Jan 11 - 367 Views - 51.1 Hours Watch Time
Week Three - Jan 12 - Jan 18 - 552 Views - 110.7. Hours Watch Time
Week Four - Jan 19 - Jan 25 - 628 Views - 93.6. Hours Watch Time
Week Five - Jan 26 - Feb 1 - 584 Views - 108.6 Hours Watch Time
Week Six - Feb 2 - Feb 8 - 523 Views - 107.2 Hours Watch Time
Week Seven - Feb 9 - Feb15 - 507 Views - 70 Hours Watch Time
Week Eight - Feb 16 - Feb 22 - 1336 Views - 75 Hours Watch Time
Week Nine - Feb 23 - Feb 29 - 772 Views - 177 Hours Watch Time
Week Ten - Mar 1 - Mar 7 - 1415 Views - 284.2 Hours Watch Time
Week Eleven - Mar 8 - Mar 14 - 1306 Views - 258.7 Hours Watch Time
Week Twelve - Mar 15 - Mar 21 - 1068 Views - 232.7 Hours Watch Time
Week Thirteen - Mar 22 - Mar 28 - 1025 Views - 237 Hours Watch Time
Week Fourteen - Mar 29 - Apr 4 - 1229 Views - 258.2 Hours Watch Time
Week Fifteen - Apr 5 - Apr 11 - 766 Views - 75 Hours Watch Time
Week Sixteen - Apr 12 - April 18 - 1872 Views - 418.7 Hours Watch Time
Week Seventeen - Apr 19 - Apr 24 - 1001 Views - 175.4 Hous Watch Time
Now, Youtube is a whole complicated thing that I don't want to dwell on too much because I'm certainly no expert. Overall, we see a really encouraging trend of steadily gaining. more views as well as increased watch time. Our totals for 2020 are very exciting: 15,109 views with 2,756.3 hours of watch time. That's almost 115 days of watching our 2-D dots.
There doesn't seem to be a perfect pattern. In S20, watch time increased for the middle weeks of the season but was lower for the first and last week. In S21, the opposite was true, with higher watch time for the first and last weeks. Offseason also seems to have higher watch times. I would pose two reasons why this may be. Firstly, this is when new people are around and learning about the league. Secondly, off-season events tend to be far longer than an average game stream, which would drive watch time up.
The only week that really stands out here is Week Eight. As you may recall, this is the week of the r/nfl recruitment. So we see a very high view count, 1336 views, but very little increase in view time from the week prior, only a difference of 5 hours despite there being 2.6x as many views. One reason behind this difference would be that this is when we have a large group of people clicking on to see what we're about, but not sticking around for the long term. There was also a reduced amount of streams that week with might have impacted the overall number.
The other big outlier week to highlight here is Week Fifteen. There is a huge dip from the prior week and less watch time, with a huge resurgence the next week. Now, without context, this seems concerning. But when cross-checked with the schedule, this makes perfect sense. Week 15 was the end of S21. This means that there were only two streams this week, for the Conference Championship Games, and the Ultimus and Ultimini games. An average week during the season has 5 streams, while this week had only two. No need for alarm!
Unrelated to the rest of the project but just some fun data to think about: According to our youtube analytics, 99.4% of our watchers are male. That's shocking, I know. I'd like to shout out the other .6%, wherever you are. I know I'm not .6% all by myself.
Youtube also provides our watcher age ranges, which are as follows
28.2% 18-24
67.7% 25-34
2.8% 35-44
1.4% 45-54
This is interesting to me specifically because I always think of our community as relatively young. I myself am in that lowest listed age bracket.
