Watching Golf this Week: The British Open, and the Tiger Internet Channel debut

Screen Shot 2014-07-10 at 11.21.37 PMIn honor of ESPN fulfilling our longtime wish for continuous coverage of Tiger Woods at a golf tournament, we are bringing back our Watching Golf this Week feature. And for this weekend’s third major of the season, the British Open (aka the Open Championship) the viewing guide is easy: Just check ESPN, both on the tube and online, because the worldwide leader will give you wall to wall coverage of the action that starts Thursday morning at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, England.

So what’s the deal with the Tiger Cam? We haven’t interviewed anyone at ESPN but it’s easy to see how this idea came about: With Eldrick finally returning to the pro golf majors scene for the first time this year after back surgery, there is an incredible amount of pent-up Tiger interest. Still easily the biggest draw in golf — just go to any tourney he’s in and watch where the crowd goes — Woods is an even bigger interest item this week, with everyone wanting to see if he is A) recovered enough to play competitively, and if so, B) if he’s good enough to start the Nicklaus majors-hunt in earnest.

While ESPN will most certainly cut to Woods whenever possible during normal telecast coverage, the idea of putting a camera on Woods only and using ESPN3, one of the company’s “Internet channels” to show streaming coverage is a masterstroke. Not only will you lure in potential “casual” viewers who might not give a hoot who Martin Kaymer is but who will watch Woods, you will also likely get golf nuts doing the two-screen dance, with the TV on the regular coverage and a phone, tablet or laptop following Woods. At the very least it’s a great experiment and one we expect will be copied (at least we hope so) in other sports, soon.

But while you might not want be so fired up to watch something like a “quarterback cam” or a “third baseman cam,” individual player coverage in things like golf tournaments is a perfect idea. In fact, most online golf efforts for the majors over the past few years have had “featured group” channels online, where they follow attractive pairings throughout a round. This is not really much different except for the focus on Woods, which some will no doubt say is unworthy, since Woods is only a single player, he’s not bigger than the game, blah blah blah. Tiger fans get it, and will (I predict) turn out in the millions to watch every shot he takes over the weekend. Here’s hoping for Tiger, ESPN and for golf that the cams stay on through Sunday. Plus you can watch it mobile, via the WatchESPN app. Good on ya, ESPN.

There will, of course, be other stories from Liverpool, including whatever magic defending champ Phil Mickelson can conjure, and whether or not we will see Major-winning Rory McIlroy finally fulfill his Open dreams, or whether he’ll continue to sputter in the big events. If I could I’d bet a few pounds on American Ricky Fowler, who has been steadily doing well in majors this year. Is this his breakthrough event? Are the British ready for an all-orange winner on Sunday? Or will Sergio Garcia finally come through? It all gets underway Thursday, and for once we’ll have a way to watch and see exactly everything that Tiger does.

BONUS: Doug Ferguson penned an excellent, technically correct article about Wi-Fi at Royal Liverpool. Hello Augusta, can you hear me now?

THE OPEN CHAMPIONSIP

ESPN COVERAGE
This is long, but worth it… what follows is the entire ESPN lineup of content from The Open (all times U.S. Eastern):

Screen Shot 2014-07-16 at 9.58.08 AM

FACEBOOK PAGE
Get yourself close to the Claret Jug at The Open’s Facebook page.

TOP TWITTER FEEDS TO FOLLOW
The Open’s own Twitter feed.
Geoff Shackelford — well known golf writer. If you’re not following Geoff you are missing the online boat.
Golf Channel — official Golf Channel feed
@PGATOUR — official PGA Twitter feed
@StephanieWei — great golf writer who is a Twitter fiend.
Doug Ferguson is the lead golf writer for AP. Good Twitter insights that often aren’t part of your wire-service lead.

TOURNAMENT APP
One of the better event apps, the Open’s App has everything you want in a handheld device app. iPad, iPhone and Android, even Windows. You will still need the ESPN contract to view live video, though. Still, well worth the download especially for the Thursday-Friday times when you may be at work.

WHAT’S THE COURSE LIKE?

Everything we’re reading says that Royal Liverpool (aka Hoylake) will play much differently than it did back in 2006, when Tiger did his 1-iron stinger thing, hitting only one driver all weekend en route to victory. According to an AP story today Tiger says the greens are soft, which might mean that American players unused to links golf might have a better chance. To us, it really doesn’t matter which course they use for the Open Championship. We’re so tired of TPC layouts by this time of the year that basically anything links-like is a refreshing slap in the face, like an ocean breeze. Fore, gentlemen.

WHO WON THIS THING LAST YEAR?

C’mon, do you need to ask? HEFTY!

