Archives for 2011

Verizon Adds Cellular Tower Power at Michigan Speedway

Portable cellular tower on light truck -- aka a "COLT." Credit: Verizon Wireless



As more and more fans bring their new high-powered cell phones to sporting events, wireless operators are being forced to scramble to support the new demand for bandwidth by adding portable cell towers or Wi-Fi infrastructure.

Making lemonade from the sour problem today was Verizon Wireless, which issued a press release trumpeting its attempts to provide more cellular bandwidth to the thousands of NASCAR fans who will visit Michigan International Speedway this summer, especially the big crowds expected at Sunday’s NASCAR race.

Verizon’s quick fix to handle the crowd (the speedway has 106,000 reserved grandstand seats) is something called a COLT, or Cell on Light Truck, a mobile cell antenna unit that Verizon says “will boost voice capacity by 200 percent and data capacity by 1,000 percent” in the greater speedway vicinity. Here’s the money quote from the press release:

“Ensuring our customers can count on their wireless devices for communication, news and more at major sporting events, like the races held at MIS is part of our ongoing commitment to network reliability,” said John Granby, president–Michigan/Indiana/Kentucky Region, Verizon Wireless. “We look at how our customers’ usage patterns are changing at events like these and we use this information to make sure we stay well ahead of their demand.”

What Verizon left unsaid was why it had to scramble to add portable cellular power in the first place — namely it’s the crush of new bandwidth demand precipitated by people bringing their iPhones and other superphones that Verizon and its competitors have been busy selling selling selling to large-gathering public venues like stadiums and malls. Like Verizon, expect all the other major carriers to follow suit the rest of the year by telling you how great it is that they are adding additional capacity to handle the crunch caused by selling all those phones that are overpowering their old networks.

Consumers slamming NBA mobile sports app downloads during playoffs

NBA Game Time app downloads up 250%

 There have been more than 680,000 downloads of the 2010-2011 National Basketball Association’s NBA Game Time free mobile application since the beginning of the playoffs, according to a report by Mashable.

The NBA Game Time surge marks another example of exponential growth in watching sports on iPads and smartphones when games really start to count. As reported, the NCAA’s March Madness on Demand (MMOD) application generated not only record downloads, but heavier than expected video downloads and longer user sessions then anticipated.

 

Turner Sports continues to lead in mobile sports production

In total, the NBA Game Time has exceeded 2.5 million downloads during its 82 regular-game season and playoffs, a 250 percent increase from the 2009-2010 campaign. NBA’s numbers were confirmed to Mashable by Turner Sports, which is in its third year managing digital properties for The Association.

The NBA's digital leader, Bryan Perez

Bryan Perez confirms NBA apps surging

NBA Digital senior vice president and general manager Bryan Perez told Mashable that NBA Basketball’s lightning-fast pace creates difficult production problems for a broadcaster, but the point has come where the games can be rendered quickly enough to provide consumers with a fulfilling experience.

 NBA Game Time is available for iPhone, BlackBerry and Android, as well as such connected device platforms as Apple TV, Google TV and Vizio Internet apps.

Sony brings PlayStation capabilities to Mobile Phones

So you are in the market for a new phone and with the ever growing variety you are having a tough time making a decision. Of course the first step is to narrow down what you are looking for in a phone-is it the underlying operating system, the form factor, perhaps you want a specific carrier or the flip side of that, are seeking to avoid a specific carrier.

For those looking for a strong gaming experience then PlayStation manufacturer Sony along with joint partner Ericsson might have just the product for you, the Xperia Play. The product is designed to appeal specifically to gamers seeking a solution that enables portable play that mirrors, more or less, their home console experience coupled with all of the features of a more traditional smartphone.

Powered by the Android operating system the Xperia Play design features a panel that slides out from under the keyboard. The panel contains a layout that is pretty familiar to gamers, with directional buttons on the left and the usual four PlayStation buttons that have the triangle on the right. An extended section in the middle features a pair of pressure sensitive plates that operate as the device’s two joysticks. The phone is capable of playing both PlayStation-specific games as well as more traditional games that cell phone users have become accustomed to playing.

