Being a sports fan can be stressful. Every missed shot or dropped pass has a way of weighing on a fan’s psyche. Luckily, Reddit and Twitter are safe spaces for them to let off some steam.
With this in mind, we carried out a study using TensiStrength to uncover which sports fans supporting teams in the Australian Football League and Indian Premier League are letting out the most rage online!
TensiStrength estimates the amount of stress and relaxation expressed in short texts; including informal language. It’s human-level accuracy gives fair judgement and scores each phrase between -3 (most stressed) and 3 (most relaxed).
Most Stressed Fanbases in the AFL
We analysed the most popular threads on Reddit from all 18 Australian Football League teams’ forums. Below is a table ranking each of them from most stressed to least.

The Brisbane Lions are the most stressed out fanbase in the AFL. Lions fans scored an average of -2.56 across their comments on Reddit and a whopping 85% of users contributed to negativity! Currently at 4th place on the ladder, fans are keen for the team to up their game.
Gold Coast Suns are not far behind, and are actually averaging at a even higher stress score of -2.58. However it’s the 16% of fans that are keeping it super positive on the forums – receiving the highest relaxation score of 2.37 – keeping them in second place.
Right at the bottom of the table is Richmond Football Club, with only 38% of the users on their Reddit forum being ranked at negative. They scored similar scores on each end of the spectrum, telling us their fans aren’t too wary about the team’s performance in the league.
The current top of the league Melbourne are sitting among the middle of the table, with just over half of their fans being stressed out.
Most Stressed Fanbases in the IPL
We also analysed forums from all 8 teams in the Indian Premier League.

At 40%, the Sunrisers are number one on our table! Although not too much higher than their competitors, fans have been expressing a stress score of -1.66. The team are currently at the bottom of the league, so there’s no surprise fans are psyched out. That being said, many of them are still holding onto hope, as their positive comments have also been calculated as the most relaxed of all teams at 1.31.
Following closely is the Delhi Capitals, who’s forum has been analysed as 38% of the comments being stressed. However, DC are at the top of the league, so fans have clearly been using the forum to share their excitement as well as their anxiety throughout the games.

The bottom of the table with a significantly lower score is Rajasthan Royals. 95% of comments in their forum were relaxed, and they also received the lowest stress score of -1 overall.
Methodology
We scraped Reddit forums for each team and ran them through TensiStrength to determine the strength of stress and relaxation. TensiStrength estimates the strength of stress and relaxation expressed in short texts – including informal language. It has a human-level accuracy which gives a fair judgement to small texts. The scoring reports 2 strengths; -1 (no stress) to -5 (very high stress) and 1 (no relaxation) to 5 (highly relaxed).
- About this Author
- Latest Posts

I enjoy writing about gambling, movies, tv shows, and funny stories. I am very interested in sports.