Turner Sports’ digital approach to March Madness a winner

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While most people I know have already seen their NCAA brackets crushed, one player is clearly winning at the tournament and that is Turner Sports and its online game-viewing policy.

According to Turner the men’s 2014 NCAA tournament has set an all-time record for online video consumption with a total of 51 million video streams accessed through the first full week of the tournament, a number that is 40% greater than what it achieved a year ago at the same point in the event.

To put the number in greater perspective, last year for the entire tournament there were a grand total of 49 million video streams accessed for the event. These numbers represent users accessing the videos from desktops or laptops as well as smartphones and tablets. Mobile (tablets and smartphones) platforms experienced the highest segment growth this year, with live streams for mobile device users up 74% over the first week of the tournament in 2013, according to Turner.

It is interesting to note that the videos were watched for 10.5 million hours, a number that witnessed only an increase by a mere 6%, showing that fans liked the ability to cherry pick the events that they watched and came in droves for them.

According to Turner Sports the top games featured some of the exciting upsets that have been a major factor in this tournament.

§ Dayton vs. Ohio State – 4,626,000 viewers
§ Mercer vs. Duke – 4,218,000
§ Harvard vs. Cincinnati – 2,767,000
§ Kentucky vs. Wichita State – 1,987,000
§ Stanford vs. New Mexico – 1,451,000

Not surprisingly the broadcast side of the business also had a record setting first week. The four networks that carried the games, TBS, truTV, CBS and TNT reported that they had the best first week in the 23 years that they have been carrying the tournament. It is averaging 9,277,000, up 4% from last year.

Friday Grab Bag: Where is the MLS TV deal?

For those of you who managed to miss it the Major League Soccer season started recently and its broadcast contract, which many had expected to be finalized sometime last winter, is still unfinished business.

Awful Announcing does a good job pointing out the issues, which have to do with how each side perceives itself. An interesting note showing the increasing popularity of the sport is that the average MLS attendance is greater than the NBA or NHL’s.

Android flaws could make upgrades a danger
System updates are a fact of life for most mobile phone users and a recent report from researchers at the System Security Lab at Indiana University and Microsoft have found a vulnerability that could enable hackers to take over Android systems.

It is not a real threat as they did a proof of concept test only but the threat would be in the form of an app that waits for a system update and then takes gains access for privileges that it had not had previously. Interestingly it only works if you have a fairly old version of Android running.

FIFA Exec paid millions for votes
If you ever wondered how sun-baked Qatar managed to win approval to host the World Cup during its summer this story might help explain it: FIFA executive Jack Warner appears to have made millions off of the deal.

According to a piece in the Telegraph a Quatari company paid Warner millions after the country won the vote. The Big Lead has a list of his apparent transgressions over the past few years that shows a long history of shady dealings.

NBA pondering new TV deal
MLS is not the only sport that is taking its time in finalizing its next broadcast deal as the NBA is also taking a leisurely approach on its current round of negotiations. However the NBA is in a much stronger position.

According to the Sports Business Daily there are a number of interesting options being considered at this time including adding an additional broadcasting partner, bringing its digital rights in-house and moving NBA on TNT off of Thursday night. It looks like big changes are in the works.

Drones can read Wi-Fi messages?

A report in the International Business Times is saying that you should turn off your smartphone’s Wi-Fi because drones that are flying overhead can monitor the conversation, using a pretty simple trick that I think many of us would fall for.

A drone overhead could present itself as a free Wi-Fi network, something that phones are constantly looking for. Then if a user connects it can intercept traffic. Boy would they be bored with reading my stuff.

Love baseball and need a date? MLB has you covered!
Major League Baseball has joined forces with online dating site Match.com to create club-focused singles pages, because apparently there was a need for this. I am not kidding it seems that some rabid fans, say Yankee fans, whose first question is to ask “Who hates the Red Sox?” [editor’s note: insert joke for “getting to first base” here.]

It will be interesting to see how this works; maybe MLB could do the same for the Dungeons and Dragons crowd, or even a dating site set up for stats nerds, which is almost the same as the D&D group.

Turner, March Madness app ready for NCAA tournament

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March Madness, one of the sports world’s iconic events is on the horizon and no doubt fans are already plotting out strategies to get out of the office or school to watch their favorite team attempt to advance in its bracket. However thanks to Turner Sports there is an alternative.

It has released NCAA March Madness Live, an app that will provide portable access to all of the games in the tournament, with a total of 150 hours available during the event. Even better the app will now be supported by three platforms, Apple’s iOS, Android and for the first time Microsoft as well. Now fans can use a smartphone or tablet as a second screen if at a bar or as a primary device if at work.

To use the app a fan and watch all of the matchups that will be broadcast on TNT, TBS, and truTV a fan needs to log in with their TV service provider information. Games will also be available online at various sites, including This year, NCAA March Madness Live will launch from more platforms than ever before including the NCAA March Madness page, CBS Sports, and Bleacher Report. There is no registration required for games on CBS. The app will also provide a temporary preview period giving fans access to live game streaming before login is required.

The app, Developed in partnership with the NCAA, Turner Sports and CBS Sports is a follow up to previous years’ offerings but it has made several major enhancements to the app since last year, aside from the Microsoft support.

Of importance to the fans of bracketology and seeing if they are winning in their office pool the app has a new interface that has been designed for work with the smaller screens that smartphones feature as well with the slightly larger screens on tablets. It allows users to go directly from this feature to a live game and includes broadcast times and schedules. It also has additional view modes for brackets.

