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MLB delivers completely revamped At The Ballpark app

March 27, 2014 by

mlbcom

With the start of the Major League Baseball season just days away the league has delivered a complete rebuilt At The Ballpark app that includes a great deal more local customization, new technology integration and support.

The app has been available for 4 years and the facelift will add many features that will give users a greater ability to customize the app to meet their personal needs and usage model. It is available now for 20 ballparks and runs on both Android and Apple’s iOS operating system with additional customization in the latest release for the iOS 7 operating system.

The first of the two key technologies that have been incorporated is mapping and directions provided by a MapQuest-powered engine. MapQuest has a deal with MLBAM that will call for the delivery of additional MLB-focused features that will be available soon for both operating systems that At The Ballpark supports. In addition MapQuest and MLBAM also are co-creating an original video series, expected to debut in May 2014.

The second technology has been much more talked about in recent months, and that is the inclusion of iBeacon, a low powered micro-location technology that was introduced with iOS 7. MLBAM has equipped 20 ballparks with dozens of iBeacons each, and starting with Opening Day fans can check in at the ballpark and then receive offers and information from locations within the park as they travel around or sit in their seats.

Currently there are only a select few applications for the technology at the ball yards but MLBAM is working to create more and expects to deliver them later this year, as well as expand the number of fields that have the technology.

For fans who have been using At The Ballpark in the past it will still have the familiar functions including the ability to use MyTickets Mobile for delivery and storage of all MLB tickets sold as well as seat upgrade functions in select clubs. Some clubs also allow you to order food and beverages with the app.

You can view team stats, schedule and watch video of games, a number of hooks into social media and rewards for check-ins as well as more mundane features such as ballpark guides, parking and directions are all among the functions of the app.

This is a great upgrade to the app and really enables fans to not just customize their experience but will provide even seasoned baseball game attendees the ability to make the experience easier and more enjoyable.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, iOS, iOS 7, Major League Baseball, Social Media, Sports Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

MLB delivers daily fantasy game in partnership with DraftKings

March 26, 2014 by

draft

In the past Major League Baseball once denounced daily fantasy baseball games as gambling, implying that no skill was involved, but that has changed as baseball has teamed with fantasy sports contest provider DraftKings for an offering that launches with the upcoming season.

The Official Mini Fantasy Game of MLB.com is a free one-day fantasy league that can be entered daily and offers fans the ability to win tickets to regular season games, the 2014 All-Star Game and a 2014 World Series game. There are a total of four grand prizes, two each to the All-Star and World Series as well as a number of other prizes.

Players get a $50,000 salary cap and then select from a field of players that has 10 position players who can accumulate points (or lose them) by accomplishing select actions such as +5 points for a stolen base and +2 points for each strike out a pitcher earns. There will be several different offerings including a daily MLB.com Official Fantasy Contest and a weekly MLB.com Friday Home Team contest among others.

DraftKings specializes in creating what it calls daily leagues, ones that you can play and then quit, none of this following a fantasy baseball team for a season trying to convince a fellow owner to trade his star starting pitcher for your broken down LOOGY.

Its system is simple and has the potential to be lucrative for users. It has both free and paid contests in which participants select individuals to make up a team, watch how they perform that day and if they perform the best you can win cash. DraftKings is currently running several contests including a March Madness one. It offers contests in five major sports: MLB, NHL, NFL, NBA and the PGA. It offers a wide variety of contests from head-to-head to qualifiers.

This will be interesting to see how this pans out on many levels. Lotteries have tried to have sports offerings and most of the major league teams have fought against them. States, led by New Jersey, have then fought back, so far unsuccessfully. Now a league is endorsing it as a skill event and that could lead to an easing of other leagues’ dislike of this type of activity.

Filed Under: All Star Game, Baseball, Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Sports, Major League Baseball, Sports Betting Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: Where is the MLS TV deal?

March 21, 2014 by

For those of you who managed to miss it the Major League Soccer season started recently and its broadcast contract, which many had expected to be finalized sometime last winter, is still unfinished business.

Awful Announcing does a good job pointing out the issues, which have to do with how each side perceives itself. An interesting note showing the increasing popularity of the sport is that the average MLS attendance is greater than the NBA or NHL’s.

Android flaws could make upgrades a danger
System updates are a fact of life for most mobile phone users and a recent report from researchers at the System Security Lab at Indiana University and Microsoft have found a vulnerability that could enable hackers to take over Android systems.

