Every year as the NFL season comes to a close and the Super Bowl arrives, we see more and more “band wagon” fans coming out of the woodworks. We also start to see more and more “real” fans complaining about these band wagon fans. This year’s faceoff between the Ravens and the 49ers is no exception, and has stirred up a lot of band wagon talk on Twitter.
So, which team has more band wagon fans this year? At first glance, according to Tweets gathered from August until today, it’s almost equal. There were 1018 tweets about 49ers band wagon fans, and 1057 tweets about Ravens band wagon fans. Diving deeper into the data though, we can start to see some trends that more accurately paint the picture of which team has more Band Wagon Fans.
There were spikes on January 12th and 20th when both teams won their games to stay in contention for the super bowl. On both occasions the spikes were slightly higher for the Ravens. The band wagon mentions have been separated into three categories: “I hate band wagon fans”, “I’m not on a bandwagon, I’ve always been a fan”, and “I’m jumping on the band wagon!”
Around 75% of the ravens “band wagon” mentions were loyal fans who dislike their team’s new-found followers. On the 49ers side, only about 20% of the mentions were “real” fans who dislike band wagon fans.
About 15% of the Ravens mentions were people stating that they were jumping on the band wagon of a particular team. The percentage of new band wagon fans for the 49ers was much higher, accounting for 45% of the mentions.
The remaining 10% of Ravens fans are people clarifying that they are not band wagon fans. For the 49ers, this segment represented 20% of them mentions.
So overall, it appears that the 49ers have more band wagon fans than the Ravens do (at least more that are willing to publicly state it). “Real” Ravens fans have a much stronger hatred for band wagon fans of their team, and are quick to call people out on it. More “real” 49ers fans feel the need to claim that they are indeed “real” fans, and not just jumping on the band wagon.
Aside from these main trends, a couple of other interesting trends came through from the research done-
People have trouble spelling “hop,” and “ hopping,” and hope and hoping.
Ray Lewis is enough to make or break a band wagon.
Nice football fans exist. This guy knows what he’s talking about.
And for your viewing pleasure, word clouds of all the band wagon mentions for each team:
Ravens
49ers
So what do you think? Are band wagon fans that bad? If your team didn’t make it to the Super Bowl, which wagon will you be jumping on come Sunday?
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