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Rugby’s HSBC Sevens World Series Ends this Weekend

May 9, 2012 by

If you are a fan of rugby, and are looking for something to watch this weekend, then you owe it to yourself by tuning into the HSBC Sevens World Series 2011/2012 with the final matches being held in London, England this weekend.

The length of this series makes the NBA and NHL playoffs appear to be short by comparison. Counting this weekend’s games there will have been nine rounds that started last year with the first matches being played November 25-26th. So far New Zealand is in the lead with three series wins and a total of 150 points followed by Fiji at 139 and then England at 123. The United States is tied with Kenya at 11.

I would have watched more of the games but aside from catching a rerun on this week I had no idea that this event was even taking place. I did notice that it does have roughly 88, 000 likes on Facebook but really that is a drop in the bucket compared to other sports. Apparently the second day will be broadcast live in the United States on NBC.

While I do not quite understand all of the rules, even though they have been explained to me more than once, I have to say that I have always enjoyed watching the sport. A while back I was in France when its national team beat New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup and the town I was in celebrated all night. The person in the bar I was in chatted with me all night, apparently failing to notice that I had no idea what he was saying.

I do not want to call this a bad example of marketing yourself because it could be that I just have not been on the right sites or watched the correct program to see when the matches were being held. Still it seems to me that on a sport such as this, which has a large international following but a small, yet avid US following, a bit of marketing might be in order.

Part of the issue could also be just the way that I find out what is on the television at night. I often just look in the local paper, although I am breaking that habit. The problem is that the local paper does not always list all of the games that will be on- mine often misses Cubs baseball on WGN, football on the NFL Network and baseball on MLB’s network.

Hopefully events like this, and non US mainstream sports such as cycling and sailing will get more media savvy and learn how to get their message, and news about their events, out to the viewing public.

Filed Under: HSBC Sevens World Series, Live Sports Video Consumption, NBC Sports, Rugby Tagged With:

Elemental Technologies lands $13m in Series C funding

May 9, 2012 by

Elemental Technologies, a young company that is focusing on creating video solutions for multiscreen content delivery has closed its third round of funding after landing $13 million in a Series C round of funding.

The round was led by Northwest Venture Partners (NVP) and was joined by three additional partners; General Catalyst, Voyager Capital and Steamboat Ventures, all of whom are previous investors in the company.

This brings to $27.6 million to the company, which was founded in 2006, has managed to raise in the past few years. It closed its Series B round in July, 2010 after raising $7.5 million and $7.1 million in its first round in July, 2008.

In that time it has signed more than a 100 customers including number of top tier players including ESPN, Comcast and HBO, been named to Forbes Magazine’s Most Promising Companies in America list and more.

One of the most interesting is the deal it landed last month that calls for it to be part of the backbone to the systems that will be broadcasting the upcoming London Olympics to viewers in Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada and a dozen countries in Latin America.

Filed Under: Comcast, Elemental Technologies, ESPN, General Catalyst, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Northwest Venture Partners, Startup, Steamboat Ventures, Venture Capital, Voyager Capital Tagged With: , ,

Crowdfunding Investments Estimated to Reach $3 Billion in 2012

May 8, 2012 by

I believe that I was like a great many others who when they heard the term ‘crowdfunding’ kind of pretended that I understood what it meant and then merrily went on my way without really giving it a second thought.

Then earlier this year I started running into a number of interesting products that were starting to get funding in that manner, starting with the Pebble watch. I find the whole trend very interesting and I think it’s a great boon to small developers who have great ideas but no expertise or experience in fund raising. It’s especially interesting to sports-related projects, since many of the developers of apps or devices are fans or enthusiastic athletes at heart and not necessarily business-minded as say, an investment banker or a Silicon Valley entrpreneur.

Now Venture Beat talks about how big this trend has become and estimates and where it is going and it is much bigger than I would have suspected. According to the piece which quotes a report from market research firm Massolution the industry raised $1.5 billion last year.

The research paper, called the Crowdfunding Industry Report also predicted that there was 1 million crowdfunding efforts over the course of last year and that $837 million came from North America. It breaks down the efforts into four basic categories: equity-based, donation-based, lending-based, and reward-based.

According to the report the market is expected to double this year. I know of at least two people considering heading this way for seed fund for their future developments and I am really fascinated by how this is all working out. You are also seeing a growing number of companies or sites seeking to be the home of a crowdfunding effort. There is Kickstarter, Crowdfunder, AppStori, and others are out there already.

