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ESPN’s Euro 2012 Broadcasts Drawing Strong Viewership

June 27, 2012 by

ESPN is continuing to draw strong viewership for its Euro 2012 soccer broadcast through last weekend’s quarterfinals, with the Italy versus England match last Sunday leading the way.

The quarterfinal rounds witnessed a slight increase in viewership overall, compared to the opening round, 1.4 million versus 1.3 million, while the top match on Sunday drew an average of 2.96 million viewers.

One of the interesting aspects of the viewership numbers is how well it is doing on week days. While the Italy/England match drawing double the viewership of the weekday matches, most people I know work at 2:30 pm, so quite a few are sneaking away to catch some of the action. I suspect that with the finals, played on a Sunday, will destroy the Italy/Germany numbers as more and more fans are tuning in to catch the matches.

Overall the first two rounds of the Euro 2012 championship, which was a total of 28 games, saw an average of 1.1 million viewers, up 63% from the same 28 matches four years ago, with the quarterfinals up 31% over the same period of time.

ESPN is also continuing to see strong viewership on its on-line and other broadcast properties. Online the quarterfinals saw ESPN’s two soccer properties, ESPNFC and ESPNsoccernet.com average 878,000 daily visitors and 3.1 million page views per day globally. Four years ago, when ESPN only had Soccernet its three online properties, including ESPNdesportes.com are up 24%, 13% and 132%. ESPN3 and WatchESPN had 2.1 million unique viewers, with computer usage to watch the games up 688% compared to four years ago.

Compared to ESPNsoccernet.com during the same time period for EURO 2008, the site is up 24 percent, 13 percent and 132 percent, respectively. In total, ESPNFC.com, ESPNsoccernet.com and ESPNdeportes.com generated 13.3 million total page views during the quarterfinals, up 14.6 percent compared to EURO 2008.
The Semifinals begin later today at 2:30 ET with Portugal vs. Spain and then tomorrow at the same time for the Germany vs. Italy match. The finals will begin at 2:30 on Sunday.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN Radio, ESPN3, Euro 2012, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Soccer Tagged With: , ,

Google Delivers 7-inch tablet, the Nexus 7; Google Q Streaming Media CE device

June 27, 2012 by

Google has delivered a host of new features for its Android operating system as well as a co-developed 7-inch tablet and its first consumer electronics device that is designed to unify and play the data that you might have stored in the cloud.

The tablet was developed along with partner Asus and is called the Nexus 7, a 7-inch tablet that will take on everything from products from rival’s Amazon’s Kindle , Barnes and Noble’s Nook, Microsoft’s Surface and Apple’s iPad to just name a few.

The $199 tablet features a Nvidia Tegra 3 quad core processor as well as a12 core Nvidia Tegra application processor that will run the just announced next generation Android operating system 4.1, code-named Jelly Bean and has a 1280 x 800 pixel display.

The Nexus 7 is designed to work with other Android devices so a user can start reading a book on their phone and pick up on where they were on the tablets. It supports interactive articles that enable a user to go from an article in a magazine to say a video showing an exercise being described in the article.

The Nexus 7 is built around using the company’s Google Play store as a center of usage and said that it is available now for preorder with shipment expected for mid-July. It will come with a $25 credit to spend in the Google Play store as well as free books, magazines and others.

The company also showed its Nexus Q, a black ball that is a social media streaming device that a user can control via another Android device and is designed to access data and media that is stored in the cloud.

Designed to be set up from your phone it is essentially jukebox and movie player, and as the ability to serve as a center that allows your friends to add songs or movies from their devices to the playlist, and anyone can take control and rearrange the playlist to suit their tastes. Same with movies and YouTube videos. It will run Android 4.0 and feature 16GB of internal storage and have both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities.

The company displayed its Google Glass project, much to surprise of the audience. The live Google Glass demo started by showing ski divers in a blimp over San Francisco equipped with glasses. They jumped from the blimp and the glasses enabled the audience at the Moscone Center, and online viewers, to follow the divers as they descended onto the roof of the building.

They also employed bikers doing flips on the roof top and then building climbers to drop down the side of the building, all wearing the glasses. It was a very impressive live demonstration and I suspect it will give users of cameras such as GoPro a moment of pause.

But the company does not envision the Glasses to be just for recording information and video for friends but also make it easier to access information via your glasses rather than taking out a smartphone, unlocked it and then do a search for the required information.

The Glasses in Project Glass feature and array of technology including a display, a camera, a processor and memory to store what is being recorded as well as a touch pad, microphone, small speaker, sensors including gyroscopes as well as multiple radios for data communications.

Project Glass is still a work in process and the company was asking for feedback to see what else the audience, which features many of its top developers, would also like to have in the devices. It announced the Google Glass Explorer addition for developers and admitted it was still a rough product. Hopefully some of this will make it to YouTube.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Asus, Barnes & Noble, Google, Kindle, Microsoft, Nook, Smartphone, Surface, Tablets, Wi-Fi, YouTube Tagged With: , ,

The NBA Draft is Tomorrow but ESPN Starts Tonight

June 27, 2012 by

The NBA draft is upon us once again and in some ways it has not achieved the overall hype level that the NFL has achieved, but it also often makes for a much better viewing spectacle as there is often a host of wildcards.

The official draft begins Thursday night at 7 pm ET and will be hosted, as it has for the last decade, by ESPN. A predraft show will be aired tonight at 7 pm ET for those of you that want to get an advanced look and see if you should despair or be elated over your following day prospects.

