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‘Big Four’ wireless carriers sign on to use DAS at Niners’ Levi’s Stadium

January 7, 2014 by

Levi's StadiumWhenever you are putting a neutral DAS in a stadium, one of the biggest challenges is convincing the major cellular carriers to participate in your deployment. Even before their new arena has opened, the San Francisco 49ers have scored a victory of sorts with the news that the four biggest U.S. cellular carriers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile — have all agreed to use the neutral-hosted DAS at Levi’s Stadium.

According to DAS Group Professionals, who are behind the DAS deployment at Levi’s, the system of small cellular antennas will also be synchronized with the stadium’s Wi-Fi coverage to produce “seamless” coverage for fans. Though we are historically wary of promises made before networks go live, the fact that the big players in U.S. cellular all agreed to use the neutral DAS shows at least in some way that the folks putting together the technology at Levi’s have a convincing story.

We’ll have more from DGP and the Levi’s DAS deployment at some point in the future, so stay tuned for the stadium launch that has everyone in the stadium tech marketplace watching and waiting.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, NFL, Sprint, T-Mobile, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

ESPN the BCS winner with Megacast broadcast experiment

January 6, 2014 by

Side by side ESPN Megacast screens during BCS

Side by side ESPN Megacast screens during BCS

My favorite moment from Monday’s stupendously good BCS championship game came during a break at the start of the fourth quarter, when FSU quarterback Jameis Winston told his offensive teammates, one by one, that “you want it more” than Auburn. If you were watching the game on TV on the main ESPN feed, you missed this extremely cool exchange. But I saw it, and heard it, courtesy of the ESPN Megacast experiment.

My guess is that the Megacast experiment — in which ESPN used multiple broadcast channels to air different views and commentators on the game — was probably only experienced by a small amount of hard-core fans with digital chops. (And purported sports-site editors who call Jameis Winston “Wilson” in Twitter-speed error.) But I think it’s the wave of the future for big-event broadcasts, since it addresses the too-common problem of boring or annoying announcers and one single view of the action.

The bit where Winston was talking to his teammates came courtesy of the “Spidercam” channel, which simply showed fans what the robot camera that hovers above the field was seeing. What was unadvertised was the fact that that camera also has a microphone — in addition to the Wilson pep talk the spidercam caught coaching conversations on the sidelines during breaks, and also gave you a real in-the-arena feel of crowd noise. My new favorite digital sports moment came when I realized I could open more than one Megacast window and had the main feed running next to the spidercam feed on my desktop Mac. Nirvana. I felt like I was in the broadcast truck, deciding exactly how much info the audience of one — me — wanted to see.

Screen shot 2014-01-06 at 8.45.47 PMSome of the people I follow on Twitter really liked the channel that provided a panel of coaches watching and commenting on formations and things like that, a kind of chalk talk in real time. I wasn’t that thrilled with it because the coaches were all “aware” and tried to act too scholarly. A roundtable discussion channel had participants with a bit more life, but the “Fan Cam” channel was a fail, especially the FSU fan who looked like Zach Galifianakis — dude, you wore a red vest and texted for all of us to see?

Some other parts were hit and miss as well — the Goal Line channel had the excellent radio feed audio with Mike Tirico, and an instant replay after every play, which was great. But it also had two cameras that remained focused on the coaches, something I never need to see again in my lifetime. There was also a Spanish language feed and the home team radio feeds for each team, which I didn’t spend a lot of time on. Still, the breadth of choices was for me the amazing part and I hope it gets copied often and improved on.

I mean — imagine the possibilities! ESPN blew it by not having Jason Dufner and Charles Barkley, two Auburn alums who are hilarious, on some kind of screen or feed. Dufner’s Twitter feed during the game was 10 times more entertaining than the Fan Cam, and he was spot on in calling out the refs for missing multiple holding infractions on FSU. I also nominate the SB Nation crew to do a live commentary on their hilarious Brent Bingo if Musberger comes back for one more year on the title game crew.

