Fox Sports – Page 4

MLB, NFL team up to battle Aereo

November 19, 2013 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

Live-TV startup Aereo has been taking on television broadcasters and winning but now faces an assault by two of America’s largest sports leagues, the NFL and MLB as they seek to prevent it from showing their broadcasts.

The two leagues are seeking to piggyback with an amicus brief to a petition filed by broadcasters that asks the United States Supreme Court to rule on the legality of Aereo’s broadcasting of local over the air signals.

In case you are unfamiliar with Aereo, it is a startup that makes a combination DVR/antenna that captures over the air broadcasts and allows customers to its $8 a month service to view the programming on Internet connected devices.

It started out in New York City last year and then moved to Boston and Atlanta, surviving legal challenges along the way. It has now accelerated its expansion efforts and recently moved into Utah, Chicago, Miami, Houston and Dallas this year.

Apparently this is terrible news to the sports leagues, as well as with NBC, Fox, ABC and CBS, the broadcasters that filed the initial suit. The broadcasters have claimed that Aereo is violating their copyrights and must pay retransmission fees.

The sports leagues have piled on claiming that if they lose exclusive retransmission licensing rights it will make over the air broadcasting less attractive and that they would be forced to go to paid cable networks. According to a piece in Variety the amount that the league collects is about $100 million for those rights.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out on a number of levels. Cable has been losing viewership as a generation of ‘cable cutters’ has emerged and they use Netflix and other online programs, get over the air antennas or do without.

Also the sports should keep boxing in mind. A once popular over the air sport it moved its premium events to pay per view cable, and helped kill the sport. While basic cable is not the same as PPV the example is one to remember.

The trend to get over the air broadcast, either from a service such as Aereo or by using a proxy, often illegal, appears to have accelerated the movement of quality content to basic cable where it is much more difficult to rebroadcast. Will sports follow this trend?

Filed Under: ABC, Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, Lawsuit, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, NFL Tagged With: ABC, Aereo, CBS, Fox, Lawsuit, MLB, NBC, NFL

Friday Grab Bag: Top Sports Twitters, No one wants NASCAR

October 11, 2013 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

Sports humor site Deadspin breaks down the top sports Twitter accounts with a short synopsis of each, most of them dead on and pretty funny, using actual tweets from each account to highlight, sort of, what the person stands for.

The piece does not spare many, with pretty much an impressive list of people and put downs. It should be noted that Deadspin only included 73 sites in its Top 100 list.

Instagram a threat to hockey reporters?
Sports reporters who cover the Philadelphia Flyers are all up in arms over the team’s decision to use Instagram as the avenue by which it announced who would be its starting goalie. The best part is how the reporters, some of the most old school in the nation, responded.

That would be via their smartphones and through their Twitter accounts of course. Nothing can show your disgust over someone using the latest technology than by also using it to complain about that use.

Aereo coming to Android
The TV over Internet developer Aereo said that it will soon be delivering to the Android operating system. It already has a version of the iPhone but said that the Android took much longer because of the huge number of customized versions of the OS.

Aereo is currently locked into a lawsuit with TV broadcasters over its rights to rebroadcast their products and they are trying to fast track the suit to the US Supreme Court to prevent the rapid expansion of the company,

iPhone 6 to reported to have 4.8-inch screen
Cnet is reporting that a Jefferies analyst is predicting that the next generation iPhone, expected in sometime in 2014, will have a 4.8-inch screen. The current screens on the just released iPhone 5s is 4 inches.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek made his prediction after meeting with Apple suppliers in Asia. Currently Apple is behind the curve in screen size, with an estimated 50% of other smartphones that shipped last quarter having screens larger than 4 inches.

ESPN & Turner fleeing NASCAR
It has been reported elsewhere that NASCAR’s viewing numbers have been declining for the last several years but has it really come to this? The Sports Business Daily is reporting that both Turner Sports and ESPN are looking to exit their respective broadcast deals with the sport early.

The idea was to turn responsibility for the telecasts over to Fox Sports a year early, since Fox will be the new broadcaster for NASCAR in the future. NASCAR turned down the idea according to The SBD.

Motorola to one-up Samsung in large format smartphones
According to Cnet there is the possibility that the next generation smartphone from Motorola will feature a 6.3-inch display, placing its own stake in the ground in the rapidly growing phablet market segment.

The space, pioneered by Samsung and its Galaxy Note lineup, has seen a number of additional players enter the market such as Sony while others such as Microsoft have hinted at the possibility. Apple appears to be the lone holdout on the large screen segment among the major players.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, ESPN, Fox Sports, Instagram, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Motorola, NASCAR, Turner Sports Tagged With: Apple, Deadspin, ESPN, Fox Sports, NASCAR, Turner Sports, Twitter

Friday Grab Bag: Fenway Boots, Fox vs. ESPN

October 4, 2013 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

Nokia is starting to sound like a punch line from a Monty Python movie “I’m not dead yet.” While many have given up on the company it is still churning out products and is expected to unveil its first tablet later this month.

