Will sports help Apple win the indoor location market?

ibeacon

A few months ago Apple, Major League Baseball and the New York Mets showed off iBeacon, a technology that is embedded in Apple’s iOS 7 operating system and how it can be used for indoor location services.

If you are not too familiar with iBeacon that is not surprising, Apple really has not publicized the technology that much since it was rolled out as part of the iOS7 release last September. It is an indoor positioning system that is designed to enable a facility to push notifications, coupons and other material to enabled iOS mobile devices. It is built around a low powered version of Bluetooth technology and has the advantage of being very precise and essentially serves as an indoor GPS, but with a much greater degree of accuracy.

The advantages for a sporting facility are obvious. It can track where a user is and send them discount coupons when they are in front of a souvenir shop or a two for one hot dog offer when they are at the food stands. Facilities can see where fans visit and where they do not and customize both their offers to the fans, and the layout of the retail outlets to better meet fans usage models.

It is no surprise that MLB’s Advanced Media group, which has been very aggressive in delivering apps that both engage fans when they are in attendance and when they are not, would be interested in this technology. It has the potential to help increase sales while also enabling fans to take an unescorted but informative tour of ballparks such as Fenway and hear all of the history of the park.

After that announcement it seemed the technology fell off the radar but last week Macy’s said that it will use the technology to send alerts to shoppers when they enter stress over the holiday season at select stores via an app called Shopkick.

Apple delivered its own version of maps a while ago and emerged with egg on its face as the maps were in some cases very inaccurate and rival Google and others made fun of Apple’s efforts. A shakeup later Apple seems to have the map app working well and according to this piece from Mobile Marketer Apple has taken 23 million users from Google in the maps space, but still trails Google’s impressive lead in that space.

However indoor is a different area and Apple could be heading to a lead there, in part because of the effort by sports leagues to add enhanced networking capabilities to their facilities. In addition they have a great deal of familiarity developing for Apple’s platform as apps for Apple’s iOS are often the first to appear for sports leagues and fans can already use them to locate hot dog stands and swap seats, among other uses. An app that does significantly more would simply fit in with the fans already established mindset of using a mobile device to assist them in a facility.

Fans can get upset with the lack of access at a stadium when using a mobile device and all major US sports leagues are expanding and enhancing their Wi-Fi networks. Since teams want a return on investment aside from fan satisfaction this presents them with a solid opportunity.

I suspect that come next year we will be seeing an influx of apps not just from Apple developers but also Android and Windows 8 seeking to take advantage of the new networking and connectivity capabilities of stadiums and it will be interesting to track which ones are using indoor positioning as a feature since it certainly appears to present a solid advantage to its users.

Under Armour joins sports-community race with $150M MapMyFitness buy

Today’s news that sports apparel giant Under Armour has bought sports community concern MapMyFitness for $150 million is just more proof that the big brands will be driving the bus in the race between sports social networks.

MapMyFitness, one of the more popular activity stat-recording and sharing site businesses, better known through its MapMyRun and MapMyRide services, will now have a deep-pocketed parent to help it compete against players like Nike and its FuelBand, Jawbone and Fitbit, and newcomers like Adidas. Then there are software-only or web-only players like Strava.com who are all angling for a part of the new, popular field of athletic and everyday biometrics.

What will be really interesting is if the biometric information from pro athletes becomes more readily available to fans — the Tour de France does an interesting job recently with showing wattage and other exertion information while cyclists are out on the road. Why not have heart rate or calorie-burning levels for marathoners, or basketball players? Recorded stats so you can compare your workouts to LeBron James? It will be interesting to see where the biometrics and social data sharing ends up, now that the big marketing dollars are taking over.

Want to interact with Winter Olympians? The IOC has an App for you

SochiTransformer

It seems hard to believe that in about three months the 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia will begin and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has developed and released an app that will enable fans to follow favorite athletes and sports.

The IOC’s app is called the Olympic Athletes’ Hub and it is much more than a one-dimensional portal into a static web site. The IOC has embraced a host of social media and acknowledged that many of the athletes have a major presence in social media.

The basic function of the Hub is pretty simple, it has created a searchable directory of the social media activities of Olympic athletes and brings them to users of mobile devices, a first for the Olympics. Included will be Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Possibly best of all for some fans is that the app makes the posting a two-way street with fans having the ability to post to the athletes social feeds across a wide swath of social media including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The IOC started down this path 2 years ago with the Summer Olympics that were held in London, allowing chats between fans and athletes, but it has taken that model and greatly expanded it to meet the growing, and changing usage of social media by athletes and fans.

The Hub provides fans with the tools to search for athletes by country, team, and sport as well as ones from previous Olympics that wish to sign up for the program. According to the IOC it already has 5,000 verified Olympians on board the program.

There is much more than just finding and following athletes. Former Olympians will post training tips that can be “Liked” which will earn virtual medals for these athletes such as Stephane Lambiel and Mark Spitz.

The Hub is just now being developed and the IOC said that it will add additional features to it as the games approach. It is also not just about social media. There will be a section that will direct fans to the websites of the IOC’s rights-holding broadcasters, where users can find their coverage of the Games.