You’ve also got to think that beer companies will get in on this act soon, showing R-rated commentary from sports humorists from some sponsor tent on site. The beauty of having multiple audio or complementary video feeds online is the cost of producing them has got to be a fraction of the cost that is already sunk for the main TV production. ESPN could pull this off for TV since it has multiple channels in ESPN2, ESPNU and the like. But any broadcaster could do this more easily by putting all the extras online only.

There were some apparent production glitches — viewing online, the different channels weren’t in sync, so if you tried my two-window experiment you quickly noticed that the spidercam was a few seconds ahead of Brent and Herbie. And the spidercam window could use a floating info-window that tells you down and distance, since it’s not always apparent from the behind-the-play angle the camera usually takes. Keep the live microphone, though! Moments like the one of Winston in the huddle are a priceless view into the games we care deeply about. And that, in my mind, makes the Megacast a win in its first time out. Well played, ESPN. Now everybody else, please copy it.

Filed Under: Awful Announcing, BCS, ESPN, ESPN3, NCAA Football, WatchESPN Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

ESPN holding nothing back for tonight’s BCS broadcast

January 6, 2014 by

bcs

An era ends tonight in college football with the last of the current format championships about to be played between Florida State and Auburn. Next season will usher in a playoff format that is a major change from the current poll-based system.

The current system was introduced in 1998 and now it is gone, but when you look at the freight train of equipment and army of personnel that ESPN is bringing to the event, it will likely live on for quite a long time in the form of multiple digital recordings.

The sports channel is broadcasting the 2014 Vizio BCS National Championship game tonight with the biggest broadcast team in its history and has termed it the “BCS Megacast” with it being presented across six of its television platforms as well as its audio and digital outlets.

You can pretty much take your choice of platforms- ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPN Radio, ESPN3, ESPN Classic, ESPN Deportes, ESPN Goal Line and ESPN International. There will be pregame talkshows, interviews, analysis, celebrities and much more available prior to the kickoff at 8:30 ET.

Social and digital media will be strongly represented in the mix with the personalities posting thoughts and comments prior to kickoff as well during the game.

For those that are not able to watch at home or in a comfortable sporting establishment the presentations that were broadcast on the ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3 and ESPNEWS will be available to a range of alternative platforms via WatchESPN including online at WatchESPN.com, on smartphones and tablets, through ESPN on Xbox LIVE to Gold members, on Apple TV and Roku to fans who receive their video subscription from an affiliated provider.

So how many people and trucks will this take? According to USA Today Sports and ESPN it will be 16 trucks, 63 cameras, 73 microphones a four-engine generator and as many as 200 employees, only a few who you will see online.

Hopefully this will make for a great broadcast, but much of that will depend on the teams. A stinker of a game will lead to fans tuning out as happened a few years ago when Alabama crushed LSU 21-0. The blowout was obvious early and fans tuned out in droves even though ESPN had added some interesting bells and whistles to its broadcast. At that time the future was 3D and ESPN had a 3D broadcast of the game as well as a more traditional broadcast.

However I am looking forward to the game and hopefully in all of the broadcasts comes something that will last to enhance future broadcasts.

Filed Under: ABC, Android, Apple, Apps, BCS, ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN Radio, ESPN3, iPad, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Football, WatchESPN Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

New Year’s Prediction: No wireless data record at 2014 Super Bowl

December 31, 2013 by

Even though the steady march of smartphone and tablet use at sporting events seems to show no sign of decreasing anytime soon, I am going to go out on a small limb here on the last day of 2013 and predict that we will NOT see a new record for mobile data use at the upcoming Super Bowl XLVII.

Why? Because it’s outside, in New Jersey, and it will very likely be cold or snowy — so the lucky fans who get to freeze their behinds off will most likely keep their fingers inside their gloves or mittens, and not expose them to the elements just to text, post photos or view handheld video. Well, some if not many people probably will, since MetLife Stadium has (reportedly) one of the better Wi-Fi installations in the NFL. And maybe there will be a power outage, which is always good for more wireless use. But still — it’s not such a stretch to think that fewer people will be using their phones at MetLife than at the Superdome from last year, right?