The heart of the app might be the GameCenter, one of the features that has been redesigned. It is the central [point to find which games are currently live streaming as well as pre-game matchup analysis, live in-game stats, key social moments and fan chat.

To complement the enhanced features in the bracket area there is the almost obligatory bracket for fans, this one entitled Capitol One NCAA March Madness Bracket Challenge. The app developers have enhanced its social media functionality as well as supporting computers as well as smartphones and tablets. It allows for the formation of groups, sharing brackets and chat via Facebook.

There is also a general chat forum called the Coke Zero NCAA March Madness Social Arena that enables fans t converse about games and other events as well as follow game tweets, post and view Instagram photos and Vine videos. Fans can participate in the social commentary by using the hashtag #marchmadness.

Understanding that some fans might want to set up schedules to just see specific matchups the app now includes a TV Schedule that helps with planning. This feature can be accessed from various other features such as game schedule or bracket and provides the round, date, time and network for each game. Also new this year is a Tournament News feature that provides news and updates as well as highlights, recaps and additional information each day.

Following the broadcasting of all of the just concluded Winter Olympic events online by NBC hopefully this is the wave of the future. While MLB enables fans to watch a huge number of games either online or on their television via a subscription model the NBA and NFL trail well behind it.

Broadcast and digital video combine for huge NBA All-Star weekend

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Starting tonight there will be four days and nights filled with a variety of activities related to the NBA All-Star game that will be played on Monday night including features and broadcasts on live television, NBA.com and NBA Mobile.

While the actual game and some of the key events will only be available via broadcast television there are a number of features that will be available for the digital viewer as well as specials that will be made available on the NBA’s NBA TV channel. This will total an estimated 140 hours of all star coverage.

Social Media
Featured on the NBA.com home page, fans can follow tweets from NBA players and insiders, share user-generated video, check which topics and content are trending in real time and get behind-the-scenes video from players and celebrities.

Fans will be able to vote for both the BBVA Rising Stars Challenge MVP and Kia NBA All-Star MVP via online, mobile web, SMS text messaging, Twitter and via the NBA Game Time app. I wonder how many will vote like they are in Chicago?

The NBA Mobile app is being used as primarily a schedule and event tracker. There will be highlights from different events as well as some live coverage but no real streaming events to mobile users. All of the content that would fit nicely for a mobile user has mostly been designated for NBA TV. Still it provides users with the All-Star Dashboard that is basically a one stop site for that is happening with live press events, live video and social feeds.

It is more valuable if you are attending because the Events Section also includes including event information, ticket links, venue maps, directions, video, live scoring and social feeds from all of the individual events.

NBA TV
The league appears dedicated to highlighting its own channel and has a top lineup for NBA TV including a big block of original programming on Monday that will be highlighted by an interview with LeBron James, another with Oscar Robertson and an All-Star edition of Open Court: The Dunk In Depth and Defined.

However the festivities start tonight on the channel with a Slam Dunk-A-Thon that will show all of the Slam Dunk contests including the first held, during the days of the ABA in 1976. Among the events that will be broadcast on Friday there will be highlights and an inside look at the league’s rising stars. There will also be coverage of the media day as well as exclusive coverage of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Announcement.

The weekend sees a great deal more broadcasting on NBA TV and you can go here for the full schedule but some of the interesting items are the 2013 NBA D-League All-Star game and the new NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s press conference. There will also be pre- and post game coverage on Sunday.

Turner Sports to provide viewer options during Final Four broadcasts

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The NCAA’s Final Four is one of the most watched sporting events of the year, and for that matter talked about as fans and non fans start early by entering pools of all sorts to predict the winner of the month long tournament..

As the teams get eliminated and it charges down to the finals fans become polarized as to who they want to win based on teams’ reputations, pool results and a host of other issues. Now fans can watch broadcasts that are designed for each team in the Final Four thanks to Turner Sports, the network that will be broadcasting the games.

Sports Business Daily is reporting that the two will take an innovative approach to broadcasting the games at next years’ tournament. There will be the traditional national broadcast that will be seen on TBS. TNT and truTV will then carry the exact same game but with a twist.

Each channel will have a team-centric approach with announcers and camera angles designed to highlight one team. The differentiation does not stop there as the halftime shows will also be different, although pregame and post games shows will be the same.

The Final Four next year will be seen only on cable for the first time and the networks are hoping that they can avoid the tradition viewership drop when a formerly over the air broadcast moves to cable with this move. The championship game will be broadcast on CBS and so will obviously not have dual perspectives.

Viewers flock to on-air and digital PGA Championship broadcasts

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The Turner Sports decision to present an aggressive online presence for the PGA Championship as well as strong over the air coverage resulted in strong results as the event sees big growth in viewership in both areas.

The over the air broadcast of the 2013 PGA Championship from the Oak Hill Country Club East Course in Pittsford, N.Y., shown on TNT received the network’s highest rating for the event in 3 years with an average of 1.6 million viewers, up 54% from last year. It had an average of 1.2 U.S. house hold rating, a 50% increase from last year.

Probably as no surprise most of the top regions in terms of viewership are also hot golfing destinations and all rated much higher than the national average. They were markets for all four rounds of coverage on TNT were Las Vegas (2.7), West Palm Beach (2.6), Columbus (2.4), Greenville, S.C. (2.4) and Orlando (2.3).

While the broadcast numbers were strong, the digital numbers were even stronger, showing that there is a large market that wants to experience sporting events but often cannot get away to view them on television.

The PGA.Com umbrella that handles both mobile and broadband streaming delivery was up 69% during the Championship and live streaming hours across platforms are up 85% compared with 2012.

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