FEDEX CUP LEADERS
1. Jimmy Walker, 2,322 points
2. Bubba Watson, 2,135
3. Matt Kuchar, 1,725
4. Dustin Johnson, 1,701
5. Jordan Spieth, 1,636

WORLD GOLF RANKINGS
1. Adam Scott; 2. Henrik Stenson; 3. Justin Rose; 4. Bubba Watson; 5. Matt Kuchar.

And… for those of you late risers who miss the Open coverage, don’t forget to watch Annika take on Michael Jordan and John Elway in Tahoe at the American Century Classic:

AMERICAN CENTURY CLASSIC TV
Friday, July 18 — NBC, 4 p.m. — 7 p.m.
Saturday, July 19 — NBC, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.
Sunday, July 20 — NBC, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.

ESPN to make ‘TigerCam’ idea come true: ESPN3 will live-stream Woods’ British Open rounds

Call me a visionary. Call me media-savvy when it comes to golf. Go ahead. Because it was almost 2 years ago that I asked why some broadcaster couldn’t tee up what golf fans really wanted — 24/7 coverage of Tiger Woods. And now, ESPN is doing just that for the upcoming British Open, live-streaming every round that Tiger will play on its ESPN3 Internet channel.

Like the very successful Megacast of the most recent BCS Championship game, I think ESPN’s decision to offer one of its many outlets as all Tiger, all the time, is brilliant. I’ll even go out on a limb here and predict that for the first 2 days of the tournament, the ESPN3 Tiger feed will outdraw the regular ESPN coverage. OK maybe not but it will be huge, and it will set online golf watching records — I’ll bet a virtual pint of warm ale on that.

Say what you will about Woods as a person, and call him washed up as a golfer. There is still a huge army of people who, whether they are Tiger fans or just Tiger followers, find him so far more compelling than any other pro golfer currently playing that they would watch him playing mini-golf before they watch, say, Zach Johnson or Brendt Snedeker.

No offense guys. Your results show you’re outstanding golfers. But when it comes to professional golf, there’s nobody currently active who moves the needle like Woods — not even Phil Mickelson, who is also a tremendous golfer in his own right. But have you watched Phil play? A lot? It’s an exercise in pain, most of the time. When will Phil crack is a much different show than the Tiger show. And it’s a brilliant move by ESPN, because nobody can claim they are shirking other coverage just to show Tiger. That’s the beauty of multiple streams from the same event… and let’s hope this is just the first of many such experiments. Bravo, ESPN!

ESPN’s streaming World Cup: Record audiences, embarrassing crashes

Just like the U.S. Men’s soccer team, ESPN had it both good and bad during Wednesday’s World Cup game against Germany. On the plus side, ESPN recorded record audiences for its online broadcasts, easily topping any other sporting event ever, including Super Bowls.

But the bad was about as bad as the U.S. team’s somewhat lackluster shutout. By several accounts, including our personal viewing, ESPN’s live stream of the game crashed several times, and was (according to complaints on Twitter) simply unavailable for many viewers. While it’s an inexact science to track down how and why the problems may have been caused, there seems to be enough circumstantial evidence pointing to some pretty massive infrastructure failures from the worldwide leader. According to the Variety story, Univision’s live stream had no such problems, even though its size was smaller.

The line I love from the Variety story penned by our good pal Todd Spangler is the ESPN rep quoting “unprecedented demand” as a reason for the crashes. It would be one thing if something unexpected happened — like, say, the lights went out — and all of a sudden there was a huge audience that tuned in. But ESPN had to know the online viewership was going to be massive days ahead of time, given the start time in the middle of most of the U.S. business working hours. Plus, ESPN itself has spent the entire World Cup blasting emails about every 10 minutes or so, telling everyone it knows to tune in to games online. So: Huge demand? Yes. Unprecendented? Maybe. Unknown that it was coming? Unexplainable.

Maybe we’re holding ESPN to an unreal expectation here, but I’m trying to think how bad the fallout would be if Fox, or NBC, say, dropped the TV broadcast of a big event for even a few minutes. Media outlets around the world would be howling. It seems like online broadcasts are still getting a pass from observers, as if online doesn’t really count. But according to ESPN’s own numbers, online does count and the audiences are huge — 3.2 million uniques for the game — so why can’t big broadcasters put in an appropriate amount of resources to make sure the show goes on smoothly? Is it just that nobody really knows yet how much capacity it takes to keep a big event running? In that case, are advertisers and/or the sports who sell the online rights asking for refunds or make-goods?

As always we give a hats off to ESPN or any other broadcaster who tries to make as much content as possible available online. We just hope that going forward, those same broadcasters recognize that online is a significant, serious market, and that you underestimate your needs at your own peril.

The U.S. Open’s last hurrah on NBC, ESPN — last chance for good online golf?