Or will new records be set anyway, since probably more fans will have more devices and more people now know that they can get a decent signal inside a stadium? If you are reading this blog you are probably among the select crowd who cares about such statistics, so stay tuned and we will provide you with updates since we usually get them from the cell providers and stadium operators the week after the big game. For now, happy new year to all and here’s to a great 2014 in stadium technology and mobile sports.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, NFL, Super Bowl, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

ESPN sets mobile consumption records; why do you think we started Mobile Sports Report?

December 26, 2013 by

According to this stunning press release from ESPN the Worldwide Leader in sports is now also the worldwide mobile leader, with sports fans consuming 4.1 billion minutes of ESPN content in November on smartphones and tablets.

Read that again: 4.1 BILLION minutes of content consumed in November, on smartphones and tablets. With mobile usage accounting for 54 percent of all ESPN digital traffic — and with 28.6 million fans only hitting ESPN through mobile devices — you are now getting stats to back up the reason why we started this here Mobile Sports Report site. Sports is not just going mobile, it’s already there. And it’s not coming back.

Neither, apparently, is ESPN. We’ll just let ESPN brag with the money quote from its release, vis-a-vis its digital platform competition:

“ESPN Digital Media accounted for 35% of all sports category usage across computers, smartphones and tablets in November, more than the Nos. 2, 3 and 4 sports properties combined (Yahoo! Sports-NBC Sports Network, NFL Internet Group, and Bleacher Report-Turner Sports Network), according to comScore Multi-Platform data.”

For stats freaks there’s a lot more to dig into here — like, the fact that ESPN is claiming 26.5 million Twitter followers of all ESPN Twitter handles, but only 2.6 million interacted (liked, shared, etc.) with either the ESPN or SportsCenter Facebook pages. Does that mean Twitter is killing Facebook in sports?

I also like this factoid: “ESPN videos were viewed 39.2 million times on YouTube, up 66% from a year ago.” I guess ESPN isn’t too worried about losing viewers to YouTube. Instead it got another 39.2 million ad views. Cha-ching!

Bottom line: People still want to watch sports on TV, but when they’re away from the TV they still want sports. And more often than not — already — they’re using a tablet or smartphone to get that sports content, not a laptop or a desktop computer. Make sure you understand that fact: ESPN’s mobile site usage is ALREADY bigger than desktop traffic. Mobile sports, people. Mobile sports.

Filed Under: ESPN Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Stadium Tech Report: Boingo, AT&T answer call for more DAS bandwidth at Chicago’s Soldier Field

December 26, 2013 by

Soldier FieldWhether or not the Chicago Bears will beat the Green Bay Packers this Sunday is a question still answerable only by higher deities. But if those powers that be decide to unleash weather conditions of biblical proportions again, at the very least the Soldier Field folks can be confident that their in-stadium network will stand up to the challenge.

Earlier this year, tornado weather hit Soldier Field and caused an unusual 2-hour delay during the Nov. 17 Bears-Ravens game. While the deluge was too dangerous for football, for Doug Lodder and Luca Serra, it was a big test to see if the stadium wireless network upgrades they’d recently helped install could stand up to a huge, unexpected traffic surge.

“We thought we’d probably see some good [network] usage with the weather delay and tornados,” said Lodder, vice president of business development at Boingo Wireless, which recently concluded a big network upgrade at the home of the NFL’s Chicago Bears.

“We saw double the usual traffic from both AT&T and Verizon customers during the 2-hour delay,” said Serra, director of sponsorship and media for SMG, the outside entity that manages Soldier Field for its owners, the Chicago Park District. “During that break, we didn’t hear a single complaint [about the wireless network] from the media or the fans. It was a great test — not a desired one in any way, shape or form, but a great test.”

Upgrades needed at ‘oldest’ big stadium Wi-Fi network

Luca Serra, SMG

Luca Serra, SMG

Even though you can’t really plan or design for surges that might happen during extreme situations, Serra and Lodder and others running the Soldier Field network knew last year that an overall upgrade was needed. Home of one of the earliest (if not the first) big-stadium DAS and Wi-Fi networks, Soldier Field was showing 80 percent year-over-year traffic growth on the Wi-Fi network, Lodder said in a recent joint phone interview with Serra.

