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Mobile Data Consumption Set to Explode- Will Sports Cash in?

May 16, 2012 by

A recent report is highlighting the massive growth that is expected in mobile data consumption as users of smartphones increasingly use their devices for watching video, playing games, interacting with a variety of social media and other uses.

According a report from Informa Telecoms & Media, by the year 2016 mobile users will consume eight times more social media than currently, downloading 14 times as many megabytes of applications and browsing will increase six fold.

The two driving factors will be the increased use of smartphones, which currently are roughly half the handsets sold and the increase in overall mobile users. Not listed in the report but most likely also a driving factor is faster networks.

This presents a major opportunity not only for sports teams and leagues but also for the growing ecosystem of app developers involved in this space, from office league sponsored developments such as MLB At Bat 12 to sports aggregation news readers such as Recapp. With smartphones increasing in storage capacity app developers can also make larger, fuller featured products to grab users attention.

Currently mobile users can get access to a growing number of live sporting events including a wide range of college football, Major League Baseball, National Football League, National Hockey League and Soccer matches are all available, however they are often limited to a single carrier of you need to subscribe to the correct cable network.

If sports continue this path it seems that they will be missing out on a larger opportunity. It is nice that Verizon has hockey, but I don’t have Verizon. If I want NFL and hockey do I need two phones? To really cash in the leagues will need to come up with something other than exclusive deals with a single carrier, otherwise they are intentionally missing a huge segment of the market.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, Informa Telecoms & Media, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, Market Research, NCAA Football, NFL, NHL, Smartphone, Social Media, Social Media Data, Sports Social Media, Sports Social Media Data Tagged With: ,

ExteNet Scores Another DAS Win, At the Brooklyn Nets’ new Barclays Center

May 16, 2012 by

Chalk up another impressive stadium-network win for middleman ExteNet Systems, which will install and maintain a DAS (Distributed Antenna System) network in the new Barclays Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA.

The Barclays Center, a 19,000-capacity stadium set to open in September, will host hundreds of events a year including home games for the old “New Jersey” Nets, who will move to the borough of Brooklyn for the next NBA season. Like it does at the new Marlins Stadium in Miami, ExteNet will act as the network service provider, connecting the small cellular DAS antennas to any wireless service provider who wants to improve its in-building coverage.

If you missed our previous post about ExteNet, here’s a quick primer on how it uses DAS to bring better service to fans, and better business to service providers and stadium owners:

If you’re not familar with how a DAS works, it’s essentialy a bunch of small cellular antennas that are mounted on ceilings and walls inside buildings, instead of on huge towers like traditional cellular antennas. A DAS network administrator provides normal cellular connectivity to users, and then connects those signals to the appropriate cellular vendor on the network’s back end. DAS deployments can also add Wi-Fi antennas to their infrastructure mix. ExteNet, like many DAS operators, can connect its back end to any number of cellular networks, meaning that fans don’t have to be a customer of a certain provider to get better in-stadium service.

The openness of ExteNet’s design may make it a better choice for stadium operators than an internal network designed and owned by a single carrier, since fans wouldn’t have to be customers of a specific carrier to get better service. ExteNet runs a network operations center 24/7 to provide support to all its networks, and signs a service level agreement (SLA) with both the stadium owner and its cellular partners to give both parties what they really want — happier customers.

No word yet from ExteNet on which carriers might be signing up to provide service to Nets fans. But it’s a big win for the relatively new player ExteNet, in a high profile installation.

Filed Under: DAS, NBA, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , ,

Texts, Twitter and Social Media Help CyclingNews.com Keep its Fans at the Front of the Pack

May 15, 2012 by

CyclingNews.com's Laura Weislo working hard at the Tour of California press room. Credit: James Raia.

Cycling fans are as passionate as any sport’s followers, and no one knows more about how following the sport has changed than Laura Weislo, the North America editor of CyclingNews.com.

Weislo is coordinating the site’s stage coverage of the Amgen Tour of California. The eight-day race, the largest in the United States, features 128 cyclists from 16 teams and riders who are Olympic medalists, Tour de France stage winners and world titlists.

In addition to daily in-depth articles on the race, CyclingNews.com, the world’s largest English language cycling site, is providing live text at least every five minutes from all of the eight stages. The seventh annual race, which began May 13 in Santa Rosa, will continue through its Los Angeles finish May 20.

The site also has a Facebook page with about 70,000 fans and an equally active Twitter following.

“Bike races now are completely different,” said Weislo, a former competitive swimmer and cyclist who joined the site in 2006. “We find that people are out there watching live streaming. They’re on Twitter on their computers. They’re looking at our live coverage. They are using that altogether and they’re having a conversation at the same time with all their followers or fans.”

At the Tour of California, CyclingNews.com has a reporter in the media caravan of the race and others who on the course reporting the news to editors who post the updates.

Weislo and other reporters and photographers contribute results, news and images shortly after each stage is complete and then additional details after conducting post-race interviews.

CyclingNews.com reports on the sport globally, but selects its live coverage depending upon an event’s anticipated popularity.

“When I started in 2006 we didn’t use social media,” said Weislo. “It was about a year or two in we realized we better get in on this Facebook thing. Now it’s really important to direct people to specific stories and other content, so they don’t have to check the web site all the time to see if there’s something new. We inform them, and it’s actually a pretty big driver of traffic to the website.”

CyclingNews.com live reports are not a new concept, but Weislo believes how cycling fans follow the sport has substantially changed in the past year.

