Just in time for the Super Bowl. Who should you hang out with to watch the game and bond over beer and wings? Facebook data, Tableau style.

The Facebook Data Science team does some pretty awesome analysis of friend relationships!  On Monday they published an article on fan relationships between NFL teams.  It’s very interesting content.  I was working on the last visualization in the post with their team but we didn’t get it done before they had to publish their post.

So with their permission, I’m publishing my version of NFL fan relationships. Here’s their explanation for how to read it:

Even the most die-hard fans among us have some friends who root against us. While it turns out that most friendships between NFL fans on Facebook are between fans of the same team,  we wondered, what about the rest of the friendships? Which rival teams' fans are most likely to hang out on Sunday to bond over beer and wings despite their conflicting allegiances?

The following viz shows the fan-friendships for each team in the league, excluding friendships between users who like the same team.  Highlight a team by choosing it from the list on the upper-right.  Filter by Division.

If you have a large monitor, check out this version.

There are a couple of interesting findings.  Dallas and Pittsburgh are nearly always in the top 3, while Jacksonville, Houston and Buffalo aren’t very popular.  Perhaps this helps explains why certain teams are on TV more than others, or perhaps they’re more popular because they’re on TV.

Where does your favorite team rank?