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MSR Report: State of the Stadium Technology Survey

August 8, 2013 by

state_of_stadium_128What is the “state of the stadium” when it comes to technology deployment? That is what we here at Mobile Sports Report set out to discover when we launched our inaugural “State of the Stadium” Technology Survey, in conjunction with our partner the SEAT Consortium, hosts of the recent SEAT 2013 conference in Kansas City.

With more than 50 respondents representing arenas that host the top professional league teams, including the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL, as well as top U.S. university facilities for basketball and football, European and U.S. professional soccer teams, professional golf and car-racing venues the State of the Stadium Technology Survey provides, we think, the first real statistical snapshot of how teams are deploying technology to both improve the fan experience while helping increase business opportunities. The survey covers deployment and planning decisions for several stadium technology categories, including Wi-Fi, DAS, Digital Signage, Sports Digital Marketing, Sports CRM, and Sports Social Media. You can download a copy of the survey for free, at this link.

What did we discover? Simply, all survey respondents and interviewees were in violent agreement that advanced technologies, especially those involving wireless communications, would be the key to an enhanced fan experience and a bigger roster of business opportunities for stadium owners and operators. Yet for most of the industry, it is still early in the game when it comes to actual stadium technology deployments, as rollout schedules are still paced by the reality of budgetary and situational constraints, a list that often spans from geographic and facility-construction concerns to complexities of partnerships and rights agreements. So the era of the connected stadium is well on its way, but not quite here just yet.

There is a general feeling of a need to move quickly to solve the most pressing problems, while taking time on longer-term and bigger-ticket deployments to ensure the correct choice of technology at the right price with the right return on investment. These findings were confirmed at this week’s SEAT Conference, which we were invited to attend, and we’ll be sharing more stories from SEAT speakers and thought leaders in the following weeks. The best place to start, though, is by downloading the report to get a level-set on what is happening at the biggest facilities out there today.

Free download of the report is made possible by our report sponsors, SOLiD Technologies and Xirrus. We would also like to thank Christine Stoffel and Chris Dill from SEAT, as well as the SEAT attendee organizations who participated in the survey.

Filed Under: About MSR, DAS, Major League Baseball, NBA, NCAA Football, NFL, NHL, SEAT Conference, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Football On Your Phone — Manning Style, Bro

August 7, 2013 by

We write a lot about football on your phone — in fact I just did a long, kind of wonky piece earlier this week about the gyrations and gymnastics Verizon and the NFL are going through to justify Verizon’s $1 billion in rights for live football on a cellular phone. Of course there is another way to get football on your phone, and that is to switch your world to satellite and get DirecTV’s pricey Sunday Ticket — which lets you watch every NFL game, any time, on any device… including, yo, your phone.

Do we need a long post about it? No. Just the Mannings, the new TV pitchmen of the century. Take it away, boys.

Football in your pants, yo. I think Mobile Sports Report just jumped the shark.

Filed Under: NFL Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

NFL, Verizon Introduce New NFL Mobile App

August 5, 2013 by

New NFL Mobile app; photo courtesy of NFL.

New NFL Mobile app; photo courtesy of NFL.

If you, like me, enjoy watching live NFL action on your Verizon smartphone, things are probably going to be a lot better this season as the league and Verizon have teamed up for a full refresh of the NFL Mobile app, which will also be available to smartphone customers of other carriers, with the only catch being that those customers won’t have access to live game action.

In a phone interview with Manish Jha, General Manager of Mobile at the National Football League, we learned about a whole bunch of new bells and whistles, maybe things you won’t necessarily notice, like improved back-end design and more up-to-date score information. What hasn’t changed for the 2013 season is the $5 monthly fee Verizon will charge its smartphone customers to view live NFL games on Sunday, Monday and Thursday nights, along with NFL network coverage and (perhaps most important) live RedZone coverage on Sunday.

(Don’t dismiss the RedZone coverage. If you live in California, like we do, you can sometimes get a full extra live game or two on Sundays because they are the only ones still going on.)

If your phone is from AT&T, or Sprint, or T-Mobile, you won’t be able to watch live action but you also won’t have to fight to find an NFL app that works well to bring you things like video highlights, replays, scores, and fantasy stats. Jha said the NFL and Verizon teamed up to produce one app to rule them all, the new NFL Mobile app which you should be able to find in the operating system app store of your choice. Also built into the new version of the app are some of the features from last year’s experimental Thursday Night Xtra app, which we never felt was fully baked; hopefully some of its interesting social media ideas are better fleshed out this time around.

“We want to make this the definitive NFL experience for a smartphone,” said Jha. And well should the NFL pay a lot of attention to mobile access: According to Jha, during last season mobile traffic to all NFL Internet sites surpassed desktop Internet traffic, even as that latter figure also increased.

Read that again: Mobile traffic to NFL sites eclipsed desktop traffic last year, even as desktop traffic grew. So now you have an idea why Verizon paid $1 billion to keep the rights for 4 more years as the NFL’s exclusive mobile carrier.

The only thing we still argue about is the league and Verizon’s decision to keep live cellular action off tablets; the Verzion NFL Mobile live access only works for devices they consider “phones,” though Jha even admits that such a definition may be a short-time thing, given the trend of phones getting big phat screens.

“We’re staying on top of trends, watching what comes out of Silicon Valley,” Jha said. “Right now we’re being pragmatic, trying to strike the right balance between serving fans and creating value for our sponsor.”