“Everyone used to be sort of isolated,” Weislo explained. “There wasn’t really a way for people to converse about what was going. But now I have close to 3,000 Twitter followers. It makes it more interesting and I think it’s happened in the last year.

“I noticed last year that there was a little bit of that. But now we get people commenting about our live coverage. People get the information from us and then they correct each other on things that happen in the race. It does add to the conversation of what’s going on.”

Filed Under: Cycling, Facebook, Live sports via mobile, Tour de France, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

Online Video Features at the Heart of BBC’s Olympics Coverage

May 15, 2012 by

If they can live up to their promises, the folks at the BBC may be the heroes of this year’s Olympics in London, especially for the online audience. According to news released today the BBC plans to have live coverage of every event from every venue — and for its online content the BBC is promising some cool twists, like the ability to rewind to the start of an event as well as “chapter marks” to let you skip to whatever part of the coverage you desire.

I am not sure if and how the BBC will be sharing broadcast rights with NBC, which also plans to stream everything online. Either way, it sounds like this will finally be the year that we don’t have to miss that important archery semifinal or equestrian dressage. It will all be online.

The promise of 24 simultaneous live HD streams sounds great — but so far we have been unable to ascertain whether this will be available only in the U.K., or to audiences worldwide. We are hoping the latter, will pass along more info as we get confirmation. If it is for everyone, we can hardly wait until what will likely be the biggest online sports event ever gets underway.

Filed Under: Apps, BBC, NBC Sports, Olympics Tagged With: , ,

ESPN Gets its Social Media Game On: Twitter Deal, YouTube Channels and More

May 15, 2012 by

They’re called advertising upfronts but today’s announcements from ESPN show mainly that the worldwide leader in sports isn’t missing the bus when it comes to social media. Instead, it’s firmly behind the wheel and driving in the lead.

While there were many ground-breaking developments announced by ESPN today, the ones we think are really big news are the Twitter/ESPN branded ad campaigns, the new ESPN radio apps and some cool plans for the Bill Simmons/Grantland outlet that include a dedicated YouTube channel and a podcast channel. In all, what ESPN is basically saying is that it’s not going to be run over by social media like Twitter, as some astute observers predicted might happen. Instead, ESPN is using its content might to leverage social media’s appeal, marrying the best of what it has with the ongoing revolution of user-driven content consumption.

I’m not so sure how the branded ESPN/Twitter idea will pan out — it involves having fans send in their pictures to then be highlighted during an ESPN broadcast. Though I am sure we will all watch to see how silly people are willing to be, to me the power of Twitter is that it’s not directed or harnessed, but most amazing when it forms through happenstance and intuition. But acknowledging that Twitter is better at giving users an online identity than its own commenting system is a big leap for a big company like ESPN, and it shows that the network is ready and willing to embrace technology that it doesn’t necessarily control. Not an easy thing for a big company to do.

The new ESPN radio app may be the big sleeper announcement that intially gets overlooked and then becomes the thing everyone can’t live without. If the app’s announced ability to act as sort of a radio-broadcast DVR delivers as promised I could see a new wave of “sports radio” emerging where you don’t just tune in to what’s on the air but instead load your device with the latest SportsCenter and maybe a Simmons podcast for the drive to work. That’s a scary thought if you are a local radio talk show trying to compete against ESPN and its massive resources.

I also like the ideas spinning out of the Grantland property, which is interesting at times but is still (I think) trying to find its place and voice. Deeper content vehicles like YouTube, short films and podcasts may be where Grantland finally shines; the real question there may be whether Simmons has enough interest left to drive it toward new ground, instead of continually mining his old and successful but now somewhat tiresome models of mailbags, cousin Vinny episodes, etc. At the very least, ESPN’s doubling down shows it thinks Grantland has legs. Maybe social media will help it run faster.

Filed Under: Apps, ESPN, ESPN Radio, Sports Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

Active Networks Develops two more Tools to Pry You Outside

May 15, 2012 by

More people I know profess a love of hiking than actually do so, the same for camping and backpacking. Of course many are just very busy and not only is it hard to find the time but to also ensure that there is space when you get to a destination if the plans call for more than a day hike.

To help fill the need of busy people Active Network, already a player in this space has launched a pair of iPhone apps that connects users with a pair of outdoor recreational websites that will enable users to peruse, plan and then make reservations for a trip.

The first site is for ReserveAmerica, which probably not coincidentally is owned by Active Network. The web site that the app links to get real time listing on a variety of types of campsites including RV, day use, tent and cabin sites at state campgrounds.

The second app is really just a revamp of an existing one that the company did for the Recreation.Gov site. This one s targeted at campers looking at what is available at federal recreation facilities nationwide including at national parks.

While the two apps are targeted at slightly different types of facilities they share the same basic functionality. A user can see the potential camp sites as well as get a variety of details about the facilities. You can set search parameters to find sites that meet your needs that includes searching by zip code, city, state as well as amenities such as if pets are allowed.

Other features enable you to see the campgrounds on a map as well as get driving direction. They also serve the basic function of enabling you to make reservations, either online or via telephone.

While there are multiple obstacles in getting off the sofa and going out to enjoy the great outdoors, these apps, and ones like them help eliminate that issue and so if you can overcome inertia maybe you will finally get out and see Old Faithful.

Filed Under: Camping, Outdoor Activities Tagged With: ,
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