Another less than shocking piece of information is our country breakdown:
63.6% United States
2.4% Canada
1% United Kingdom
0.1% Germany
.1% Australia
Forum Content
Now, we've done our ACs, and watched some games. But again, there is so much more to the league than that! Let's take a look at the stuff that makes the league come alive past the dots on a screen. Let's look at the breakdown for media, podcasts, and graphics. Please note for GFX, I have tracked the number of submission threads. Each thread can have an unlimited amount of submissions within it, but each user is restricted to one submission thread per week. I'm just not enough of a masochist to hand count GFX submissions from the last seventeen weeks, so take the submission thread number and be happy. Green denotes double draft media periods.
Week One - Dec 29 - Jan 4 - 23 Media Pieces - 1 Podcast - 16 GFX Submission Threads
Week Two - Jan 5 - Jan 11 - 37 Media Pieces - 3 Podcast - 14 GFX Submission Threads
Week Three - Jan 12 - Jan 18 - 42 Media Pieces - 9 Podcast - 14 GFX Submission Threads
Week Four - Jan 19 - Jan 25 - 38 Media Pieces - 6 Podcast - 14 GFX Submission Threads
Week Five - Jan 26 - Feb 1 - 14 Media Pieces - 1 Podcast - 10 GFX Submission Threads
Week Six - Feb 2 - Feb 8 - 17 Media Pieces - 2 Podcast - 9 GFX Submission Threads
Week Seven - Feb 9 - Feb 15 - 16 Media Pieces - 2 Podcast - 11 GFX Submission Threads
Week Eight - Feb 16 - Feb 22 - 105 Media Pieces - 3 Podcast - 37 GFX Submission Threads
Week Nine - Feb 23 - Feb 29 - 124 Media Pieces - 3 Podcast - 20 GFX Submission Threads
Week Ten - Mar 1 - Mar 7 - 119 Media Pieces - 12 Podcast - 23 GFX Submission Threads
Week Eleven - Mar 8 - Mar 14 - 77 Media Pieces - 8 Podcast - 18 GFX Submission Threads
Week Twelve - Mar 15 - Mar 21 - 71 Media Pieces - 5 Podcast - 11 GFX Submission Threads
Week Thirteen - Mar 22 - Mar 28 - 69 Media Pieces - 6 Podcast - 8 GFX Submission Threads
Week Fourteen - Mar 29 - Apr 4 - 123 Media Pieces - 11 Podcast - 11 GFX Submission Threads
Week Fifteen - Apr 5 - Apr 11 - 83 Media Pieces - 6 Podcast - 14 GFX Submission Threads
Week Sixteen - Apr 12 - April 18 - 128 Media Pieces - 5 Podcast - 16 GFX Submission Threads
Week Seventeen - Apr 19 - Apr 25 - 80 Media Pieces - 9 Podcast - 32 GFX Submission Threads
So uh. . . this is a whole lot. Y'all be full on wildin' when it comes to media production in recent weeks.
I think it's safe to say that Week 8 and our r/nfl friends definitely revitalized media production in the league, pushing us from 2-3 podcasts and media pieces in the mid-teens to between 5-11 podcasts per week and between 69-128 media pieces a week. I had been feeling like I was falling behind on listening to podcasts and reading media, but figured that had more to do with me being busy. Turns out that no, it's not my schedule. It's the absolutely insane pace of production right now.
League Jobs
Finally, I wanted to take a second to highlight one other MAJOR engagement piece: League Jobs. This is what actually inspired this deep dive into the numbers. I was resetting jcink permissions part of my work in the head office as we transition job holders in the offseason. This made me curious to know how many jobs are being filled and by whom. There are some limits to this data, however. Certain contract work like wiki and the dev team are not included, as they do not have traditional staffing models that make for easy counting. Likewise, the awards committee and the DSFL advisory board are also not counted, as these are in flux.
That being said, there are roughly 162 jobs currently being filled in the league. There are 107 people who fill these roles, with 43 of those people double or triple dipping in league jobs. This means that roughly one-third of the current league is a job holder. One-third of the league is dedicating at least some amount of time to helping this very crazy little corner of the internet stay running.
So What?
