Federer popular than NFL, Cricket and Golf stars in Australia..

[Bobby Jr]

Originally Posted by Bartelby

This is not a conspiracy theory.

It is a well known trend by all industry insiders and reported on by academics and media experts. .

What trend is this?

[rk_sports]

ah! Serena in the most disliked in Oz.. wonder why...
could that be because of the USO incident (against Stosur not the other infamous one)?

[dominikk1985]

admired doesn't mean popular.

in germany we have the same with dirk nowitzki. everyone is saying "wow he is one of the best basketbal players ever bla bla" but there are not going to be any screaming teenagers when he shows up. (well not a lot)

in fact the germans won't even watch his games in TV. they will just read about his wins in the newpaper and say like "cool, he won again".

I think the same is true with tennis stars like nadal or fed. everyone has great respect for them and acknowledges their greatness but people are not going to get crazy like they do for a soccer match.

when there is a soccer WC people will not talk about or watch anything else for a month. they will go to public viewing parties and cry if their team loses.

that is just not going to happen in tennis. a few will watch some matches, maybe even have a short talk about the final match but you can absolutely not compare that to the craze about soccer or american football.

federer makes a lot of money because tennis has a very consistent followership all over the world. but in no country in the world (even in switzerland were skiing and even football are certainly more in the media then tennis) there will be a collective craze like there is in soccer.

[Bartelby]

The trend to use spurious opinion polling as a way of advertising - in this case advertising the AO:


These polls are put out by marketing companies associated with organizations that want to send a message replete with spurious data.

There is no way that the result means anything other than that the survey was conceived to obtain a result.

There is a never-ending succession of these purportedly objective studies that pop up and spread throughout the media as fact when they're twaddle.

And this is twaddle.

Originally Posted by Bobby Jr

What trend is this?

[westside]

Gee people are making a big deal out of this. My only concern is how Gary Ablett jr is not on the most liked? Anyone who has a dream team should have voted for him!

[Speranza]

I'd have to say that what Bartelby points to does make sense, that the timing of such 'surveys' etc. is done with a hidden agenda.

That said, it's a touch more difficult (without knowing the exact questions involved and which demographic was questioned) to prove that Federer topping the survey was guaranteed, regardless of the aims.

[Bartelby]

Gemba, the marketing company doing the survey, has Tennis Australia as a client.

Their pitch from their website to Cricket Australia is that athletes have more 'asset power' in uncluttered environments (viz not large football competitions with many players and teams).

[slickerthansleek]

Originally Posted by Rocky89

I wonder who votes on these surveys, I always thought AFL players were the most popular athletes in Australia.

Anyways here is a list of the most popular which includes Federer, Nadal and Stosur, and least popular athletes from the survey.

Based on the conversations I have with people, I'd actually say this is relatively accurate. Personally I'm not a Nadal fan, but I know plenty of people in this country have a lot of respect for Federer, Nadal and Stosur, as far as cricketers go McGrath, Ponting and Clarke are well looked upon, and the 'disliked' list... pretty much spot-on. Warne and Tiger are 50-50, Serena is pretty much universally disliked, as is Fevola.