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Friday Grab Bag: $1 Billion for perfect March Madness bracket?

January 24, 2014 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

Every year you hear, usually third hand, about somebody who correctly picked all of the winners in the NCAA’s March Madness basketball tournament. A side note is that they won an office pool with maybe a few hundred dollars in it.

Well Warren Buffett is changing the stakes to the game, along with Berkshire Hathaway and Quicken Loans. They are offering an award of $1 billion for the person that correctly selects all 63 winners. You can ask for that in either $25 million a year over 40 years or a lump sum of $500 million. Such tough choices.

More Thursday night games from NFL
Remember those games that the NFL said it was not going to be playing on Thursday nights. Well the networks have all started bidding on the rights to broadcast the games that will start this upcoming September and the deal is expected to be for one season.

In the mix are CBS, Fox and NBC and the rumored amount is in the $400 million and is expected to be for eight games. However it appears that the deals are not exclusive but rather the NFL will also broadcast the same games on its NFL Network.

More NASCAR changes coming
NASCAR does not seem to want to leave good enough alone and is once again altering the rules that establish who wins the championship each season. The sport has been tinkering off and on with changes since it established the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

More teams seem to be the answer, at least according to NASCAR, which is trying to recapture its former broadcasting ratings glory. SportsOnEarth does a very nice job tearing down the proposal and pointing out how the sports executives seem bent on destroying the unique nature of the sport.

MLB Advanced Media honcho looks into the future
MLBAM has gotten a lot of news so far in this young year, deals streaming the new WWE online channel and a relationship with Sony that will leverage the MLBAM’s technical know-how for its back end technology.

Now its CEO Bob Bowman is talking about where he sees streaming video going and what impact the recent high profile deals will have on MLBAM

X Games have started
The prelude to the Winter Olympics has begun with ESPN’s annual X Games, hosted in Aspen, Colo. Just prior to the start of the Winter Olympics. However it looks like a few big names will not be seen at the events.

One is 13-time gold medal winner Shaun White, who said that he needed the time to prepare for the Sochi Games. The other is Red Bull, one of the top sponsors for the event. Monster Energy has replaced it and Forbes speculates that this could be the start of Monster establishing itself as a rival to Red Bull in the sports action market.

Sharp goes big in tablet spaceIf the current generation of tablets, now edging out to 13-inches, is too small to meet your needs then you might want to take a gander at the latest from Sharp, the RW-16G1, that boasts a 15.6 inch display.

The tablet runs Windows 8.1 operating system and is seen as a tool for those looking for a powerful tablet to replace a desktop or laptop computer. Among its features are 128GB storage, 3200 x 800 screen resolution and is powered by an Intel Core i5 processor with 4GB RAM.

Filed Under: Apps, Athlete to Follow, CBS Sports, Daytona 500, ESPN, Fox Sports, Microsoft, NASCAR, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, NFL, NFL Network, Olympics, Outdoor Activities, Skiing, Windows 8, X Games Tagged With: ABC, CBS, ESPN, March Madness, NASCAR, NCAA, NFL, Red Bull, Sprint Cup, X Games

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: Watch NBA Finals on Select Mobile Devices: New Rival to Google Glass

June 7, 2013 by Greg Quick 1 Comment

Just a reminder that with the NBA Finals now being fought out on the court you can still watch the games if you are not in front of your television on ABC. Well on most but not all mobile devices. For users of Apple’s iPhone and iPad there is an app at the iTunes store.

There is also an app for users of the Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD. Viewers using laptops as well as desktop computers can log into ABC.com. Looks like Android users are out in the cold on this for some reason. This is all part of a free access preview running through the end of June.

Asus fights for tablet share with low cost Memo Pad HD7
Asustek’s latest offering is a 7-inch tablet that could create demand for lower cost offerings in the tablet space. The $129 Asus Memo Pad HD7 has a 7-inch display with 1280 x 800 resolution and it includes a 1.2 megapixel front facing camera and a 5 MP rear facing camera. Depending on market it will be available with either 8GB or 16GB (at $149) of storage.

The company also delivered a 10-inch tablet this week, the 10-inch Transformer Pad Infinity that has the Android 4.2 operating system and is powered by a quad-core Tegra processor. It also features a 2048 x 1600 resolution display. Pricing is not yet available according to Arnnet.com.

Intel invests in gesture control technology developer Thalmic Lab
There has been a great deal of talk about the advent of wearable computing devices, from smartwatches to Google Glass and Intel does not want to miss out on the fun. It has joined an investment round to provide $14.5 million in Series A funding to Thalmic Labs.