Well, I think you can take away from this whatever you'd like to. For me, the take away is this: Our League is amazing.
We've grown tremendously over the first four months of 2020. We've seen explosions across all areas of engagement. Yes, we've had perhaps more than our fair share of controversies and drama. But at the end of the day, what we're doing here is resonating with people. People want to be part of what we have built together.
Obviously we've grown to the point of expansion. On January 1st, 2020, there were 10 NSFL teams and 4 DSFL Teams. Now, we have 12 NSFL teams and 8 DSFL teams. We've hired more bankers, graders, rookie mentors, updaters and more to be able to accommodate our growing community.
We've added new features to the league, like our brand new NSFL Casino, and are continuing to work on projects that will better our league. Our wiki team works tirelessly to archive our history, while the development team works to bring us into the future with new tech tools and features. Our rookie mentors continue to look for ways to increase retention, while our ever-expanding twitter team looks for ways to promote our league and drive new engagement.
So, I'd like to thank you, reader. Whether you are someone who just does an activity check now and then, or whether you watch every stream, write media, make graphics and hold three league jobs. Every single person in this community is valued and appreciated. We would not be where we are today without you. I hope you choose to stick around and continue to build with us.
*League Engagement by the Numbers - ADwyer87 - 04-26-2020
youve done a lot for the league. Its amazing how much the league has grown over your short leadership already. The league is lucky to have you in charge, and it owes you everything
*League Engagement by the Numbers - slothfacekilla - 04-26-2020
Very cool to see the numbers!
*League Engagement by the Numbers - siddhus - 04-26-2020
Speaking from expierence. Most people prob faked their age cause they too young to make an account lmfao on Youtube
*League Engagement by the Numbers - Memento Mori - 04-26-2020
This is very cool, thanks for compiling all the numbers.
I noticed how huge the increase in media was when the media spreadsheet decided to set fire to itself a few weeks ago. The sheet runs from 6th Feb 2018 onwards.
The first piece of media post-r/nfl recruitment is row 2926. We’re now on row 4060. There’s been more media written since that recruitment class (just over two months) than in the previous 7.5 months, stretching back to July 2019.
Agreed that this place is amazing and I think everyone who contributes to that should be very proud.
*League Engagement by the Numbers - Thiath - 04-26-2020
(04-25-2020, 11:55 PM)bex Wrote:So, I'd like to thank you, reader.
:
Is bex seriously taking my bit? Shame.
*League Engagement by the Numbers - Troen - 04-26-2020
(04-25-2020, 09:55 PM)bex Wrote:The other big outlier week to highlight here is Week Fifteen. There is a huge dip from the prior week and less watch time, with a huge resurgence the next week. Now, without context, this seems concerning. But when cross-checked with the schedule, this makes perfect sense. Week 15 was the end of S21. This means that there were only two streams this week, for the Conference Championship Games, and the Ultimus and Ultimini games. An average week during the season has 5 streams, while this week had only two. No need for alarm!I suspect that rather in addition to total hours watched, average percent of broadcast watched could be informative (hours / viewers / length of broadcast). Or, including the length of the broadcasts directly could give more context to those metrics such that the total hours watched dropping when the broadcast length drops would be more directly noticeable.
*League Engagement by the Numbers - Duilio05 - 04-26-2020
imagine doing all this activity work and not reaching out to ask about twitter. JK just means I can post my own media and make money about twitter activity trends.
*League Engagement by the Numbers - bex - 04-26-2020
(04-26-2020, 09:00 AM)Duilio05 Wrote:imagine doing all this activity work and not reaching out to ask about twitter. JK just means I can post my own media and make money about twitter activity trends.
I considered asking, but decided that twitter is definitely something that deserves its own spotlight!
I hope you do put out something!
*League Engagement by the Numbers - iseedoug - 04-26-2020
Exciting stuff! Keep up the great work bex, HO, and everyone with league jobs!