Report says Cleveland Indians most hated team

[Auggie]

ESPN.com / 4-29-10

With 27 World Series championships, baseball's highest payroll and some of the most boastful fans in sports, the New York Yankees have to be the team other baseball fans love to hate, right? Wrong.

According to a formula created by The Neilsen Company, there are four teams more detested than the Bronx Bombers, The Wall Street Journal reported. The No. 1 most disliked team in baseball, according to the formula, is the Cleveland (Baseball Team). The Boston Red Sox, the Yankees' archrival, rank No. 2 on the list.

:wtf:

The formula helps determine whether consumers have positive, negative or neutral reactions to brands in their online messages. Neilsen's "Sentiment Rankings" range from 5 to minus-5. No team finished with a negative number. But six teams finished with a number lower than 2.

The rest of the not-so top 10: Chicago White Sox (No. 7), Baltimore Orioles (No. 8), New York Mets (No. 9) and Los Angeles Dodgers (No. 10).

SNIP

The San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics were the most popular teams among fans, according to Neilsen's study.

:) :thumbsup: :) :thumbsup: :) :thumbsup: :)

LINK: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5146663

[Captain Hilts]

1. But playoff ratings DOUBLE when the Yanks, Sox, Cubs and Mets are in. nt

[madinmaryland]

2. That sounds pretty bogus to me. I bet the Ginats were one of the most

hated teams back in the mid 00's.

(*)

[joeybee12]

3. Whne you know how played there...n/t

[Auggie]

5. I was wondering if some of the post here could have been counted...

thanks to your pals CBoy4 and Upton.

That would weigh in favor of the Giants, certainly.

[Forkboy]

4. I can understand Boston being there....but Cleveland?

[joeybee12]

6. WHAT??????? ???????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AMERICA'S BELOVED AND REVERED TEAM?????????

[madinmaryland]

7. Maybe it's the whiney-assed Red Sox fans that got the Red Sox on the list.

:hide:

[Forkboy]

8. Sure...teams that win are hated. It's a good sign.

let's face it, most hatred for any team comes from fans of teams that have lost to said winning teams over the years. It's jealousy. I mean, how many people hate the Cubs or Nationals? Hardly anyone, because there's no reason to. Being hated is a great sign for any sports team, it means they're doing something right.

Which is why Cleveland makes no sense.....

[Redbear]

9. They took a bizarre way of answering that question.

By there logic there are no "hated" teams because all teams have more positives said about them than negatives, the Indians are just the "least-liked".

I would define the most-hated team as the one about whom the most negative things are said.

Its also a bit weird to say negative equals hated.

I doubt many people actually hate the Indians, Orioles, or Astros, but lots of negative things are said about them because they aren't very good.

[HughBeaumont]

10. I don't get it. Wouldn't you have to . . . you know . . . WIN . . .

. . . or have a rivalry with some other team . .. or even be on the radar, to be hated?

I mean, we Clevelanders hate them as an organization for the boneheaded moves that defy description. Like, for instance, getting rid of two Cy Young award winners in consecutive seasons for nothing rather than add two more aces to offset your inconsistent offense and become a contender for years.

But hey, when you have a miserly cheapster owner, a staff that thinks they know what they're doing and are part of a sport that's pretty much become the epitome of unbridled corporatism, what are you going to do but root for the Cavs and hope they bring this God-forsaken dying city a goddamned TITLE in SOMEthing already?

[Auggie]

11. UPDATE: It's a bad headline from ESPN -- "hated" not accurate...

Gwen Knapp, S.F. Chronicle (4-30-10)

"The Nielsen Co., famous as the source of TV ratings, used a formula based on keywords indicating positive, negative or neutral feelings about a product to arrive at its findings. The study, the first of its kind, assessed a variety of blog posts and comments, message-board chatter and tweets from April 4 through April 25.

In the study, the ratings could have potentially ranged from a plus-5 to a minus-5. The Giants finished first with a 4.5 in the "overall sentiment score," and the A's took second with a 4.2. Cleveland, with a 0.9, narrowly beat the Red Sox for last place, while the presumably despised Yankees finished fifth from the bottom.

The formula relies on automated screening for a variety of words that could be construed as positive (good, great, like, love, well) or negative (hate, ineffectual, poorly). The method also takes into consideration whether, for example, the word "not" appears in conjunction with the word "good." A positive or negative expression about a particular team had to occur within six to seven words to be counted as a plus or minus.

SNIP

The company concedes that misspellings, emoticons and nuanced sarcasm cannot be taken into account in the analysis. The formula has safeguards to screen out posts about tigers in a post about zoos as opposed to the upper-case variety in Detroit, or cardinals in Rome versus the Albert Pujols crew, said Aaron Lewis, a Nielsen publicist.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/knapp/#ixzz0mawCmshx

If you want your dislike to be counted by Neilson, don't use terms/slang like G-nats, Frisco, or Skankees.