It will ship with seven preloaded games, one of great interest to sports fans — EA Sports’ Madden NFL 11 — including one of the oldie but goodie PlayStation program, Crash Bandicoot. More titles are available at Verizon’s VCast store, but ones written specifically for the PlayStation settings are still very limited.

While the play is obviously for the serious gamer that might not want to carry multiple devices it is easy to see how this might appeal to a less hard core crowd. While some smartphone users are satisfied with a level of simplification for their gaming use, it is nice to have something that is a step up in degree of difficulty. However for sports fans looking for popular games, theer looks to be an iitial shortage in the near term if you want apps that are tailored to the devices advanced gfeatures, but expect that to change as developers get moving.

The Play is powered by a Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon II processor with an Adreno 205 graphics processor. It has a 4-inch multi-touch display as well as forward and reward facing cameras. The Sony Ericsson Play started hitting stores at the end of May and is available for $199.99 with a two year plan with Verizon Wireless as well as a smartphone data package.

AT&T Helps Stanford University Connect with Fans

Ever go to a sporting event where your phone indicates great reception but when you try to perform anything more complex than sending a text it seems as if there is no coverage? Let me rephrase that – Why is there never decent Internet access at sporting events?

The reason — major sporting events, as well as concerts and other large gatherings, now tend to overwhelm the cell sites located around the venues leading to frustrated fans wondering what their carrier is going to do about it. Now AT&T appears to be stepping to the plate with a solution.

The company has teamed with Stanford University Athletics in a 5-year deal that will bring a variety of AT&T wireless services to nine Stanford athletic venues, one of the first deals of its kind between the carrier and collegiate athletics. It is just the latest in Ma Bell’s recent effort to strike additional relationships with not only colleges but also professional sports franchises and venues, including deals already announced at places like its namesake AT&T Park in San Francisco and at Dallas Stadium.
The Stanford program comes out of AT&T’s Advanced Mobility Solutions Group and is part of the company’s drive to capitalize on the massive amount of usage and data that now flow from major sporting events, via text messages, photo uploads and other communications. The deal is designed mainly to increase the performance of smartphones and other advanced devices by allowing them to connect to the faster Wi-Fi links instead of competing for the limited cellular bandidth.

At its most basic it seems that the company realizes that fans and users are increasingly frustrated with the poor level of service that is available at most venues. With expanded Wi-Fi access fans should be able to perform many functions that are taken for granted elsewhere but often are impossible at stadiums, including checking scores, accessing video and watching instant replay as well as posting to YouTube, Facebook and other social media.

For AT&T users there is the bonus of being able to automatically use AT&T’s Wi-Fi, without the bother of going through any sort of setup or log-in through an auto-authentication process. Wi-Fi will be available to non-AT&T users as well. AT&T has also promised a suite of customized mobile apps including Live In-Stadium instant replay, interactive games and stadium guide, team information and news including real-time game and player stats and video. The Wi-Fi and other features will now be available for football games at Stanford Stadium, basketball and other indoor sports at Maples Pavilion, at the Avery Aquatics Center and other venues on campus.

Hopefully AT&T will aggressively pursue this effort as fans are increasingly seeking an interactive experience, one that they can share with friends and sadly this is increasingly impossible to do as networks are overwhelmed by user demands. I expect that rival carriers will quickly adopt a similar approach and seek their own stadium and school deals to help their customers and ward off AT&T’s efforts to expand its presence.

‘Way harder, intense look’ at Mobile Sports Production Underway at Turner Sports, exec says


Picture of mobile sports broadcast visionary Michael AdamsonThere’s a large enough audience for mobile sports to spark Turner Sports to take a “way harder, more intense” look at mobile sports production, according to a recently posted Beet.TV video.

According to Michael Adamson, VP of Sports New Products, Turner Sports, the proof is the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament, which saw a 17 percent increase in online sports video consumption and a 63 percent increase in total viewership for March Madness on Demand (MMOD).

More mobile sports viewers “than we thought”

“For the first time, we saw a significant enough portion of our audience consume live games on mobile (to cause Turner) to take a way harder, more intense look at mobile video production,” said Adamson in the Beet.TV video. “It really pushed our numbers higher on mobile than we thought was going to happen this year.”