ESPN’ has said that it will have a specific focus for part of its broadcast that will be on the themes of determination and achievement and “climbing the ladder” to success. I think that this could be very interesting. It often seems to me that players that were stars in school and then disappear in the NBA, and NFL for that matter, are often the victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Getting stuck with a coach that does not use a players skill in his offense or defense, and yet when traded seem to bloom as their supporting cast improves, or their skills are used in a much better manner by the team.

The NBA’s 66th annual draft, held at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., will feature a horde of ESPN personnel and is hosted by Rece Davis along with and college basketball analyst Jay Bilas, NBA analyst Jeff Van Gundy, NBA Insider Chris Broussard, college basketball reporter Andy Katz and NBA reporter Ric Bucher.

It does not appear that the network is taking its arguers in chief Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith on the road for the event, something they did do for the NBA Finals. I was hoping to once again hear the chants of ‘cheese doodles’ ringing from the rafters.

However ESPN is pulling out all of the stops with live news feeds from 15 cities to get head coaches and general managers’ feedback on selections, with live reporting from New Orleans, where the league owned team has the #1 choice and a reporter in Charlotte where the #2 pick resides.

ESPN will also be providing coverage over a wide range of its other media properties including ESPN Radio, ESPN Mobile TV and streaming live via WatchESPN on ESPN3.com. You can also look for NBA on ESPN Facebook page for updates of you are so inclined.

Filed Under: Basketball, ESPN, ESPN Radio, ESPN3, NBA, NBA Draft, NFL Draft Tagged With: , , ,

PGA Tour to Part Ways with Turner, Manage its Own Digital Properties

June 26, 2012 by

We’ve seen this movie before, when the NFL started taking control of its own content and starting the NFL Network. Now golf’s big professional tour, the PGA Tour, has announced plans to completely take over production of its own digital properties, ending a relationship it had with Turner Sports since 2006.

It’s perhaps a small surprise that golf’s biggest operator should want more control, since by its own account digital consumption of content is growing fast with no top in sight. And Mobile Sports Report readers already know that the PGA is planning to expand its live video options in 2013, with full simulcasts of broadcast TV available to the mobile, digital audience.

Paul Johnson, PGA TOUR Senior Vice President of Strategic Development, Digital Media and Entertainment, put it simply in the PGA’s press release:

“With the speed in which the digital landscape is changing, we feel it is important to control all aspects of the business directly,” Johnson added. “This does not reflect upon Turner, which has done a wonderful job and has been a great partner; it is about our overall strategy regarding our fans, players, sponsors and other stakeholders, and our desire to control those elements directly out into the future.”

The PGA and Turner, in our view, have done a pretty impressive job innovating, with cool online apps like Shot Tracker, which is due for an upgrade as well in 2013, maybe even getting to mobile platforms.

The real question, as golf writer Geoff Shackelford asks, is whether or not digital coverage will be better or worse in 2013. Is it a rebuilding year, or will the talent in Ponte Vedra Beach perform like LeBron? We, along with lots of other digital golf enthusiasts, will be watching.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Golf, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, PGA, Turner Sports Tagged With: , , , ,

Lawsuit Seeks to Change MLB’s Blackout Policy

June 26, 2012 by

As a general rule I think that MLB does a great job connecting to fans in the digital age. It has contests, apps and a range of programs that make it easy to follow your team, and others, from your phone, computer and television.

The one area that it seems to be in the dark ages on is in its blackout policy, which seems to give teams huge latitude in what areas they can claim as their own and prevent the broadcasting of games there, using MLB.TV

We mentioned it briefly several months ago when a post from a poor fan in Hawaii noted that despite the presence of the Pacific Ocean, which most would believe hinder any sudden decision to drop in on a ball game, he was blacked out from watching games from nine different teams including ones as far away as Texas.

Now a group has filed a class action lawsuit claiming that MLB is in violation of the Sherman Act, according to a nice piece on the suit by Yahoo Sports Jeff Passan who notes that Bud Selig, MLB’s commissioner promised to fix the problem six years ago.

The issue is that baseball gains so much from the broadcast rights from regional sports networks and the networks want exclusive rights in exchange for the millions they hand over to the teams. However it does seem odd that it has allowed some networks to claim areas that are a time zone or more away, and that do not carry the networks broadcasting.

With its hard to predict what the result of this case will be, and with baseball’s antitrust exemption it would be hard to bet against them winning, but it would be nice if it actually did make some changes so that fans could see games that they want to.

Filed Under: Baseball, Lawsuit, Major League Baseball Tagged With:

GoPro Renews X Games Sponsorship — Lots of Fun in LA this Week

June 25, 2012 by

Is there any better fit than the X Games and GoPro’s cameras? In perhaps the smallest surprise ever the companies announced Monday that GoPro is once again sponsoring the Summer X Games, which start later this week in the city of lost angels. For a little taste of X Games life recorded via a GoPro camera check out the video above (I like the bit about “pass the GoPro,” handing off the camera in mid-trick).

UPDATE: Here’s the full ESPN broadcast schedule for X Games this week.

MSR has been on vacation but we’ll try to catch up later this week with the GoPro folks as well as giving you as much X Games info as we can. Consider this an appetizer for all the cool stuff yet to come.

Filed Under: GoPro Tagged With: , , ,
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