It is not a real threat as they did a proof of concept test only but the threat would be in the form of an app that waits for a system update and then takes gains access for privileges that it had not had previously. Interestingly it only works if you have a fairly old version of Android running.

FIFA Exec paid millions for votes
If you ever wondered how sun-baked Qatar managed to win approval to host the World Cup during its summer this story might help explain it: FIFA executive Jack Warner appears to have made millions off of the deal.

According to a piece in the Telegraph a Quatari company paid Warner millions after the country won the vote. The Big Lead has a list of his apparent transgressions over the past few years that shows a long history of shady dealings.

NBA pondering new TV deal
MLS is not the only sport that is taking its time in finalizing its next broadcast deal as the NBA is also taking a leisurely approach on its current round of negotiations. However the NBA is in a much stronger position.

According to the Sports Business Daily there are a number of interesting options being considered at this time including adding an additional broadcasting partner, bringing its digital rights in-house and moving NBA on TNT off of Thursday night. It looks like big changes are in the works.

Drones can read Wi-Fi messages?
A report in the International Business Times is saying that you should turn off your smartphone’s Wi-Fi because drones that are flying overhead can monitor the conversation, using a pretty simple trick that I think many of us would fall for.

A drone overhead could present itself as a free Wi-Fi network, something that phones are constantly looking for. Then if a user connects it can intercept traffic. Boy would they be bored with reading my stuff.

Love baseball and need a date? MLB has you covered!
Major League Baseball has joined forces with online dating site Match.com to create club-focused singles pages, because apparently there was a need for this. I am not kidding it seems that some rabid fans, say Yankee fans, whose first question is to ask “Who hates the Red Sox?” [editor’s note: insert joke for “getting to first base” here.]

It will be interesting to see how this works; maybe MLB could do the same for the Dungeons and Dragons crowd, or even a dating site set up for stats nerds, which is almost the same as the D&D group.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, Awful Announcing, Baseball, ESPN, FIFA, Fox Sports, Major League Baseball, MLS, NBA, NBA Game Time, NHL, Smartphone, Soccer, Sports Business Daily, The Big Lead, TNT Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: R.B.I. Baseball available in April?

March 14, 2014 by

Reports are emerging that R.B.I. Baseball 2014 will be available just in time for the start of the MLB season. According to a tweet from Darren Rovell the long-awaited renewal of the once popular game will be available on April 10.

The game will be available on a wide number of platforms including PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, iOS, and Android devices. This is MLBAM’s first move into the video game space and while it has had a great deal of success with online games the video gamers are a significantly tougher crowd to please.

A bonus from MLB’s new analytic approach
You do not have to be a stat head to be driven insane by inane commentary by baseball “analysts” that describe a play that in no way resembles what you just witnessed. I think everybody has seen an infielder break the wrong way on a pop up and then manage a miraculous catch followed by effusive praise by the broadcaster for the player’s great reactions.

With the new tracing system that the MLBAM announced just weeks ago, this blather could hopefully be a thing of the past and as a bonus the technology will show how some baseball “analysts” really just do not know what they are talking about.

Internet a game changer for sports broadcasting?
The success of broadcasting the just concluded Winter Olympics not just over the traditional airwaves but also over the Internet and to digital devices via specific apps has broadcasters taking a harder look at the appeal of Internet Protocol television, or IPTV.

What broadcasters that own the rights to sporting events like about IPTV is that it enables them to leverage an investment onto new market segments as mainstream viewing declines and there is also a decline in pay TV interest.

ESPN forms content unit called Exit 31
ESPN has combined three of its existing properties: ESPN Films, Grantland and FiveThirtyEight into a new entity called Exit 31 in what it calls an effort to produce creative storytelling beyond the traditional area with experiments in subjects, editorial approaches and platforms.

ESPN says that this will complement its already expansive storytelling abilities. If talking about Tim Tebow is an example of its existing expansive abilities I will pass. If you are curious as to what Exit 31 is, it’s the exit you take off of Interstate 84 to reach ESPN’s Bristol headquarters.

MLS season opener sees huge ratings increase
For those of you who did not notice the Major League Soccer season has started, beginning with a match between the Seattle Sounders and Sporting Kansas City. Viewership on NBCSN was up 283 percent over last year’s opening.

Now the numbers are still very small when compared to other major US sports, with only a .23 rating compared to last year’s .06. Still that is a positive note for the league and with World Cup interest starting to grow as that tournament nears, expect to see strong ratings continue.

