https://www.cybersport.ru/other/articles/u-virtus-pro-samye-aktivnye-fanaty-a-u-navi-samye-predannye-analiz-kibersportivnoi-auditorii-vo-vkontakte

I’m not glor, I just love everyone

The culture of pain in e-sports is still in its infancy, and therefore is still in many ways different from what we can see in the same football. This is clearly visible including the example of groups in VK. It’s hard to imagine that the Barcelona fan would follow the news of Real Madrid: to come in to control the opponents after the victory – yes, to be permanently subscribed to the official group – no. In e-sports, everything is different: in almost all clubs, at least half of the audience is also subscribed to another organization.

The most loyal fans Natus vincere – out of 750 thousand subscribers, almost 500 thousand (68.93%) not subscribed to any other club. This is largely explainable, since a huge number of spectators came to e-sports precisely thanks to the old-school NAVI rosters in Dota 2 and CS: GO, as well as their successes at major world tournaments.

All images are magnified by click.

Good performance groups boast forZe and Team spirit – more than 50% of their subscribers are not in other publics. Virtus.pro, for example, has more than 200 thousand unique fans, but if we take the total number of audience, this is only 42.7%. Least unique fans Winstrike team – 14.81%. Such a low figure can be explained by the relative youth of the club: Winstrike only in 2018 signed the rosters for CS: GO and Dota 2.

Sports achievements and media weight were precisely with the Dota roster, which in the best of times included quite well-known players in the community who managed to prove themselves in other clubs. Therefore, the audience that came after the conditional Silentmust have been previously subscribed to Team empire, and the fans Lilmost likely consisted in groups Virtus.pro and NAVI. These trends are clearly visible in terms of audience intersection – VP and Winstrike have more than 150 thousand common subscribers. Virtus.pro and NAVI are second in this indicator: 134.9 thousand people.

The group Natus Vincere in general can be called a unifying factor for e-sports fans in VK. It is with the public NAVI that all organizations (except VP) have the largest intersection of the audience, which varies from 25 thousand to 40 thousand people. It turns out that about a third or a quarter of all fans of each club in the CIS follow Natus Vincere. At Virtus.pro this indicator is also high and varies from 17 to 36% (if you do not take Winstrike into account).

Among e-sports fans there are as many as 408 enthusiasts who are subscribed to absolutely all ten clubs on VKontakte. And these are not bots, but active users. True, most likely, many of them work in the industry, so being aware of all the events is part of their responsibilities.

The fastest destroyer in the Wild West

The activity in groups in VK, of course, depends on the results of the club, but the public administration’s workload should also be taken into account. Here ahead of all is Team Empire SMM Manager – almost 600 posts were published in the group per month. In addition to news about the composition of the organization and their results, the club’s public often hosts artwork with video game characters and memes. However, this did not help Team Empire get ahead of the number of likes and comments of its closest competitors – Team Spirit and Gambit esports.

The least active group became Vega Squadron. Prior to the signing of the League of Legends roster, almost nothing was published in the public – three posts per month. From April 18, when the head of Vega, Alexei Kondakov, spoke in an open letter about the organization’s financial problems, until June 1 (Vega Academy announcement on CS: GO) there were no posts in the group at all.

The most active group was Virtus.pro. At 444 posts per month in the public, the highest rate of likes and comments, as well as active users – 36.8 thousand. The most popular among the audience are photos from Instagram of e-sportsmen, memes and polls. For example, a picture with Jame, which after the victory invites the audience to change their shoes, has collected almost a thousand likes – this is a quarter of all the likes that Winstrike group generated in a month. A meme with Solo and Resolut1on brought 2.2 thousand likes – this is twice as much as in 30 days Avangar and Vega combined.

Natus Vincere crawled close to Virtus.pro’s performance in an active audience – there were 33.5 thousand of such fans in their group. All other public clubs of the CIS clubs were noticeably inferior in this indicator. Team Spirit still managed to overcome the barrier of 10 thousand active userswhose e-mail is quite regularly publishes entertaining content – memes, polls, puzzles. Such posts often collect several times more likes than match results or highlights. The level of activity in the Team Spirit group, of course, was also affected by the successful results of the CS: GO roster, which during the quarantine period significantly increased and rose more than ten positions in the HLTV.org rating. It is the posts about the matches and the results of this composition that are the basis of the content in the Team Spirit group.

In addition to sports results, giveaways and collaborations give a good boost in terms of audience activity and the influx of new subscribers. For example, after the announcement of a joint stream of Fortnite Gambit players with rappers GONE.Fludd and CAKEBOY the number of participants in the club group for almost a day increased by 2 thousand people.

