Football vs non-football MW1 → MW34
When fans talk football on social media, are they actually talking about the game — or about everything around it? Two groupings of taxonomy categories matched across every post & reply in 2,681,883 Reddit, X/Twitter and YouTube comments. A post is counted for a group if it matches any term in any of that group's categories. The same post can count for both groups if it mentions terms from each.
Football · 22 groups · 3,076 terms
action assists competition crowd deadball events fixture foul goal goalkeeper lineup manager medical mistakes performance positions qualities rank scoreline showboating statistics tactics
Non-Football · 12 groups · 1,182 terms
appearance business channels commentator officiating owner people socialmedia weather var fan_culture gambling
1,657,569
Football mentions
61.81% of posts
570,024
Non-Football mentions
21.25% of posts
406,342
Both in same post
15.15% of posts
Share of conversation per matchweek raw
% of all posts/replies in each matchweek that mention a term from each group. Football has 3,076 terms; Non-Football has 1,182 terms — so Football naturally has more surface area. The next chart normalises for that.
football
non-football
both (same post)
Normalised share — per-100-terms fair
Raw share divided by the number of terms in each group, then multiplied by 100 (so both groups are compared on a "per 100 terms" basis). If Football is still above Non-Football here, fans really do talk about the game more. If Non-Football catches up — or overtakes — it means fans get more mileage from fewer "around-the-game" words.
football (per 100 terms)
non-football (per 100 terms)
Balance ratio per matchweek
Football share ÷ Non-Football share for each matchweek. 1.0 means equal discourse; >1 means Football leads; <1 means Non-Football leads. The dashed line uses the normalised (per-term) figures, which is the fairer comparison.
Season balance
Aggregated over the whole season.
| Group | Terms | Posts matching | Share | Mentions / term | Distribution |
|---|
| Football |
3,076 |
1,657,569 |
61.81% |
538.9 |
|
| Non-Football |
1,182 |
570,024 |
21.25% |
482.3 |
|
Top 15 football terms
Most-mentioned keywords across the football group (22 categories, 3,076 terms). % is share of all football-group mentions.
| # | Term | Posts | % | |
|---|
| 1 | game | 137,651 | 3.7% | |
| 2 | season | 89,073 | 2.4% | |
| 3 | goal | 85,422 | 2.3% | |
| 4 | play | 80,425 | 2.2% | |
| 5 | back | 72,901 | 1.9% | |
| 6 | win | 71,583 | 1.9% | |
| 7 | playing | 57,181 | 1.5% | |
| 8 | shit | 55,258 | 1.5% | |
| 9 | games | 45,848 | 1.2% | |
| 10 | league | 39,052 | 1.1% | |
| 11 | score | 34,574 | 0.9% | |
| 12 | match | 34,420 | 0.9% | |
| 13 | won | 33,637 | 0.9% | |
| 14 | fans | 33,302 | 0.9% | |
| 15 | point | 32,147 | 0.9% | |
Top 15 non-football terms
Most-mentioned keywords across the non-football group (12 categories, 1,182 terms). % is share of all non-football-group mentions.
| # | Term | Posts | % | |
|---|
| 1 | players | 82,232 | 11.1% | |
| 2 | player | 50,980 | 6.9% | |
| 3 | great | 43,304 | 5.9% | |
| 4 | ref | 34,377 | 4.7% | |
| 5 | penalty | 18,883 | 2.5% | |
| 6 | var | 15,750 | 2.1% | |
| 7 | pen | 15,654 | 2.1% | |
| 8 | offside | 11,295 | 1.5% | |
| 9 | call | 11,174 | 1.5% | |
| 10 | single | 11,024 | 1.5% | |
| 11 | decision | 11,015 | 1.5% | |
| 12 | wait | 10,693 | 1.4% | |
| 13 | joke | 10,094 | 1.4% | |
| 14 | refs | 9,920 | 1.3% | |
| 15 | called | 7,400 | 1.0% | |