Filed Under: Apps, Baseball, ESPN, FIFA, Major League Baseball, MLS Tagged With: , ,

Friday Grab Bag: 14 New ESPN Channels — mainly online

March 7, 2014 by

ESPN is launching 15 virtual networks for users of Apple TV and Roku boxes that provide Internet connectivity to their televisions as part of its ongoing WatchESPN initiative. The new channels’ programming will be culled from related conference programming from the network’s existing portfolio that includes ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPNU and others.

Some of the programming will include select live events including college basketball. Others such as college football will only be available via on-demand broadcasting. The channels will feature the ACC, America East, Atlantic Sun, Big South, Big West, Horizon, Mid-American, Metro Atlantic Athletic, Missouri Valley, Northeast, Ohio Valley, Southern, Sun Belt and Southland conferences. In addition there will be a combined channel featuring coverage of historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) and conferences including the Southwestern Athletic Conference, Mid-Eastern Athletic and Central Intercollegiate Athletic conferences.
Fox Sports 1 has new MLB show
Fox Sports will be broadcasting a new slate of games this year, with a preference for teams that have regional Fox broadcast deals, and it will have the opportunity to highlight its games with its new MLB Whiparound show.

Airing Monday-Friday at 10 pm ET (but 12 midnight on Wednesdays) the program will be up against one of ESPN’s flagship programs Baseball Tonight and the MLB Network’s MLB tonight, all of which start at the same hour.

The Raiders to Portland?
There are a few fans in Portland, Ore., who are running a campaign to get the state to encourage the Oakland Raiders to move north to Portland, a city that lost its Single A baseball team a few years ago due to lack of support.

While the Raiders’ owner has said that the team would look to move if Oakland does not solve its stadium issue (it wants a new one) it seems highly unlikely that Portland would be its first choice with Los Angeles open. However the mix between Portland hipsters and die hard Raider fans would be great to watch.


NBC had to provide make-good ads for Olympics
Advertising Age is reporting that the broadcast giant has to provide make-good ads to some of its Olympics customers because while it won the broadcast bragging rights for virtually every night it fell short of the projected ratings.

However the network feels good about the overall results and is optimistic about its next Olympics broadcast, the 2016 Summer games in Rio. It has already started to sell ads for that event.

Minor League Baseball team has selfie promotion
One of the great things about minor league baseball are the interesting promotions that many of the teams engage in. What is possible the first of the upcoming season comes from the Kalamazoo Growlers.

They are having a promotion centered around selfies called the Salute to Selfie Night this season. The event calls for fans to take pictures of themselves and submit them, from which the team will make a jersey with the images reproduced in collage form. So practice your duck face now!

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Awful Announcing, Baseball, ESPN, ESPN3, Fox Sports, Live sports via mobile, Major League Baseball, NBC Sports, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NFL, Olympics, WatchESPN Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

MLB unveils analytic player tracking system

March 3, 2014 by

mlbam

Major league Baseball’s Advanced Media (MLBAM) used last week’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston as the platform to showcase a new analytics system that will track every play on the field and track a number of factors that in the past were only difficult to properly analyze.

The goal of the program is to provide the tools that will enable a better evaluation of a huge number of aspects of the game. An example MLBAM used was on a diving catch in the outfield. The system will help determine how that outcome occurred by looking at how quickly the player reacted, how direct he went to the spot from which he leaped and how fast he was going. The program will try and look at all aspects of the game including pitching, batting fielding and base running. About the only aspect that will not be under the microscope will be strategy.

This is the latest in a number of major steps the sport has taken to enable a more accurate analysis of events in the game. The first was the introduction of PITCHf/x in 2006. That technology tracks pitching including every pitch’s speed, spin, release point and location. This has been a boon to everybody from pitchers, coaches and managers, sabermetrics as well as general fans. Possibly only umpires dislike it. The addition and then expansion of instant replay is another move in this direction.

While the statistics and analytic revolution lead by Bill James has helped change how most people look at players and performance the defensive metrics have always seemed to be the ones that get the most negative feedback. This should help settle arguments on that side, but then again maybe not.

Starting this season the program will be tested at Miller Park in Milwaukee, Target Field in Minnesota and Citi Field in New York. The goal is to roll the program out at all ballparks over the course of the season so that on Opening Day 2015 all parks will be equipped with the technology that collects the data.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, Baseball, Major League Baseball, Market Research Tagged With: , ,
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