You can download the Olympic Athletes’ Hub app at the Google Play Store or iTunes App Store. If you are bookmarking sites there is the IOC YouTube one, here is the Flickr site and here are Twitter and Facebook.

Just in case any athlete forgets their phone at home each will be provided with a Samsung Galaxy 3 with the app preinstalled. The IOC said that 27 million fans have already interacted with it via its social media.

PGA Tour Develops Social Media Hub in time for FedExCup

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Two-year-old startup Mass Relevance has teamed with the PGA to create the PGA Tour Social Hub, a website that will serve as a central aggregation point for a wide variety of social media content that pertains to the PGA tour.

The Hub is being launched in time for fans to use it to follow the action for the FedExCup Playoffs, which begin today with The Barclays at Liberty National in New Jersey City.

The website, which can be located here, will use content filters that seek out relevant content including keyword and hashtag searches. Among the media sites that will be represented at the Hub will be Twitter, Facebook, YouTube videos and Instagram photos and videos.

The PGA said that one of the driving reasons was that fans often used different hashtags or terminology when tweeting or communicating about events and that by creating a single unifying site it will make it easier for fans to follow events as well as comment on them in real time.

For Mass Relevance, founded in 2011 with almost $2 million in seed funding from Floodgate and Austin Ventures it is the continuation of the SaaS developers rise as a leading partner to a wide and growing set of clients.

The company has partnered with experience developing golf-focused social hubs, having previously created one with TaylorMade-adidas Golf Partners earlier this year and developed worked on a program with Callaway Golf to bring social media to serious golfers. Other partners include the Washington Redskins, Twitter, MTV, Pepsi, Campbell’s, GE, Target, Walgreens and Microsoft.

ESPN FC on TV Launched Last Night with International Focus

espnfc

For soccer fans there is a new show called ESPN FC that caters to your needs on ESPN covering a wide array of international leagues and teams including Spain’s La Liga, Major League Soccer, Barclays Premier League and a number of such as the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team.

The programming looks to be an interesting mix of both what is expected such as breaking news, studio analysis and commentary on issues in the sport. However it will also integrated digital content from ESPN’s ESPN Stats & Information Group’s data visualization analysis, as well as incorporating social media. A digital version of ESPN FC on TV will be available on ESPNFC.com.

The show will vary both in broadcast time and focus depending if it is a weekday or a weekend. The Sunday version will run at 12 midnight ET and will be a one hour program that will in part be a weekly wrap as well as analysis of what the events shown will mean looking forward.

Weekdays the show will air as a 30 minute program at 5:30 pm ET on ESPN2 and most days will have a regular featured segment or two such as Americans Abroad on the Monday show or the EPL Weekend Previews that will be shown every Friday.

Every show will have between five to nine analysts/reports covering diverse topics and stories. There will also be a “ESPN FC TV” blog that will contain additional content and extended interviews. There will also be an extra TV segment posted on line daily at ESPN that will focus on viewers’ questions and comments from the show. The company plans to use Twitter extensively, primarily for fan polling.

It is interesting that this comes just a week prior to Fox launching Fox Sports 1 which is expected to also have a solid soccer presence. However ESPN has been steadily enhancing its soccer coverage over the last few years and I suspect that this is just the next logical step for the broadcaster.

San Jose Sharks’ Partnership with SAP brings Hi-Tech to Arena

sharks

The San Jose Sharks parent company Sharks Sports & Entertainment Inc., the City of San Jose and SAP International have joined together to use existing and emerging technologies to both enhance the experience for fans but to also for internal use and working on player performance.

The five year relationship also calls for a new official name for the Shark Tank, which will now go by the moniker of the SAP Center at San Jose. The parties involved said that the deal will make the Center a showplace for Silicon Valley high technology as well as help the team.

For those unfamiliar with SAP, at least in relationship to sports teams, this is part of a concentrated effort by SAP to mine the growing needs of both teams and leagues for both high tech internal technology to handle everything from analysis of player performance, scouting to ticket sales as well as providing fans with the growing list of features and services that they are growing accustomed to from Wi-Fi to apps that improve the experience at the stadium.

SAP has been working with the team for some time and has surveyed fans about their experience and from that data the company has initial plans to engage in some specific areas to improve their experience at the center. They include many things that a fan might expect such as providing real time alerts, up to date team and player information, hooks into social media and game video.

Good news to fans that hate the long lines that can slow entrance to a stadium or to concessions will be the adoption of technology that enables fans to use mobile devices to gain access to the arena but also buy food and merchandise from a phone or tablet. Fan loyalty programs are also under consideration.

That is all for the fans. The team will also be leveraging SAP’s traditional analytic and cloud capabilities. The team plans to use SAP’s technology in its daily operating, leveraging its expertise in areas that include cloud computing, big data analysis and mobile technology as tools for daily operating as a business as well as to handle the unique challenges that face sports and entertainment facilities and teams.

Currently the Sharks are also looking at the SAP Scouting Solution as a tool to assist its scouting department evaluate players and delve down to what the performance statistics mean in the real world.

SAP is throwing an increasingly large net in the sports world and has relationships with a variety of leagues including the NBA, and NFL as well as prominent teams including the Sharks, NY Yankees and San Francisco 49ers.

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