According to Yahoo a Nokia tablet has passed FCC approval and the company, soon to be owned my Microsoft, plans to show a tablet that will run a version of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system at an event in Abu Dhabi.

The difference between ESPN and Fox Sports Live
The good folks at the Sports Business Daily have broken down the difference between the two sports broadcasters, looking at how each o them present the biggest sporting events of the day, using last Monday night as the benchmark.

Not surprisingly ESPN led off with the NFL Monday night game that it had just concluded broadcasting while Fox focused on the MLB playoffs. As usual ESPN pretty much ignored hockey.

L.L. Bean makes Fenway Park boots
LL Bean now has something that only a die hard Red Sox fan could want, boots that are made, in part, from the tarp that was used to cover the field at Fenway Park during the 2012 season. 100 pairs are expected to be produced.

However the made to order boots are not available on a first come/first serve basis. The company is having fans visit Facebook/LL Bean site and share their favorite moments for a chance to win with 50 selected at random. There are additional avenues a fan can enter, to be announced at a later date.

Nike sets date for NikeFuel Forum
If you are an athlete, or maybe not one, but use the NikeFuel band to track you exercise and caloric output you will be happy to know that the company will be hosting an event in New York City that will discuss how it sees the digital world and physical activity merging.

This market, slow to emerge over the last few years has really jump-started with the news of wearable appliances such as Samsung’s Galaxy Gear and rumored other smartwatches as well as the Google Glass and rival efforts. It will be interesting to see how the company plans to compete going forward.

McAfee to deliver device that thwarts NSA?
Antivirus developer John McAfee has a new target in sight, preventing the NSA or any agency from snooping on your online activities. He has developed a product that he calls “Decentral” to do this.

The small device can be used with smartphones and other mobile devices to create a type of mobile network that cannot be penetrated by government surveillance. He said it will cost around $100.

New iPad to outsell last edition?
With Apple’s newest iPads expected to be unveiled in the near future analysts are back predicting how sales will be and KGI is saying that the new iPad 5 will far out pace the new iPad Minis, at least initially.

Market research firm KGI has said that it expects about 10 million iPad 5s sold in the fourth quarter compared to 2 million Minis. There has been a great deal of speculation that the Mini production is slow getting going and that supplies will be limited.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, ESPN, Fox Sports, iPad, Major League Baseball Tagged With: ESPN, Fox Sports, LL Bean, McAfee, Nike, Nokia

NFL signs promoted tweet deal with Twitter

September 30, 2013 by Greg Quick 1 Comment

In a deal that will likely make its rivals sit up and notice Twitter has signed a deal with the NFL that will feature hosted Tweets that include embedded video, highlights and analysis from NFL games and programs.

The NFL will create a dedicated team to produce content for Twitter not just on game days but seven days a week including in-game video from the Thursday Night games and will feature reports and video from all of a week’s games after they have aired, regardless of which network is showing the game.

The deal’s timing is interesting as it comes just before the expected IPO for Twitter, which was already top of mind for investors prior to this news.

The deal is interesting for a number of reasons. Twitter already has a partner that has an Amplify deal in Verizon, but apparently that only pertains to the Super Bowl. ESPN is also a partner, but it cannot broadcast NFL video in its tweets, even from its NFL broadcasts, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The agreement is part of Twitter’s Amplify service that enables broadcasters to show video clips and other programming, and ads, which is synchronized with programs that are currently airing, giving users a second screen experience that shows content that might not be available on the broadcast. The two share ad revenue that is generated from the tweets.

You may not be familiar with the Amplify service by name but if you watch sports, or other outlets for that matter, you have most likely witnessed it in action. Twitter already has deals with a number of major players including Turner Sports, the NCAA, ESPN, BBC America, Fox and the Weather Channel.

Hopefully this is a trend that other sports leagues will follow so that when fans are not in front of their screens that can still get more than just a taunting text message from their friends about the state of their favorite team.

(Editor’s note: Interestingly, the video doesn’t work in embedded tweets but redirects you to a Twitter page. Sample video tweet below. Follow @NFL for sponsored video tweets.)

Brady passes for over 300 yards and the @Patriots improve to 4-0 to start the season. #NEvsATL Highlights – http://t.co/LwNL8gRCY2

— NFL (@nfl) September 30, 2013

Filed Under: Apps, BBC, ESPN, Fox Sports, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Monday Night Football, NFL, Sunday Night Football, Twitter, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: ESPN, Fox, NFL, Twitter, Verizon

Friday Grab Bag: Tablet Rumors Galore

August 16, 2013 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

With Apple, Samsung and others either preparing new tablets Amazon is also preparing a new set of releases.

As it does so it needs to rid itself of older inventory and so has cut the prices on existing models with the current generation Kindle Fire HD now starting at $159.

Samsung Smartwatch due next month?
With the changing of the leaves that herald the coming of fall, also so do the increased number of rumors about hi-tech products that are slated for the back to school market. The latest is that Samsung may beat the field to market with its smartwatch, delivered Sept. 4.

The news comes to us from Asia One, who are forwarding a tip from Sammobile, claim that Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch will make its first public appearance at the Samsung Unpacked Episode 2 event that starts on that day. Stay tuned.