The “take” numbers across all of Turner Sports, CBS Sports and NCAA online, online streaming and mobile application rates are now large enough to warrant exploration into broadcasts tailored to mobile sports consumers, said Adamson.

“Most of our video streaming experiences that we’ve done for sports have been simulcasts or experiments with alternate-angle live streams,” said Adamson. “Now, we’re starting to think more about how to make sure we sync mobile video with broadcast, or how we sync syncing mobile video with mobile data. How do we make mobile video available as both companion (viewing) and primary (viewing) experience, and tie advertising in?”

Adamson’s comments are good news for the mobile sports consumer. In addition to March Madness, Turner Sports broadcasts NBA on TNT, Major League Baseball on TBS, NASCAR on TNT and PGA Championship and PGA Grand Slam golf.

iPad for sports extraordinary

Adamson said Turner Sports was wowed by the iPad viewership of March Madness, as well as the behavior patterns of mobile sports consumers watching hoops on the device.

“People were using the iPad more like a TV than a mobile device,” he said. “I don’t know that we would have expected that but we definitely saw it.”

Before March Madness, Turner Sports saw the iPad much more as a companion device for people watching sports on television, Adamson said. iPad viewers told Turner Sports through their behavior that iPad is ready for more intense mobile sports programming that embeds video inside a data-rich environment, he added. Watch for broadcasters to begin using iPad applications as a way to show people the games they want to see alongside a rich set of social media and location-based applications in the future, said Adamson.

Adamson made his comments to Beet.TV at paidContent Mobile 2011, held May 18, 2011 in New York.

UFC Escapes Octagon with Bold Twitter Strategies

UFC is a big hit with Twitter

UFC's social media strategies could give the sport a leg up in a mobile sports viewing universe

Credit Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) for breaking new ground in mobile sports broadcasting. The professional mixed martial arts circuit was a disappointment to pay-per-view audiences of the main card fights during its UFC 130 Championship event held Saturday, but innovative use of Twitter for two preliminary fights broadcast live on Spike TV and the remainder of the preliminary fights broadcasts exclusively on Facebook underscored its willingness to leverage social media to competitive advantage.

The online success of UFC came just days before June 1 launch of an innovative plan to compensate atheletes for developing fans via the social media power of Twitter.

The UFC 130 main events, which showed Quinton “Rampage” Jackson versus Matt Hamill and poorly conditioned Roy Nelson defeating an utterly inconsequential Frank Mir, were a huge disappointment to the 12,816 fans who put up $2.57 million to watch the event live at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. It was two exciting preliminary bouts, replete with Twitter feeds and broadcast on Spike TV, that compensated for the two main event duds.

Spike TV carried a best tweets features on its television broadcast. In arguably the best fight of the night, which pitted Miguel Torres against Demetrious Johnson, live tweets from supporters of both fighters updated regularly above the action.

UFC 130, held May 28, came just three days before the UFC will begin rewarding fighters for developing the largest number of followers on Twitter.

Beginning June 1, UFC will award fighters $5,000 apiece for showing the largest percentage increases in followers, as well as additional $5,000 prizes for fighters judged the most creative in their tweets during the upcoming year. Across all UFC weight classes, a total of $240,000 will be given out.

The promotion is believed to be the first time a major professional sports organization has offered incentive to athletes for social media. By contrast, the National Basketball Association and the National Football League have fined players for Twitter activity.

With over 1 million Twitter followers, UFC’s president, Dana White (@danawhite), is a force in 140-character communication and one of the first commissioner-level sports executives to regularly send @reply responses to fans who post on his account. To build your own Ultimate Fighting Championship Twitter Follow list  is a right of passage for most first-time attendees of a UFC event, and a highly recommended activity by Mobile Sports Report — your No. 1 resource for outstanding sports viewing experiences.

UFC was not the only recent indication that Twitter is primed to take a larger position in the average experience of sports fans during the era of mobile sports viewing. According to Twitter’s @twitterglobalpr, there were 6,277 event-related tweets per second when Barcelona’s David Villa scored over the outstretched arm of Manchester United goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar to cement Barcelona’s UEFA Champions League finals victory on May 28 at London’s Wembley Stadium. That’s believed to be record volume for social-media responses to a live sports event.