The least effective were the publications in the Winstrike group. On 161 posts had a total of 3,628 likes. In total, according to the results of the month under review, 2,831 active users were registered in the group – only AVANGAR and Vega have worse indicators. For example, in a group Hellraisers, where subscribers are almost three times less, there were three times more active users. Winstrike’s performance can be explained by the results of the teams – the CS: GO and Dota 2 rosters are now far from the first positions even in our region. This is reflected in the number of subscribers, which has been gradually decreasing over the course of several months. But the most actively growing group was Natus Vincere – the success of the CS: GO roster with enviable constancy increased the club’s audience on VKontakte by 100-200 people a day.

Dead Souls and Vlad Goncharov

It is unlikely that any group on VKontakte can boast of the absence of bots. TargetHunter has its own algorithm that recognizes “dead” pages and separates them from real users. As a percentage of the total number of users, the number of bots in the groups of e-sports clubs varies from 15 to 30%. It should be borne in mind that TargetHunter also considers blocked and deleted user pages in this category.

It is curious that in each group among the “dead souls” there are several dozen of the same type of pages of a certain blocked Vlad Goncharov.

The smallest number of “dead souls” in the percentage of forZe and Team Spirit – 15.35 and 15.79% respectively, but most of all – with Team Empire and HellRaisers. In the case of HR, this is quite surprising, since with a relatively small total number of subscribers, as we already noted, the percentage of active users in their group is also high.

Who are you, an eSports fan?

So who is following e-sports on VKontakte? Mostly these are, of course, men. In most clubs, they make up more than 90% of the audience. The most “male” organization in terms of sex ratio was forZe – 95.08% of men. In second place is AVANGAR – 94.59%. In both clubs, the flagship is the CS: GO roster.

Winstrike has the highest percentage of female audiences: 30.92%. If we take into account precisely the quantitative indicator, then Virtus.pro has the most fans: the club’s success is monitored more 92 thousand girls (18.03%).

Determining the exact geolocation of the e-sports audience on VKontakte is somewhat more difficult for two reasons. Firstly, the social network is officially blocked in Ukraine, and secondly, approximately 25% of all users do not indicate the country of residence.

Given these nuances, it turned out that on average the Russian audience of e-sports publics is from 41 to 65%. Ukrainians are in second place, Kazakhs and Belarusians in third and fourth, and US users close the top five.

The largest percentage of the audience from Russia was in the Winstrike group – 65.05%, and the smallest – in AVANGAR: 41.11%. The largest share of Ukrainian fans in public NAVI and HellRaisers – 12.56 and 8.39% respectively. Esports fans from Kazakhstan mostly follow AVANGAR (18.76%) and Gambit (6.14%). As for the residents of Belarus, they are evenly distributed across all clubs (2-3% of the total audience), only forZe is beaten out – 4.92%.

An analysis of the age of an e-sports audience is hardly relevant, since more than 50% of all users do not indicate it. Of the interesting indicators, it can be noted except that the distribution among fans’ clubs under 18 years of age. ForZe has the largest percentage of young audiences, which is quite natural given the club’s founding date. But the most old-school organization was Team Empire – it has 4.95% of the audience under 18. However, we recall once again that over 50% of subscribers who have not indicated their age are not counted here.

Memes, comics and rap

The total e-sports audience on VKontakte, which is subscribed to at least one club, is just over a million people. We analyzed their interests and studied what other content on the social network is close to them. Almost every sixth esports fan is also subscribed to MDK. In the top there are a number of groups with memes, vines and humorous videos. In fourth place is the public dedicated to Dota 2.

Every tenth fan of e-sports watches rap – in the top 50 hit “Rhymes and Punches” and Versus. Despite the low popularity of competitive Fortnite in the CIS, 75 thousand e-sports fans have signed up for the official battle royale group from Epic Games. Among the interests of the audience can also be distinguished films and comics Marvel and DC. Of the news publications, only Cybersport.ru made it to the top 30; more than 60 thousand fans of e-sports clubs have signed up for our site’s group on VKontakte. The gaming community IGM (140 thousand) is also of great interest to the audience, but there were no gaming publications in the top. Political and sports groups are not popular with eSports fans either – none of them made it to the top 30.

Most eSports organizations feel good about their VKontakte audience and try to communicate with it in the same language. Almost all clubs regularly publish entertainment content that collects the most response. A noticeable proportion of the audience does not have distinct club affiliations and follows several teams at once, therefore, not only players at tournaments, but also the SMS should fight for their fan.