Super Rugby media battle – round 2

After round 2 of Super Rugby, the first thing we noticed was an increase in total mentions of New Zealand’s five teams, from 1,819 last week to 1,895 this week. It will be interesting to see how this tracks throughout the competition.

The chart above shows each team's relative share of media voice for the past week. Notable movements include the Hurricanes (dropping from 20% to 16%) and the Chiefs (dropping from 20% to 17%) following their weekend losses.

On the other hand, the Blues have grown their share from 20% to 23% this week off the back of their loss to the Crusaders - there was plenty of angst over the Blues' player selections. Reigning champs the Highlanders moved from 19% last week to 22% after a tight win over the Canes.

Above we can see how each team's share of media voice changes over time as measured by the number of mentions. The dip in mentions is due to timing of our report - on a Tuesday - and the fact we are only two weeks in. As the competition progresses we should see this chart smooth out a little.

Bring on Week 3 – and let us know your thoughts, comments and suggestions! 

About this analysis

For a different take on this year’s Super Rugby competition, Hotwire is tracking the share of media voice for each New Zealand team using TrendKite monitoring software.

We want to find out if all the teams receive an equal share, or whether some favourites emerge – for good or bad reasons.

We’ll be looking at New Zealand online media coverage of each weekend’s games, tracking the number of mentions of each New Zealand team, and reporting our findings each Tuesday during the round robin.