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, NFL, NFL Mobile, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: March Madness Changes, NBCSN Push

August 2, 2013 by

The NFL’s Pro Bowl, seemingly the one property that it has never managed to get fans to watch, is undergoing a major change as the league tries to once again salvage the event, this time by eliminating the traditional AFC vs NFC format.

Instead the league will be take the top two vote getters and make them team captains and they will then select players for their respective teams from the pool of players elected by the fans in a fantasy draft style effort.

Goodbye NBC Sports Network, Hello NBCSN
Branding seems to be all important these days and with the sports network wars heating up prior to the latest entrant of Fox Sports as a national provider and NBC is taken steps to establish its brand, and it looks like the transition is scheduled to be completed by the upcoming Winter Olympics, according to Awful Announcing.

If you are familiar with the NBC Sports Network moniker, wave goodbye as the network has been slowly phasing it out and replacing it with its initials, NBCSN.

Dell is looking to computer on a stick to help reverse its fortunes
Dell has an internal development effort code-named “Project Ophelia” that according to reports is basically a computer that runs the Android operating system and all of it is in the form of a USB stick, according to a report in Quartz.

The basic premise came from a company called Wyse that Dell acquired a year ago. Ophelia is designed to run a large number of operating systems including Windows, Google’s Chrome, and the Mac operating system in a virtual mode running in the cloud. However the fact that this might kill off Dell’s existing PC business may be an issue.

Tablet shipments head to top of the pack
Maybe Dell is onto something about killing its PC business. NPD DisplaySearch is reporting that shipments of PC tablets are expected to reach 364 million next year, a number that more than doubles the estimated 177 million standard notebook and ultra slim PCs.

The company had previously predicted that tablet sales will overtake notebook sales this year and it now looks like that trend will continue going forward, driven by growth in all regions, particularly emerging markets.

Microsoft’s Surface Tablets have quite a price tag
When Microsoft entered the tablet market there is no doubt that the company had some expectations for the platform, however having it cost the company $900 million, which is the amount that it took in a charge in its latest earnings report for the write down on unsold Surface RT tablets.

The RT was the first model to hit the market and it started shipping them last October. In addition the tablet platform has raised $853 million in revenue, according to its annual report.

NCAA makes alterations to March Madness brackets
The NCAA is seeking o keep teams closer to their true seed level with a number of changes in bracketing rules that will take effect with next year’s tournament, primarily relaxing conference and regular season rematching restrictions, according to Sports Illustrated.

Among the moves will be one that could change how the top three seeds from a conference are bracketed and may now be in the same one, as well as changing how early conference rivals can play, now moving up to the round of 32.

Filed Under: Android, Awful Announcing, Dell, Microsoft, NBC Sports, NCAA Hoops, NFL, Surface, Tablets, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

NFL Ratchets up Tools for Fantasy Players

July 31, 2013 by

Every had a burning question about a NFL player, team or issue but did not have time to research it and none of your friends will help because it might give you a competitive advantage in your Fantasy Football League.
nflgen
Now the NFL is stepping in and has developed an online fantasy football community called Fantasy Genius where you can post questions such as who is starting at QB this week for the Cleveland Browns, which running back you should start this week or are any of the Jets receivers worth selecting in our upcoming draft.

The site has the potential to serve millions of fans so there is the potential to become inundated with responses but it is designed so that you can focus on what interests you. Head over here to set up your profile- this enables you to not just establish yourself as a fan but is also the spot from which you can track your questions and view results. Users have the ability to preset how often they get email updates on their questions.

You can have focused discussions with fans on specific topics and post your team and have others rate it, or rate individual players. It also areas of interest such as Top Trending Questions and who to start and who to bench. If you participate in the ‘who to start’ feature you can earn ratings including draft expert.

This is an interesting idea but I wonder how the trolls will be dealt with. If you have ever visited a team fan site there are always people that log in just to insult rivals. I think this will be an interesting feature to try out for awhile and see how well it helps fans in their pursuit of fantasy glory.

Filed Under: Fantasy Sports, NFL Tagged With: , ,

MLBAM Reaches Out to Level 3 to Help Expand Media Services

July 30, 2013 by

mlbtv

Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), MLB’s interactive and media arm has expanded its partnership with communications service provider Level 3 Communications in a deal that will add data center services to the other services that Level 3 already provides MLBAM.

The expanded relationship will call for Level 3 to add data center services that will include support for MLBAM’s digital media products such as MLB.TV live video streaming as well as archival and backhaul support. Level 3 already provides Internet and content delivery technology.

Level 3 will be handling the workload from its Premier Elite data center located within its Uptime Institute Tier III Certified Scott Data Center in Omaha, Neb. MLBAM will also have access to Level 3’s international network that includes 350 data centers.

Level 3 has had a focus on providing sports media services for some time and delivers broadcast services via its Level 3 Vyvx Services network that has handled everything from the Super Bowl and major college bowl games, MLB, Fox Sports, UEFA matches, and postseason basketball games. It provides a variety of online streaming and backup services.

The relationship has taken an interesting turn, as while Level 3 is providing a variety of streaming and storage services to MLBAM, MLBAM has in turn been providing backend services to other sports, including the NCAA’s March Madness, according to a report here.

Filed Under: Baseball, ESPN, Fox Sports, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NFL, Super Bowl Tagged With: , , , ,
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