MLS – Page 7

Mobilitie gets DAS contract for San Jose Earthquakes’ Avaya Stadium

March 9, 2015 by Paul Kapustka 1 Comment

Good look at the steep pitch of stands at Avaya Stadium. Credit: Avaya Stadium

It’s not deployed yet and there’s not a lot of details yet but we can confirm that Mobilitie will be building the neutral host DAS deployment at the San Jose Earthquakes’ new Avaya Stadium in San Jose, a facility that gets its “official” launch later this month.

The new $100 million Avaya Stadium, which hosted its first event in a preseason game on Feb. 28, will officially open with the Quakes’ home MLS opener against Chicago on March 22. While the Ruckus Wireless-powered Wi-Fi network in the stadium is reportedly already live, the DAS isn’t yet complete and may not be in time for the season opener. Mobilitie officials confirmed the deal Monday but didn’t have more details to share but we are sure we’ll hear more as antennas get connected and contracts get signed.

The Mobilitie deal was first “reported” in an advertorial that ran in Sports Business Journal, where the Earthquakes also talked about bringing in-seat food and beverage ordering to their still-under-development stadium app. Mobile Sports Report will be at the home opener, so look for a Stadium Tech Report after that visit. Any Quakes fans who were at the preseason game, feel free to add your observations about the new arena in the comments.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, MLS, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, AT&T, Avaya Stadium, DAS, Mobile Sports Report, Mobilitie, Paul Kapustka, Stadium Wi-Fi, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi

San Jose Earthquakes’ Avaya Stadium will have Wi-Fi for ‘soft’ preseason opener

February 27, 2015 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Practice on the pitch at Avaya Stadium in San Jose. Credit all photos: Avaya (click on any photo for a larger image)

Keeping in tune with its Silicon Valley location, the San Jose Earthquakes‘ new Avaya Stadium will have a bit of a “beta” launch this weekend when the Quakes host the Los Angeles Galaxy for a 2 p.m. preseason match on Feb. 28, with only 10,000 fans being allowed into the brand-new 18,000-seat venue.

While all the bells and whistles for Avaya Stadium may not be in place yet, one thing will be at full strength for the preseason tilt — the stadium’s free fan-facing Wi-Fi network. With 180 Wi-Fi access points from Wi-Fi gear supplier Ruckus Wireless and a 10 Gbps backbone pipe, the network should be ready for the first batch of selfies and other communications from the Bay area’s newest sports stadium, located right next to the San Jose airport a little bit south and west of the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium.

If the Avaya Stadium app gets finalized in time, fans who attend Saturday’s game will be able to use the “Phase 1” features which include ticketing, parking and concession information. According to Peter Thompson, managing director of global sponsorship for Avaya, a follow-on phase of the app will add in-game statistics, among other features being considered. Thompson said the unfinished feeling to the app is a bit by design, since Avaya and Earthquakes officials want to first get some fan feedback on things they’d like to have in an interactive platform.

In-stadium message board touts the Wi-Fi

“We’re trying to make this collaborative,” Thompson said in a phone interview Friday afternoon, following the official ribbon-cutting ceremonies at the stadium. “We’ll be looking for fans to tell us what they want [in the app] and see which ideas float to the top.”

And even though the crowd this weekend will be limited to 10,000 fans, Thompson is quite sure the network will see almost 10,000 devices access it, from fans as well as those from media at the game. Fans may want to switch to the Wi-Fi network early, since according to Thompson there isn’t yet a distributed antenna system (DAS) deployment inside Avaya Stadium, which might make cellular communications a bit constrained.

And even if the Avaya Stadium app launches in time for the game, Thompson isn’t sure it will be the most-used application. When Avaya ran networking operations for the recent Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Thompson said iTunes and DropBox were at the top of the list.

“It [app usage] wasn’t what we expected, it wasn’t Facebook or Twitter [at the top],” Thompson said. “It will be interesting to see what happens.”

We will have stats from the Avaya Stadium network following the preseason match as well as the sold-out home opener on March 22. More photos from the stadium below.

Panoramic view of the field

Good look at the steep pitch of stands

Big scoreboard atop open-air bar area. Sure to be popular, with many beer taps available!

Let’s hope this grass holds up better than some other stadium turf we have seen

Soon to be full of soccer fans!

Filed Under: Apps, DAS, MLS, MSR Guides, Soccer, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Avaya, Avaya Stadium, DAS, MLS, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, San Jose, San Jose Earthquakes, Soccer, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi

Ruckus will provide Wi-Fi for new MLS Earthquakes stadium in San Jose

March 24, 2014 by Paul Kapustka 3 Comments

Ruckus Wireless has scored a deal to provide a Wi-Fi network for the San Jose Earthquakes, in the team’s new 18,000-seat stadium slated to open in 2015.

The sponsorship agreement will see Ruckus designing and supplying the high-capacity Wi-Fi network in the new stadium, which will be located on Coleman Avenue in San Jose, near the city airport. According to Ruckus the network will use more than 150 of the company’s Ruckus ZoneFlex access points. David Callisch, vice president of corporate marketing for Ruckus, said the deal is a “partnership” with the Earthquakes, with Ruckus providing both some equipment discounts and technical and marketing assistance to make sure the network works well and is readily discovered by the fans coming to the arena.

