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Stadium Tech Report: Read why we think MLB is the sports digital experience leader

June 30, 2014 by

STRQ@_thumbIs there any doubt that when it comes to the digital fan experience, Major League Baseball is in first place? That’s the way we see things, and research we did for our second quarterly long-form STADIUM TECH REPORT issue bears that opinion out. Thanks to a far-sighted strategy that kept league control over all Internet content, and some innovative, forward-thinking technology leaders at several MLB teams, baseball is ahead of all other U.S. sports when it comes to delivering a consistent, enriched fan experience through technology. But will the lead last?

You can find some of the answers to that question in the second issue in our STADIUM TECH REPORT series which you can download for free right here. If you’ve already registered with us, all you need is a username and password; if you’re new to MSR, we just need an email address and title and you’re on your way to the best long-form compilation of research and analysis, as well as in-depth interviews with industry experts in the stadium technology marketplace. We’d also like to thank our Stadium Tech Report sponsors, which for this issue inlcude Crown Castle, SOLiD, Corning, ExteNet Systems and TE Connectivity — without their support, we couldn’t make all this excellent content free for readers.

AT&T senior executive vice president John Donovan

AT&T senior executive vice president John Donovan

MLB tech profiles, interview with AT&T’s John Donovan

What’s in our issue #2 of STR? Glad you asked! Inside the report our editorial coverage includes:

— MLB stadium tech research: This editorial research provides a technology update on stadiums used by all 30 MLB teams, gauging the level of deployment of Wi-Fi, DAS and beaconing technologies.

— MLB tech deployment profiles: These mini-case studies will take an in-depth look at technology deployments at MLB facilities including AT&T Park in San Francisco, Target Field in Minneapolis, and Miami’s Marlins Park. This issue also includes an in-depth interview with AT&T senior executive vice president John Donovan, the man behind AT&T’s successful DAS deployment strategy.

— MSR exclusive stadium tech analysis: The report also includes MLB stadium tech analysis from MSR editor in chief Paul Kapustka, as well as a bonus mini-case study of DAS deployment at historic Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby.

White box at bottom is one of the under-the-seat Wi-Fi access points at AT&T Park.

White box at bottom is one of the under-the-seat Wi-Fi access points at AT&T Park.

MLB stadiums: Wi-Fi and DAS deployment is strong

Since last year, 8 more MLB teams have added fan-facing Wi-Fi to their ballparks, bringing the league total to a respectable 67 percent, with 20 out of 30 stadiums with Wi-Fi. On the distributed antenna system (DAS) front things are even better, with 25 out of 30 parks having enhanced cellular connectivity thanks to a DAS (our report currently erroneously shows that the Washington Nationals don’t have a DAS — we learned late this weekend that they do, so DAS is doing even better than we thought). Though the adoption rate is lower than that found in the NBA (where 26 of 29 stadiums have fan-facing Wi-Fi), baseball as a league does a much better visible job of promoting the service, which is more impressive when you consider that deploying Wi-Fi in an open-air arena is a considerably tougher task than in a building with a ceiling, like an NBA stadium.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that the National League West Division leads the pack in MLB connectivity, with all 5 teams having both Wi-Fi and DAS deployments in their park. The adoption rate in that division may have something to do with other teams following what is perhaps the overall connected-stadium leader in any sport, AT&T Park in San Francisco. The first with Wi-Fi (since 2004), AT&T Park continues to lead in innovation and experimentation, as witnessed by their embrace of new tricks like under-the-seat Wi-Fi APs and the new iBeacon technology, which is being tested in 20 MLB parks this season.

All of this is explained in greater detail in our STADIUM TECH REPORT for Q2 2014 — so download your free copy today!

Filed Under: About MSR, All Star Game, AT&T, Baseball, DAS, Los ANgeles Angeles of Anaheim, Major League Baseball, Minnesota Twins, MSR Guides, San Francisco Giants, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

ESPN’s streaming World Cup: Record audiences, embarrassing crashes

June 27, 2014 by

Just like the U.S. Men’s soccer team, ESPN had it both good and bad during Wednesday’s World Cup game against Germany. On the plus side, ESPN recorded record audiences for its online broadcasts, easily topping any other sporting event ever, including Super Bowls.

But the bad was about as bad as the U.S. team’s somewhat lackluster shutout. By several accounts, including our personal viewing, ESPN’s live stream of the game crashed several times, and was (according to complaints on Twitter) simply unavailable for many viewers. While it’s an inexact science to track down how and why the problems may have been caused, there seems to be enough circumstantial evidence pointing to some pretty massive infrastructure failures from the worldwide leader. According to the Variety story, Univision’s live stream had no such problems, even though its size was smaller.