Along with DAS partner AT&T, SMG and Boingo spent last year adding more DAS capacity so that Solider Field now has 250 DAS antennas to go along an undisclosed number of new Wi-Fi APs. Though AT&T did some specific upgrades to its DAS presence at Soldier Field (including adding support for its new 4G LTE network), all the major wireless carriers are represented in the DAS via the neutral hosting of Boingo.

Why did the firms decide Soldier Field needed an upgrade? While Lodder said its DAS, which first started operating in 2011, was “pretty cutting edge at the time,” during the past couple years, data usage at Soldier Field has skyrocketed.

“Everyone has a device, and there’s a lot more social engagement and sharing,” Lodder said. “We’ve seen a huge increase in data use.”

“With this large increase in use, we said ‘let’s address the issue’ and not let it get to a point where it’s a problem,” Serra said.

Moving fast and finding space

DAS gear at Soldier Field. Credit: Boingo Wireless

DAS gear at Soldier Field. Credit: SMG/Soldier Field

Both Serra’s and Lodder’s teams were familiar with the need to balance performance and aesthetics at the venerable stadium perched on the edge of Lake Michigan. Since the network was put in after Soldier Field’s extensive renovation was finished in 2003, special attention needed to be paid to placements of Wi-Fi and DAS antennas.

“It wasn’t just bolting APs on,” Serra said. “We had to be very protective of the aesthetics of the building.”

For Lodder, that sometimes means that the best placement isn’t always available.

“There’s always challenges with architecture at stadiums,” Lodder said. “In a perfect world, there might be a certain place you want to put an antenna. In the real world, you can almost always count on changing that 20 percent of the time.”

Doug Lodder, Boingo

Doug Lodder, Boingo

A bigger construction concern of late is where to put the extensive amount of back-end telco gear needed to support the DAS infrastructure and upgrades. “Carrier base stations need several thousand square feet of space, and those need to be rooms with connectivity and power,” Lodder said. At Solider Field, Serra said some unfinished space north of the stadium proper was converted into a DAS equipment room, since there wasn’t enough available space in the main building. Lodder said for the recent upgrade, additional power upgrades were installed as well.

Still, even with all the challenges the Boingo, AT&T and SMG teams were able to go from design to finished construction of the recent upgrade in 45 days this past summer, in part thanks to some interesting work schedules.

“After one preseason [football] game we had scaffolding going up at night, with three 24-hour shifts,” Lodder said. “It was a pretty accelerated build.”

There is no such thing as free Wi-Fi

One other interesting twist to the Boingo Wi-Fi network at Soldier Field is its cost — the company charges a $1.99 per day fee for Wi-Fi use, or you can purchase a regular Boingo monthly plan for $7.95 which will also provide access at Soldier Field.

Wi-Fi antennas hidden under stands at Soldier Field. Credit: SMG/Soldier Field

Wi-Fi antennas hidden under stands at Soldier Field. Credit: SMG/Soldier Field

While many if not most professional teams are making Wi-Fi services free to paying ticketholders, Serra and Lodder said that the Bears aren’t.

“The Bears are a tenant of the Park District, and no one [from the team] has ever said ‘we’re going to pay to turn it [Wi-Fi] on for free,’ ” Serra said. Lodder noted that in the end, someone somehow has to pay the cost of connectivity.

“Someone’s always got to pay for it — Wi-Fi isn’t free,” Lodder said. “Some teams may feel they’ve made enough on the tickets to offer [Wi-Fi] free, while in other cases users pay either with money or with eyeballs, by viewing some ads.”

While the NFL itself is still somewhat vague on its league-wide plans for in-stadium Wi-Fi — other than saying that teams should provide it — Serra and Lodder are confident that Soldier Field will be at the top of the chart when it comes to network performance.

“If and when they [the NFL] roll out standards for network performance, we’re going to exceed them,” Lodder said.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, MSR Guides, NFL, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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