How different factors impact our fandom.
December 3, 2024 by Josiah Zoodsma and Jesse Weisz in Analysis, News with 0 comments
What drives us to root for specific players? In our previous article, we outlined who the favorite MPO and FPO players are in the disc golf community. In this article, we begin to investigate what drives this fandom.
After respondents selected their favorite MPO and FPO players, we asked, “What is the main reason that the selected player is your favorite player?” Respondents could select 1 from 10 pre-written reasons. Below is the distribution of results for this question:
- For both MPO and FPO, “You like their personality” was the most selected reason, with approximately 30% of all responses.
- For both divisions, “You are in awe of what they are capable of doing” and “you enjoy their playstyle” were the 2nd and 3rd most selected answers, respectively. Notably, these selected choices were ranked above “They are a winner,” indicating that on-course success isn’t necessarily the main driver for favorite player fandom.
- 3 of the 10 answers saw significant divides between favoritism in MPO and FPO:
- “They are a winner” was substantially more important in determining a survey respondent’s favorite FPO player than MPO player.
- “You like their looks and/or personal style” was similarly preferentially picked in FPO, while “You enjoy their social media content” was preferentially selected for MPO players.
The above visualization is generalized across all players, but what is the main reason that a specific player garners favoritism from the disc golf community? You can search for any of the Top 20 most-favorited MPO and FPO players below. Compare each player to another player, or the average answer for their division, to see how fanbases compare.
We encourage you to compare any of your favorite players in the adjustable graphic above! To pick out one interesting comparison, we compared the main reason for favoritism of fans of Paul McBeth vs Ricky Wysocki. “You like their personality” and “You enjoy their playstyle” were more common responses for fans of Wysocki, while “They are a winner” and “They have great form” were more common responses for fans of McBeth.
We also looked into the players who received the highest percentage in each of the 10 favoritism categories, which is shown in the following table for MPO and FPO. Feel free to check out the distributions of these players in the interactive graph above!
To highlight some of the notable leaders: two JomezPro commentators, Nate Sexton and Madison Walker, received the highest percentage of their fans indicating their fandom is largely due to their personality. The 2023 PDGA Worlds Long Drive competition winners, Anthony Barela and Eliezra Midtlyng, awe their fans with their incredible power. Two European technicians, Niklas Anttila and Henna Blomroos, came out on top of the list for great form contributing to respondent fandom. Brodie Smith (2.2 million YouTube subscribers) and Chantel Budinsky (also known as “Miss Frisbees” on YouTube) had the greatest share of favoritism due to their social media content.
What about fandom outside of your favorite player? Do the same factors that impact who is our favorite player also drive who we root for besides our favorite? To address this question, we asked survey respondents, on a scale of 1 to 5, how important each of these factors were to who they rooted for.
In general, the trends that were observed when investigating the reasons for why a player is a respondent’s favorite aligned with the trends for overall fandom. “You like their personality” remained as the most important factor for the fandom of both MPO and FPO competitors.
What’s exciting is that we can use the answers to these questions to see what drives the Fandom Scores of specific players. Hover over each column in the chart above to see which three players in MPO and FPO have their Fandom Score largely driven by this aspect. For these players, the more survey respondents valued a reason, the higher they rated the player. Let’s take one example to explain further:
- Gannon Buhr appears in the list of players who have their Fandom Score largely driven by “They are a winner.” This means that the more a survey respondent values winning, the higher fandom score they gave to Gannon Buhr.
- Gannon’s average Fandom Score across all respondents was 6.54.
- Among people who said that “They are a winner” contributes greatly to their fandom (5 out of 5), Gannon Buhr received an average Fandom Score of 7.69! That would have ranked 7th in overall fandom score, just behind perennial fan-favorite Nate Sexton. On the other hand, respondents who did not value this attribute (1 out of 5) gave Buhr an average Fandom Score of only 6.12.
By analyzing the average Fandom Score across all of these categories, we determined which of the 100 players included in our survey had their scores most driven by each.
Many of the findings from this analysis aligned with our expectations. Players whose scores were driven by “They are a winner” also included 17x Major Champion Paul McBeth and the 2023 Major Grand Slam winner Kristin Tattar.
Interestingly, “They have a connection with where you live” was a much stronger driving factor for European players than American players.
How does the average Fandom Score of players change when we look at specific demographics of respondents? Given the interesting finding of “They have a connection with where you live” being a driving factor for European player fandom, here are the Top 20 players in average Fandom Score when considering only respondents from Europe.
- There is a new #1! When just looking at the average Fandom Score of European respondents, Niklas Anttila took the top spot, moving up from 9th in overall Fandom Score rank of all respondents. Silva Saarinen and Eveliina Salonen also moved into the Top 5.
- In total, 12 of the Top 20 in average Fandom Score among European respondents were European. This is compared to just five players in the Top-20 when looking across all respondents.
- Väinö Mäkelä, Heidi Laine, Lauri Lehtinen, and Jesse Nieminen all moved into the Top 20 when being outside of the Top 40 in average Fandom Score of all respondents.
What does the average Fandom Score landscape look like when considering only female respondents? The Top-20 are shown below:
Females’ Favorite Players Chart
- Again, there is a new #1! Ohn Scoggins takes over the top spot when looking at average Fandom Score from female respondents.
- Eveliina Salonen had the greatest increase in raw Fandom Score (comparing all respondents to just women respondents), making the jump to 2nd!
If you are interested in seeing the Top 20 in average Fandom Score of any other demographic, feel free to let us know in the links below! In the next article in the series, we will begin to look at the fandom of disc golf manufacturers, as well as the discs that respondents buy and bag!
- If you are interested in learning more about the team and research goals at First Available Research, click here!
- If you want to read articles from last year’s Fandom Survey, click here!
- If you want to be notified of the publication of future articles in this series and/or want to take future disc golf surveys from our group, click here!
- If you have any questions, comments or mailbag topics for future articles, submit them here!
Special thanks to Lauren Campbell, who was instrumental in developing our research plan and assisting with survey design. Also, thanks go out to the Fandom Survey’s editor, Karl Lamothe.
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We wanted to include some extra content for Ultiworld Disc Golf subscribers!
We dug a little deeper into the question, “In general, what contributes to your fandom of a player?” We take a look at geography, gender, and political demographic splits and how they impact fandom. Subscribe to read on for more!
Bonus Content for 2024 Fandom Survey: What Drives Fans to Root for Certain Players? is only available to Ultiworld Subscribers
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