The line I love from the Variety story penned by our good pal Todd Spangler is the ESPN rep quoting “unprecedented demand” as a reason for the crashes. It would be one thing if something unexpected happened — like, say, the lights went out — and all of a sudden there was a huge audience that tuned in. But ESPN had to know the online viewership was going to be massive days ahead of time, given the start time in the middle of most of the U.S. business working hours. Plus, ESPN itself has spent the entire World Cup blasting emails about every 10 minutes or so, telling everyone it knows to tune in to games online. So: Huge demand? Yes. Unprecendented? Maybe. Unknown that it was coming? Unexplainable.

Maybe we’re holding ESPN to an unreal expectation here, but I’m trying to think how bad the fallout would be if Fox, or NBC, say, dropped the TV broadcast of a big event for even a few minutes. Media outlets around the world would be howling. It seems like online broadcasts are still getting a pass from observers, as if online doesn’t really count. But according to ESPN’s own numbers, online does count and the audiences are huge — 3.2 million uniques for the game — so why can’t big broadcasters put in an appropriate amount of resources to make sure the show goes on smoothly? Is it just that nobody really knows yet how much capacity it takes to keep a big event running? In that case, are advertisers and/or the sports who sell the online rights asking for refunds or make-goods?

As always we give a hats off to ESPN or any other broadcaster who tries to make as much content as possible available online. We just hope that going forward, those same broadcasters recognize that online is a significant, serious market, and that you underestimate your needs at your own peril.

Filed Under: Apps, ESPN, FIFA, Soccer, WatchESPN Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Stadium for next U.S. World Cup game will have Ruckus-powered Wi-Fi available

June 26, 2014 by

Talk about luck of the draw: Fans of the U.S. men’s soccer team who are on hand for the squad’s next game on Tuesday, July 1, should be able to use a Ruckus Wireless-powered Wi-Fi network at the 51,900-seat Arena Fonte Nova in Salvador, Brazil.

As MSR reported last year, Ruckus Wireless won contracts to supply the Wi-Fi gear for at least two of the stadiums being used in the World Cup tournament. One of those was Arena Fonte Nova, which will now host the USA-Belgium tilt in the elimination round. And with U.S. fans leading the way in on-scene participation in the World Cup, it’s a good bet that the Arena Fonte Nova network will get a workout on Wi-Fi since it’s probably a good guess that cellular roaming fees might be prohibitive. (We say this having no idea what the roaming charges might be for U.S. carriers in Brazil; but if the Wi-Fi is free, we can say without a doubt that’s the cheaper option.)

According to Ruckus the Wi-Fi network at the arena (which is also called the Estadio Octavio Mangabeira) will have about 150 access points, which to us sounds a bit low for full stadium coverage for a 51,000-seat arena, but again, we’ve not seen any stats for a Ruckus solution in real-world situations so maybe it’s enough.

With more news about players biting players and Brazilians protesting the World Cup, it’s not surprising that we haven’t heard much in the way of news about performance or non-performance of wireless networks at the numerous stadiums. Unlike an Olympics or a Super Bowl, where you are in one place for a long time, the World Cup seems to be more about sporadic visits to different stadiums, and a lot of travel, and probably a lot more time spent just enjoying the scene rather than worrying about tweeting it or posting to Facebook. And since there is no reliable news source for overall network operations for the World Cup, we don’t have any statistics or performance metrics to report. But so far so good, eh? If anyone knows of any specific problems or reports of poor performance send them our way. And if anyone is in Salvador next week, take a Speedtest of the Wi-Fi and send it along.

Filed Under: Soccer, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

StadiumPark touts ‘EZ Pass for stadiums’ parking app idea

June 24, 2014 by

Screen shot of a potential StadiumPark app. Credit: StadiumPark.

Screen shot of a potential StadiumPark app. Credit: StadiumPark.

At first blush, it’s an idea so simple you wonder why it hasn’t been thought of before: Why not build a system that mimics highway EZ Pass functionality to make parking at sports events easier?

That’s the simple but powerful idea behind StadiumPark, a Rochester, N.Y. startup that has developed an app that will let fans pay for parking with their phones, in the hopes of curing one of the main pain points of live game interactions with a faster, easier experience that can benefit teams and stadium owners as well. Though StadiumPark doesn’t yet have any announced customers, it’s a good bet that before long some stadium owners and operators will take a chance on the idea, which is designed to also automatically open parking-lot gates, further reducing human overhead.