Thalmic Labs has developed a wearable gesture control device called MYO and said that it will use the funding, which came from a round that was led by Intel Capital and Spark Capital and included Formation 8, First Round Capital and FundersClub, along with the following individual investors: Paul Graham, Marc Benioff, Geoff Ralston, Sam Altman, Garry Tan, Fritz Lanman, Hank Vigil, Tom Wagner, Alex Bard, Michael Litt and Daniel Debow.

Intel will provide access to manufacturing and technology to Thalmic to help it both scale production of its existing devices as well as develop future generations.

Rivals to Google Glass starting to emerge
At the annual Computex trade show a developer called Oculon Optoelectronics surface, that has a rival product to Google Glass that Oculon calls Oculon Smart Glasses. It claims that they will have better battery life, a better display and will cost less, around $500. Well that is settled.

Google Glass is not the first time a developer has created a wearable computer in the form of glasses, although Google’s effort is by far the largest and best financed effort. I wonder if developers that once sneered at the idea of a tablet now want to try and be in front of the acceptance curve rather than behind it and so are working to have products out simultaneously with Google so as to not initially surrender the market?

Filed Under: ABC, Android, Apple, Apps, Asus, Google, Intel, Intel Capital, iOS 6, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NBA, Tablets Tagged With: ABC, Apple, Asus, Google, Google Glass, iPad, iPhone, NBA

Watching NASCAR: Bruised Teams Head to Charlotte

October 12, 2012 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

If the old saw “Misery loves company” is true, it sure had a lot last weekend at Talladega where the track took its toll among the leaders in the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship, and like a living entity it waited until almost the end to extract as much drama as possible.

Tony Stewart was defending his lead on the last lap when he moved over to block some fast moving traffic. In hindsight I am sure that he did not want to end the evening sailing through the air as part of the 25 car pileup that he created, one of the most spectacular crashed this year. He had just zoomed to the lead at the start of a two lap sprint to the checkered flag and moved to block Michael Waltrip’s car and clipped the car, starting the mayhem

The move did not just hurt his finish at the race but featured 10 of the 12 drivers competing for the Cup as, not surprising; they were all competing for a top finish at the restrictor-plate track. The ultimate beneficiary of the accident was Matt Kenseth, who won under a caution flag. The rest of the field included Jeff Gordon at second followed by Kyle Busch, David Ragan and Regan Smith.

The toll of the crash will be felt for some time now. Dale Earnhardt Jr. suffered a concussion in the crash, and following an unreported one that he suffered in an August race that was just too much for him and he is shutting down for at least the next two races, killing his hopes for winning the Sprint Cup Championship for this year. He was currently 11th in the standings.

This Week: Bank of America 500
This week everybody heads to the Charlotte Motor Speedway for the Bank of America 500. Hopefully everybody’s bruises from last week have had time to heal before they tackle Charlotte’s 1.5 mile quad oval under the lights.

Broadcast: Oct 13 at 7 pm ET ABC

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Sprint Cup Standings
1) Brad Keselowski
2) Jimmie Johnson -14
3) Denny Hamlin -23
4) Kasey Kahne -36
5) Clint Boyer -40
6) Jeff Gordon -42
7) Tony Stewart -46
8 ) Martin Truex Jr. -48
9) Greg Biffle -49
10) Kevin Harvick -49
11) Dale Earnhardt Jr. -51
12) Matt Kenseth -62

Nationwide Series
I am pretty sure that there was a collective sigh from the Nationwide drivers when they saw the last lap at Talladega last week, glad that they did not find themselves in that mess. With no race last week they could prepare for this week’s race without the problem of possibly needing a new car.

This Week: Dollar General 300
I somehow though this race was last week- sorry about that.

Broadcast: Oct. 12 7 pm ET ESPN

Nationwide Standings
1) Elliott Sadler
2) Ricky Stenhouse Jr. -9
3) Austin Dillon -25
4) Sam Hornish Jr. -60
5) Justin Allgaier -128

Filed Under: ABC, Charlotte Motor Speedway, ESPN, Greg Biffle, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch, NASCAR, Nationwide Series, Rickey Stenhouse Jr., Sam Hornish Jr., Sprint Cup Series, Talladega Superspeedway, Tony Stewart Tagged With: ABC, ESPN, NASCAR, Nationwide, Sprint Cup

Friday Grab Bag: $1 Billion for perfect March Madness bracket?

MLB, NFL team up to battle Aereo

Friday Grab Bag: Watch NBA Finals on Select Mobile Devices: New Rival to Google Glass

Watching NASCAR: Bruised Teams Head to Charlotte

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