LG Tablet in the works
Speaking of third hand rumors here is a report that a new tablet is about to emerge from LG that will be called the LG G Pad. It is expected to be in a 8.3-inch form factor that will feature a 1920 x 1200 display.

Other supposed details include a quad-core microprocessor, 2GB of memory and that is about it so far. Since no ship date was rumored we may see more details prior to a release.

Fox Sports 1 starts tomorrow
We mentioned it last week but it bears repeating that the latest rival to ESPN, Fox Sports 1, will start Saturday. It is expected to be available in 90 million homes on launch.

A piece at Sports on Earth really told the tale. It does not matter if the channel is more or less intellectual than ESPN, what will determine its success will be the number and quality of its live sports offerings.

Archos GamePad spotted via FCC filing
TechRadar is reporting that Archos looks to be refreshing its GamePad dedicated tablet device with a second generation offering ahead of what looks like a deluge this fall in similar products from a host of rivals.

Its first generation offering came out at the start of the year and now will have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support in the latest offering. Expect to see a number of other dedicated pads from the likes of Amazon and others available soon as well.

BlackBerry up for sale?
BlackBerry’s board has formed a special committee that will be tasked with looking at strategic alternatives for the company’s future, including how to boost sales of its flagship Blackberry 10 smartphone.

It will look at the possibility of selling the company or try to enter into strategic partnerships or joint ventures with other companies.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, BlackBerry, ESPN, Fox Sports, Samsung Tagged With: Amazon, Apple, Archos, BlackBerry, Kindle, Samsung

Friday Grab Bag: Fox Sports 1 around the corner

August 9, 2013 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

If you have been waiting for a new 24-hour national sports broadcast network then your dreams have been answered as Fox Sports 1 is set to launch on Aug. 17 as the network once again challenges ESPN for sports supremacy.

The network already has a very full array of content teed up from different sports and leagues such as MLB, NASCAR, FIFA World Cup, UFC as well as college football conferences such as the Big Ten, Big 12 and the Pac-12.

Hopefully the fight between the two powers will be a bit more mature than the last time when they would both superimpose their logos over scenes so that if the rival carried the broadcast they had to show the logo.

Samsung to debut next Galaxy Note in September
Samsung has sent out invites to a major announcement that the company will be making on Sept. 4, and the line ’Note the Date” is being taken as a sign that the company will be delivering its Galaxy Note 3 at the event.

It is expected to follow in the footsteps of previous Galaxy Notes and be released at the annual IFA trade show that is held in Berlin, where the two previous generations were also unveiled.

Tablet sales slow, IDC says; no new iPad to blame
Market research firm International Data Corp. has reported that tablet sales slowed in the second quarter of this year, down 9.7% from the preceding quarter. However that number is more than offset by the 60% increase sales have increased compared to the same quarter a year earlier.

IDC expects the market to take off in the upcoming months, helped a great deal by the expected release of Apple’s next generation tablets. Apple has not refreshed the lineup in a year. It said it expects ‘impressive growth’ in the fourth quarter of this year.

One area of positive news for iPad rivals is that Windows Tablet sales on the upswing, with a 527% increase over the same period a year ago, reaching 1.8 million compared to the 300,000 shipped a year ago.

Spartan Race World Championship to be broadcast on NBC
The 2013 Reebok Spartan Race World Championship will be the centerpiece of a collaboration between Spartan Race Inc. and NBC Sorts Group for a television special on the obstacle racing sport.

The special will culminate with coverage of the championship that takes place in central Vermont on Sept. 21-22, 2013. That event is expected to draw tens of thousands of participants vying for the $250,000 in cash and prizes.

Apple’s fused glass patent destined for iPod, iPhone, iPads?
The most recent Apple patent application that has come to light shows that the company is looking to secure the rights to a method of fusing glass that the company describes as being applicable to several different products.

As shown on Slash Gear the next generation products that are built using the fused glass would be entirely enclosed by the material, but don’t get your hopes up for the current generation of Apple products expected within the next month or so, this looks to be a year out at the least.

Android-powered game console?
The game console market is a cutthroat business and minor errors in judgment regarding features and functions can alienate legions of fans. According to rumors from Game Informer, that segment maybe drawing a new player into the fold, Amazon.

The rumor is that not only does the company have a console in development that will use the Android operating system but that fans of midnight shopping may be able to get one by Black Friday.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, ESPN, FIFA, Fox Sports, Galaxy Note, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Microsoft, NASCAR, NCAA Hoops, NFL, Samsung, Spartan Race, Surface Tagged With: Amazon, Android, Apple, ESPN, Fox Sports, iPad, Microsoft, NBC, Samsung, Spartan Race

MLB, NFL team up to battle Aereo

Friday Grab Bag: Top Sports Twitters, No one wants NASCAR

Friday Grab Bag: Fenway Boots, Fox vs. ESPN

NFL signs promoted tweet deal with Twitter

Friday Grab Bag: Tablet Rumors Galore

Friday Grab Bag: Fox Sports 1 around the corner

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Search the MSR Site

e-reports