In a recent phone conversation with StadiumPark’s 26-year-old founder, Jeremy Crane, we learned the skill sets behind StadiumPark’s insights: According to Crane, part of his work background includes time spent with a large parking-lot company in Rochester that handled concerns like apartment buildings and some stadium lots. An interest in learning more about mobile parking payment systems opened Crane’s eyes to the idea of parking-payment methods other than people in vests taking cash payments through a car window.

A request from Syracuse University, Crane said, to develop an “EZ Pass type app” for parking at the school’s Carrier Dome spurred him into entrepreneurial action, and StadiumPark was born. The combination of an app (which requires users to pre-register with a credit card) and the wireless technology smarts to open parking-lot gates is the main selling point for StadiumPark, which Crane said is in discussions with several potential clients.

If the system works as advertised, it could potentially cut down on the amount of time fans spend in parking-lot lines, one of the banes of live-game attendance. For stadium owners and operators, there is an extra possible incentive of having greater control over parking payments, as well as potentially having more data on fan attendance beyond ticket sales.

“For the venue, the idea is to enable a better experience,” said Crane. “We see a clear advantage to both the stadium and the fans.”

StadiumPark’s business plan is to charge users a small convenience fee, while not charging stadiums or venues. For the system to work well it must clearly have buy-in and promotion from the arena owners and operators, to steer traffic to the StadiumPark-enabled lots. But if the quick rise in mobile parking payments for other places — like airports or shopping areas — is any indicator, a simple app that lets you park quickly and conveniently is one of the uses of technology that could probably gain rapid adoption from fans who just want to get to their seats.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , , ,

AT&T: Hoops fans use more data than hockey fans

June 17, 2014 by

In a somewhat-not-surprising statistical revelation, AT&T said that basketball fans used more wireless data on its network than hockey fans at the respective arenas during both leagues’ recent championship series.

Using measurements of only AT&T customer traffic from the AT&T digital antenna system (DAS) deployments in arenas in Miami, San Antonio, Los Angeles and New York, AT&T said that hoops fans at the NBA Finals had both higher average data consumption rates and peak data rates than their NHL-watching counterparts. And when it came to home-fan data use, Miami’s American Airlines Arena hit the highest mark, with an average of 177 gigabytes of data used at the two games played in South Beach.

Though the San Antonio Spurs won the NBA title, fans at AT&T Center in Texas used an average of 138 GB of data. Miami’s arena also generated the highest peak data total of 223 GB of data. Of course maybe most of that was Miami fans using OpenTable to make early dinner reservations as the Spurs started blowing the Heat off the court.

On the frozen side of things, Los Angeles won both the real title and the data title, with fans in the Staples Center using an average of 98 GB of data during the three games there during the Stanley Cup Final. The average data usage in New York at Madison Square Garden was 83 GB of data on the AT&T network.

In defense of hockey fans, it’s really no surprise that they used less data since hockey games, especially playoff games, are mostly action and excitement, and not a million time outs. Plus, we all know that had the Chicago Blackhawks been rightfully in the Final to defend their title from last year, Da Hawks fans would have pushed everyone to shame with video renditions of the Chelsea Dagger. Next year.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Basketball, DAS, NBA, NHL, Stanley Cup Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

NBC sets streaming records for Stanley Cup final

June 16, 2014 by

Call us biased, but we bet that the numbers would have been even better had the Chicago Blackhawks been in the Stanley Cup final instead of the Los Angeles Kings. Still, according to NBC, this year’s Stanley Cup Final recorded record online streaming numbers “for virtually every metric,” according to a press release out today.

Here are the figures from NBC: “Live streaming for the five-game 2014 Stanley Cup Final on NBC Sports Live Extra delivered 603,000 uniques and 37.14 million minutes, up 38% and 22%, respectively, vs. last year and made 2014 the most-consumed Stanley Cup Final ever.”

For the entire NHL playoffs, NBC said it had 1.52 million uniques and 201.50 million minutes watched, “the best-ever for an NHL post-season” and an increase of 180% in uniques and 183% in minutes as compared to last year.

One question we have for cable and broadcast execs: Do the authentication measures really help with cable subscriptions? Or are they just a kind of feel-good thing to make cable providers feel like people aren’t getting “free” content? I’d love to see some proof or stats that say the authentication measures are valuable — as opposed to the good will and free marketing you could reap by just making stuff free online. Because really, nothing is “free” online — if you want to watch sports online you still need broadband, which isn’t really free anywhere.

Off the soapbox now. And hoping that next year when the Blackhawks return to their rightful perch atop the league, the online numbers will double this year’s.

Filed Under: NBC Sports, NHL, Stanley Cup Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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