If there’s one thing that’s been a bonus of ESPN’s coverage of the U.S. Open golf championship, it’s the fact that for those of us on the West coast, coverage starts at 6 a.m. local time. That means that by the time most of us are at our computers Thursday or Friday, there’s already live golf to be found. For one last time, we’ll enjoy it as the lads tee it up at Pinehurst No. 2 starting Thursday morn.

Will it be the same next year when Fox takes over? Though Fox did a decent job of the Super Bowl online this past big game, there’s no telling how good or how bad Fox’s golf broadcasts will be, and much less how much Fox will devote to online efforts. If the past is any clue, we may see a regression of sorts when it comes to online options from Fox. For this year, anyway, we’ll still have the rich options usually available from ESPN (including the WatchESPN app) as well as the above-decent online offerings from NBC for the weekend play.

You can, of course, also use the official U.S. Open apps or mobile websites to get mobile/online coverage of two featured groups and featured holes, a la the Masters but with less depth. And if you can stand the amount of time it takes for all the dumb features to load, the PGA’s new home page will certainly be kept up to date with scores and video highlights, as well as pointers to where you can watch live stuff.

NBC, which earned all kinds of honors recently for its online coverage (especially its Olympic streaming efforts) still, in my book, is learning how to do all this. Yes, there was lots of Olympics stuff online, but you had to hunt really hard to find the actual live programming late at night from Sochi — and when you did, the NBC window could spoil the results for you, since the integrated Twitter feed was usually a minute or two AHEAD of the NBC “live” online broadcast. Still, NBC and the NBC-owned Golf Channel should have more info and analysis than you could possibly want all weekend.

If you are watching on an actual television set, the ESPN coverage on Thursday and Friday goes from 9 a.m. Eastern to 3 p.m. ET, then you switch over to NBC for two hours, and then back to ESPN for the last two hours of coverage. On the weekend, it’ll be the last call for Johnny “63” Miller as lead broadcaster, as NBC covers things from noon ET to 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and Sunday from noon until the winning putt drops. Or until there’s a tie and an 18-hole Monday playoff.

ESPN launches updated soccer site, apps, ahead of World Cup

Just in time for the World Cup soccer tournament (which will happen if they ever finish building the stadiums), ESPN has announced an official launch of the newly redesigned ESPNFC.com website, which the worldwide leader promises will bring “comprehensive multiplatform World Cup coverage from Brazil and around the globe.”

So it’s not just World Cup matches but pretty much anything soccer that you want or need to know will be available via the site as well as through the new ESPN FC app, available for either iPhone or Android. According to ESPN, as the official FIFA U.S. broadcaster, its app will have access to live video highlights “moments after they happen.” Like we said, as long as they finish building the stadiums.

Screen shot of ESPN FC app

Screen shot of ESPN FC app

Another screen shot of the ESPN FC app. Do you have World Cup Fever yet?

Another screen shot of the ESPN FC app. Do you have World Cup Fever yet?

NFL playoff expansion on hold

Playoff games will be a bit more spread around this post season in the NFL as NBC will be adding a divisional round game and ESPN will be getting a Wild Card game. The ESPN game will be also broadcast over the air in the cities of the two teams that are playing.

Meanwhile the talk of expansion of the playoffs looks like it has been delayed, at least in the near term. NY Giants team president John Mara spoke to Newsday and said that he believed that the earliest additional post season games would be added would be in 2015. Commissioner Goodell had been pushing for this year.

NFL Players to land Tweet deal
Fans quite often follow their favorite athletes on Twitter, or at least ones that might make outspoken or interesting statements. Well now they may say something along the lines of “This Tweet brought to you by…”

A deal between the NFL Players Inc. and digital marketing company Opendorse will work to get endorsement deals for players who will be paid to tout the products via Twitter. According to Sports Business Journal Opendorse has already signed 200 players.

Top NFL Draft misses?
One of the byproducts of the huge NFL mock draft industry is that it sometimes makes some glaring mistakes. I think that most fans have a love/hate relationship with top online and broadcast mock drafters and really enjoy bringing up this topic.

Awful Announcing has complied just that type of list and leads off a historcial gem with Mel Kiper saying that JaMarcus Russell, the Oakland Raiders top draft selection in 2007 is the next John Elway. It just gets better after that but a few I was hoping to see did not make the cut, which may say something about the number of mock draft failures.

World Cup teams have needs too
Who knew that World Cup teams had demands that will most likely force rock stars to improve their game when it comes to making demands from the hotels where the teams stay. Kosher meat, fresh bananas from your native country and only liquid soap, none of that old fashion bar soap, which is apparently not good enough for the French.

According to SB Nation many are demanding the televisions carry broadcasts from home with Honduras demanding six Spanish speaking stations. Japan needs a Jacuzzi in every room. And I thought that Van Halen was demanding because they did not want brown M&Ms.

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