“This is an exciting project that our fans can look forward to utilizing at our new stadium,” said Earthquakes president Dave Kaval, in a prepared statement. “We want our stadium to reflect our community, and technological innovation is a key component of Silicon Valley. Ruckus Wireless is a great fit because of their local roots and experience working not just with Silicon Valley Wi-Fi network deployments, but with these types of deployments around the world.”

The San Jose deal adds to a growing list of soccer stadium deployment wins for Ruckus, which already provides Wi-Fi at 20,000-seat plus Rio Tinto Stadium in Salt Lake City, Utah (home of the MLS Real Salt Lake club) as well as at several venues in Brazil being readied for the upcoming World Cup. Ruckus also provides the Wi-Fi at Time-Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, N.C., home of the NBA’s Bobcats, and was also behind a new Wi-Fi network at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif.

Callisch said the free app at the BNP Open, which allowed fans to watch live video of matches at courts other than the one they were sitting in front of, was the kind of in-stadium use that a cellular DAS just can’t handle.

“A 4G signal is just not suitable for something like high-quality video,” said Callisch. “You really need Wi-Fi for high capacity applications.”

Though Ruckus does sell gear for regular, indoor office-type networks, its line of advanced access points with directional antennas make it a good fit for stadium venues, where being able to fine-tune coverage is a necessity.

Ruckus, which went public on Nov. 16 of 2012, finished its fiscal 2013 year with $263.1 million in revenue, a 22.6 percent increase from the previous year. Its Q4 revenues were $73.0 million. Though Callisch wouldn’t break out what part of that total stadium and other large-venue contracts represent, he did say they all helped the bottom line.

Though large venue deals may involve discounts and other charges for marketing or extra technical help, Callisch did say that any time you deliver equipment in the hundreds, it’s a good business deal.

“We make money on all the [stadium] deals,” Callisch said. “It’s a growing vertical market for us.”

Filed Under: DAS, MLS, Soccer, Tennis, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Indian Wells tennis, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Ruckus Wireless, San Jose Earthquakes, Stadium Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi, ZoneFlex

Friday Grab Bag: Where is the MLS TV deal?

March 21, 2014 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

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: Android, ESPN, FIFA, Fox Sports, MLB, NBA, Soccer, TNT

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

March 14, 2014 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

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: ESPN, Exit 31, MLBAM

Friday Grab Bag: MLB to live stream World Series

February 28, 2014 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

Taking its digital game up a notch MLB’s Advanced Media has announced that it will start permitting subscribers to its MLB.TV using its At Bat app to watch both the All-Star game as well as well as the entire World Series on their registered mobile devices and computers.

The games will be broadcast over the air by Fox Sports and some details still need to be worked out as Fox’s broadcast partners will be involved in some manner in the vetting process. Still this is a great move by MLB opening up the games to more viewers. Think it will go back to day games for the Series? Me neither.

Samsung teams with Mandalay Sports Media on second screen content
Samsung Electronics America will be working with Mandalay to develop new and original second screen content that will then be made available on select Samsung products. The content will be built around Samsung’s Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology platform to enable complementary and supplementary content experiences for TV programming.

The programs will initially be distributed on Samsung’s 2012, 2013 and 2014 Smart TVs as well as select tablets and smartphones. No word yet on what types of shows will be developed under the program.

NFL to add two more playoff teams in 2015?
The NFL has hinted that it is looking at adding additional playoff teams in the future because, well the owners will make more money. The rumors appear to be picking up steam and the Washington Post has reported that it will happen in 2 years.

This is interesting in that in the last postseason the league had issues selling playoff tickets and the addition of more teams will dilute the value of the regular season and possible create even more issues in selling playoff tickets.

ESPN talks about ESPN
There used to be an adage in reporting that “You reported the news, you are not part of the news.” Well that message has never sunk in at ESPN as the latest round robin of repeating itself has taken on comic qualities.

After one of its analysts reported that he would not take Johnny Manziel as a QB for his team, ESPN’s talking heads then discussed this comment endlessly for the next day or so. Awful Announcing does a great job in dissecting how much coverage the network gave to a comment made by one of its own people.

Filed Under: All Star Game, Android, Apple, Apps, Awful Announcing, Baseball, ESPN, Fox Sports, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, MLS, NASCAR, NBA, NFL, Olympics, Samsung Tagged With: At Bat, ESPN, Fox Sports, MLB, MLB.TV, MLS, NFL, NHL, Samsung

Mobilitie gets DAS contract for San Jose Earthquakes’ Avaya Stadium

San Jose Earthquakes’ Avaya Stadium will have Wi-Fi for ‘soft’ preseason opener

Ruckus will provide Wi-Fi for new MLS Earthquakes stadium in San Jose

Friday Grab Bag: Where is the MLS TV deal?

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

Friday Grab Bag: MLB to live stream World Series

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