Filed Under: Apps, AppStori, Crowdfunder, Kickstarter, Startup Tagged With: , ,

Bloomberg Sports adds Fantasy Alarm to ‘Front Office 2012’

May 8, 2012 by

Have you missed out on making an important trade or swapping out an injured player simply because in your busy day you missed looking to see how your team/league was doing at a critical time?

Well if so, and you are a user of Bloomberg Sports fantasy baseball app “Front Office 2012” then these issues will be a thing of the past. The company has integrated the Fantasy Alarm feature into the program and it is free to all subscribers.

You do have to sign up for the feature which will alert you via either e-mail or text. The program tailors its messages based on your roster so that you are not bombarded with messages that are not relevant to your team.

There are a variety of types of messages including alerting you when a player is not in the starting lineup, with a 60-90 minute lead prior to the game. Other information includes when a team changes closers, who is on or off the DL or riding the pine now in the minors.

It covers game time decisions about player availability but also forecasts 24 hours out on probably starting pitcher match-ups as well. Fantasy Alarm estimated that it will send out 25 million messages this year to fans. As an added bonus players who sign up for the Fantasy Alarms alerts will be entered into an All-Star Getaway Sweepstakes for the 2012 MLB All-Star Game in Kansas City.

This seems like a can’t miss item for fans of fantasy baseball. I know a number of people that have missed out on points because a player was sitting out a game or was injured and they missed it for any of a number of reasons. Now you can eliminate that element of chance on your team. Of course still no solution for closers that give up 3 run homers in the ninth.

Filed Under: Apps, Baseball, Bloomberg Sports, Fantasy Sports, Major League Baseball Tagged With: ,

Comcast Subscribers Finally Get WatchESPN Access

May 8, 2012 by

Screen shot of ESPNWatch TV ad with the cowboy in the horse trough -- note the disclaimer text.

If you are a paying Comcast cable subscriber, the day of sports freedom has finally arrived — you are now part of the lucky group that is able to use the WatchESPN app to get sports content wherever you want it, on basically any mobile device.

While this does mean that approximately 40 million more Comcast customers can now watch games and other ESPN programming in the horse trough should they so desire, it still isn’t quite the Internet freedom you get from watching events that are served up live to anyone with an Internet connection, like say The Masters or the Super Bowl. But it’s hard to argue with the fact that content must be paid for in one form or another; and since the cable providers pay ESPN a hefty fee to have the channel available for their regular services, it makes sense that ESPN would require the cable-subscription validation in order to consume that same content on other platforms.

Still, I would like to see ESPN offer some kind of separate, Internet-only subscription fee and I expect that someday we may see such a serving. But not anytime soon, because it makes no sense for ESPN to bite the hand that feeds it so well. For now.

Filed Under: Apps, Comcast, ESPN, WatchESPN Tagged With: , , ,

Is Round 1 of Oracle vs. Google a Tie?

May 8, 2012 by

Well the jury has weighed in on part one of the Oracle vs Google battle and it looks like Oracle is in the lead but there is still a great deal of confusion over what the verdict, and the jury’s inability to reach a conclusion on one count, will mean in the long run.

At first glance Oracle wins because the jury said that Google relied on Oracle’s Java technology to build the Android operating system that powers smartphones and tablets around the world. This looks like a big win for Oracle because that is what they have been claiming all along. The jury found that the Android operating system infringed on nine lines of Java coding.

The second issue, which has yet to be determined, is if the use of the technology is a violation of what is permissible under ‘fair use’ protection in U.S. law, which permits some use of copyrighted material to appear in other, third party works without compensation.

On this the jury was deadlocked and did not reach a decision, and unfortunately for Oracle this is the money question. If the jury had found in Oracle’s favor the company was expected to ask for $1 billion in damages, and possibly much more.

The judge in the case said that there is “zero finding of copyright liability” without a fair-use verdict. The jury will later decide on damages in this part of the case.

Well the first round is over and they are leaping into the second part of the case where the same jury will hear if Google’s Android violates two Java patents. It has been reported that the damages for this portion are expect to be significantly less than what was expected in the first part.

Filed Under: Android, Google, Lawsuit, Oracle Tagged With: , ,
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