Archives for 2011

MSR Online Guide: San Francisco 49ers

September 24, 2011 by Paul Kapustka

OK kids, this is a real “beta” work in progress — but here is our first stab at a comprehensive online guide to all the pertinent links we could find for fans of the San Francisco 49ers, just in time for Sunday’s game at Cincinnati. Readers are encouraged to critique, compliment and add to this list — use the comments field below to tell us of other outlets, more Twitter handles and where Niner fans go to drown sorrows or celebrate victories before, during and after games.

OFFICIAL 49ERS TEAM SITE

CANDLESTICK PARK INFO

TWITTER HANDLES

LIVE TWEETS FROM THE GAME
Matt Maiocco (Comcast SportsNet)

NINERS PLAYERS
Vernon Davis
Patrick Willis
Dashon Goldson
Colin Kaepernick

LOCAL NEWSPAPERS THAT FOLLOW THE NINERS:
San Francisco Chronicle
San Jose Mercury News
San Francisco Examiner

LOCAL TV/RADIO/CABLE OUTLETS THAT FOLLOW THE NINERS:
Comcast SportsNet Bay Area
KNBR Radio
The Game 95.7 FM Radio
KRON Channel 4/Gary Radnich
NBC Bay Area
KTVU Channel 2
KGO TV (ABC affiliate)

BLOGGERS AND FAN GROUPS
SB Nation
Niners Nation
49ers Paradise
The Red Zone (49ers Forums)
49ers Web Zone

LOCAL SPORTS BARS
The American Bull
7 Mile House
Knuckles Sports Bar (at the airport Hyatt)

(information compiled by MSR intern Brian Nitenson)

“Moneyball” to hit sports social media sweet spot, MSR says

September 23, 2011 by Paul Kapustka

Moneyball first sports movie to leverage SocialGuideMovies

“Moneyball,” the Brad Pitt movie about Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, is primed to be one of Hollywood’s first sports social-media grandslams.

Box office predictions include Rope of Silicon at $21.84 million, while TotalNerd puts the opening at $22.4 million. MobileSportsReport believes the Hollywood pundits have underestimated the power of the growing sports social media community. We think “Moneyball” will easily clear the $23 million marker this weekend, on its way to becoming one of the 2011 movie season’s hits.

Why will “Moneyball” exceed expectations?

What Hollywood doesn’t seem to know about “Moneyball” is that it is tailor-made for the mobile sports viewing phenomenon that is occurring across the United States. According to Juniper Research, mobile sports content and services could reach $3.8 billion in 2011. “Moneyball” plays right into the sweet spot of this emerging market of hard-core sports fans, who most often had to get a smartphone or tablet device to manage their fantasy teams, and now use it to get a 360-degree of the game through Twitter and, increasingly, as their primary screen for watching sports live. This audience is chock full of influential Twitter power users and the easily influenced. Those are the people who are going to push the “Moneyball” box office past expectations.

MobileSportsReport says:

If “Moneyball” is as good as people say it is, the mobile sports community will play a significant role in driving people who might not otherwise go to the movies. And, if that happens, things could get a lot more box office boff for the Hollywood suits who greenlit this pic.”

For their part, the producers of “Moneyball” are getting busy to get the mobile sports community involved, engaged and motivated. Consider some of the things “Moneyball” has done so far on Twitter, since the movie’s opening:

Posted the hashmarks of every former Oakland A’s player who is active on Twitter and mentioned on the movie
Retweeted positive press from the NYTimes, Roger Ebert and RottenTomatoes, among others
Promised to repost photos of moviegoers who wear Oakland A’s gear to “Moneyball.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized

How to get customized ESPN radio feeds on your smart phone, iPad

September 22, 2011 by Paul Kapustka

Until now, mobile sports fans who wanted to listen to such popular ESPN programming as “Mike and Mike in the Morning,” The Herd with Colin Cowherd” and “The Scott Van Pelt Show” couldn’t cache the programs on smartphone memory cards. Listening to ESPN radio required a network connection and drew down battery life. A solution to that problem has arrived, for a fee.

This week, ESPN went into partnership with San Diego-based Slacker Inc. to provide ESPN on Slacker Radio, including premium services priced at $3.99 and $9.99 per month which allow people to store radio programming locally.

If you don’t want to pay to listen to what you want, when you want, Slacker is also delivering a near-instantenous free feed of content from The Death Star (ESPN)

Slacker is the first digital radio distribution service to feature ESPN Radio, and the agreement turns up the heat on such competitors as Last.fm and Pandora to angle for similar deals with ESPN. The deal signals that ESPN is unafraid to be aggressive in flowing digital rights to its content for mobile distribution, which is considered key to the growth of the mobile sports viewing experience. According to Juniper Research, mobile sports content and services like the Slacker/ESPN offering could reach $3.8 billion in 2011.

Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA and AT&T subscribers can bill premium services directly to their accounts via Android and Blackberry smartphone applications, which are already available. A similar iOS application for iPhone and iPad is pending Apple’s approval.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, AT&T, Baseball, BlackBerry, ESPN, iPad, iPhone, Major League Baseball, NBA, NFL, NHL, Slacker, T-Mobile, Uncategorized, Verizon Wireless, WatchESPN, Wimbledon

Colorado State Hoops Goes Big on Twitter

September 22, 2011 by Paul Kapustka

There might not be a media outlet more confused about Twitter than ESPN — after watching an NFL Gameday “feature” from this past weekend on the league’s use of Twitter that could have been filmed a couple years ago (it lightly touched on the Chad Ochocinco non-controversies and then quoted NFL PR exec Greg Aiello as saying Twitter is fun), you then can’t find the feature archived anywhere on the network’s site. But you also can’t avoid Twitter on other programs and shows, like the new NFL32 show where live Tweets are run crawler-style under the video, and athlete Tweets are repurposed nearly every minute.

The good news is, it seems like ESPN’s younger reporters and bloggers are completely dialed in to the microblogging service, and quickly spot good uses of it, like the hilariously cheesy videos being cranked out by the Colorado State University basketball team like the one embedded above.

As a CU grad it chafes a bit to think that some Rams from Fort Fun are doing a better job of having fun with social media than my beloved Buffaloes, but let’s see if Colorado can catch up. More importantly, let’s see if Tad Boyle and the Buff hoopsters can win some games. Then they can worry about the in-state YouTube/Twitter competition.

Filed Under: ESPN, NCAA Hoops, Twitter, YouTube

SeatGeek Insider Offers Mobile Sports Fans $50 for Best Idea

September 21, 2011 by Paul Kapustka

Chad Burgess, SeatGeek's corporate blogger

Chad Burgess: SeatGeek insider goes to sports social-media community to win contest

SeatGeek, which helps fans forecast the best prices for sporting events, is running an internal Hackathon contest, and Sept. 21 one of the company insiders asked sports fans to step up and provide ideas to help him win. A $50 Amazon gift card will be provided if you help deliver a winning idea, and the idea could be implemented before kick-off of week No. 3 NFL games on Sept. 25, SeatGeek said.

Writing on SeatGeek‘s corporate blog, company insider Chad Burgess is asking sport fans to send ideas on Twitter @SeatGeek. He promises that any original idea that helps him win the corporate prize — a free iPad — will get the $50 Amazon gift card, and says that he’s acting completely outside the bounds of the company to use the blog to get ideas from the public.

“I am going Rogue on this one (aka dark for Jack Bauer fans). The contest is sponsored by me, not SeatGeek,” Burgess writes.

SeatGeek collects and filters data to allow fans to predict the prices of tickets. It is considered by MobileSportsReport.com to be one of the top sports-industry start-ups. Even if you don’t have any ideas for innovation, SeatGeek is worth a visit as you optimize your smartphone, iPad or tablet sports viewing experience.

MobileSportsReport would like SeatGeek to provide a “fan interference” prediction function, where they calculate the number of fan interference incidences at ballparks, stadiums and arenas and provide fans with the likelihood that they will see a similar incident at the game they are about to attend. But that’s just us.

You probably have a better idea, and can twitter them to @SeatGeek through Friday September 23. So, if you figure out what you would like to see SeatGeek, consider letting it fly like an Andrew Luck out pattern to Chris Owusu. Not only will Burgess get an iPad, but you’ll be $50 closer to the fifty-yard line. Burgess posted the rules and additional details on the SeatGeek corporate blog.

Filed Under: Contests, iPad, SeatGeek

Verizon’s NFL Mobile Twitter Chats: Lame and Tame (and so am I)

September 21, 2011 by Paul Kapustka

Twitter might be a cool and fun way for NFL fans to get in touch with their favorite teams and players, but the ad hoc “Twitter chats” sponsored by Verizon Wireless leave a lot to be desired, mainly due to the poor manners of the Twittersphere.

On Tuesday night Verizon Wireless and its NFL Mobile application sponsored a chat with Washington Redskins linebacker Brian Orakpo, otherwise known as @rak98 on Twitter. The half-hour long chat, which fans could find by either following Orakpo directly or by using the hashtag #NFLMobile, was almost instantly filled with spam Tweets, typically ones of a sexual nature with links to some godforsaken unknown location… which we didn’t click on.

Of the Tweets that did get through to Orakpo, the ones he chose to answer were pretty harmless — ones about “how frustrating is it when people hold you” or “what kind of victory dance will you do when you score a touchdown.” There were a couple that hinted at Orakpo’s personality — turns out his sports heroes include Michael Strahan and Hakeem Olajuwon — but since Orakpo forgot to include the #NFLMobile hashtag on several posts it was hard to follow the “chat” thread, especially with all the spam in between.

And though I tried hard, I couldn’t get Orakpo to answer a couple tweet questions I sent in — apparently they were either too controversial (I asked him if the ‘Skins were solidly behind QB Rex Grossman, someone who us Chicago Bears fans have few fond memories of) or too wordy — I also asked what Orakpo thought of the new tackling rules, a question I later realized couldn’t really be answered in 140 characters or less. So maybe I am as lame as the chat. So we’ll both learn going forward.

But it sure is a challenge to wade through the spam tweets. Not sure if the spam is standard fare for these chats, but with all its dough can’t Verizon get together with Twitter and find a way to keep the crap out of the chat? Otherwise these things are going to die a quick death and that would be unfortunate. Especially if it happens before I get one of my Tweets answered.

Filed Under: NFL, Twitter, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: NFL Mobile, Twiiter