ESPN continues to ramp up cricket coverage

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Just a few weeks ago ESPN announced that it would be carrying the biennial 2014 ICC World Twenty20 Cricket Championship across multiple platforms and the network has now added additional coverage to its lineup.

Next up is the India Professional League (IPL) cricket which comes to the sports giant via a deal with Willow TV that gives ESPN exclusive digital rights to the matches in the US, which the network will be making available on ESPN3.

The broadcasts will start on April 16th and run through the end of the season on June 1 and will include pre- and post- game coverage as well as the matches themselves. The pre and post game coverage will also be available online and to mobile platforms via ESPNcricinfo.

The deal will result in ESPN3 showing seven “Game of the Week” matches as well as both IPL semifinal matches and ESPN can show unlimited highlights from those events. It also has limited access to select highlights from all of the other IPL matches played during the season.

While not all of the matches will be made available a number of them will be able to be viewed across the spectrum of platforms that are reached by ESPN3 that includes smartphones and tablets by using the WatchESPN app. It can also be streamed to a television using a variety of platforms using ESPN on Xbox LIVE to Gold members, Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV.

ESPN published some numbers from its ESPNcricinfo site and I was surprised at how popular it has become. According to the network it is among the five most visited single sport digital sites. It was founded in 1993 and acquired by ESPN in 2007. Its mobile presence is huge with 141 million visits and 2 billion minutes of time spent on the site each month.

Hopefully this move will turn into a ratings success for ESPN and so encourage it and its rivals to both promote more international sports as well as make them available to the digital world where increasingly fans are using mobile devices to follow their favorite teams and sports.

Friday Grab Bag: Where is the MLS TV deal?

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.

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

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.

ESPN to live stream Cricket Championships

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While the average American may only know of cricket as a game that some say partially evolved into baseball it has a huge worldwide following, particularly in parts of the British Commonwealth where England helped establish the game when it ruled a vast empire.

For fans of the game ESPN will be presenting the biennial 2014 ICC World Twenty20 Cricket Championship as a multiplatform broadcast so that viewers can follow the event on a wide variety of formats including old fashion broadcast television.

The tournament will be covered live from Bangladesh on ESPN3 and will be available to any fan that also subscribes to an affiliate’s video or Internet service so that users can watch online at WatchESPN as well as streamed on televisions through ESPN on Xbox LIVE to Gold members, Apple TV and Roku. All of the matches will be broadcast live.

The broadcasts will start with coverage of the India vs Pakistan match on March 21st and will end with the championship round on April 6. The championship will also be broadcast on ESPN2. If a viewer misses a match the games will also be available for a short time after their conclusion on ESPN3. Select highlights will be available after the tournament on ESPN TV On Demand. Also included will be the ICC Women’s World Twenty20 semifinals and final will also be delivered live on ESPN3.

The network’s ESPNcricinfo.com site will also be providing extensive coverage including pre and post game analysis and in-match commentary.

Friday Grab Bag: 14 New ESPN Channels — mainly online

ESPN is launching 15 virtual networks for users of Apple TV and Roku boxes that provide Internet connectivity to their televisions as part of its ongoing WatchESPN initiative. The new channels’ programming will be culled from related conference programming from the network’s existing portfolio that includes ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPNU and others.

Some of the programming will include select live events including college basketball. Others such as college football will only be available via on-demand broadcasting. The channels will feature the ACC, America East, Atlantic Sun, Big South, Big West, Horizon, Mid-American, Metro Atlantic Athletic, Missouri Valley, Northeast, Ohio Valley, Southern, Sun Belt and Southland conferences. In addition there will be a combined channel featuring coverage of historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) and conferences including the Southwestern Athletic Conference, Mid-Eastern Athletic and Central Intercollegiate Athletic conferences.
Fox Sports 1 has new MLB show
Fox Sports will be broadcasting a new slate of games this year, with a preference for teams that have regional Fox broadcast deals, and it will have the opportunity to highlight its games with its new MLB Whiparound show.

Airing Monday-Friday at 10 pm ET (but 12 midnight on Wednesdays) the program will be up against one of ESPN’s flagship programs Baseball Tonight and the MLB Network’s MLB tonight, all of which start at the same hour.

The Raiders to Portland?
There are a few fans in Portland, Ore., who are running a campaign to get the state to encourage the Oakland Raiders to move north to Portland, a city that lost its Single A baseball team a few years ago due to lack of support.

While the Raiders’ owner has said that the team would look to move if Oakland does not solve its stadium issue (it wants a new one) it seems highly unlikely that Portland would be its first choice with Los Angeles open. However the mix between Portland hipsters and die hard Raider fans would be great to watch.


NBC had to provide make-good ads for Olympics

Advertising Age is reporting that the broadcast giant has to provide make-good ads to some of its Olympics customers because while it won the broadcast bragging rights for virtually every night it fell short of the projected ratings.

However the network feels good about the overall results and is optimistic about its next Olympics broadcast, the 2016 Summer games in Rio. It has already started to sell ads for that event.

Minor League Baseball team has selfie promotion
One of the great things about minor league baseball are the interesting promotions that many of the teams engage in. What is possible the first of the upcoming season comes from the Kalamazoo Growlers.

They are having a promotion centered around selfies called the Salute to Selfie Night this season. The event calls for fans to take pictures of themselves and submit them, from which the team will make a jersey with the images reproduced in collage form. So practice your duck face now!

DISH Network and Disney deal boon to digital sports fans

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The Walt Disney Company, parent of ESPN, has reached a long term deal with DISH Network that will open up Disney content for broadcasting to DISH customers not just for television but also across multiple digital platforms.

The deal calls for the cancellation of all legal proceedings between the two parties as well as providing content to DISH subscribers. For sports fans this means access to established sports programming such as ESPN and ESPN2.

However new or just emerging channels will also be available to fans such as the soon to be launched SEC channel and the Longhorn Network as well. The deal for the SEC and Longhorn channel also enables DISH to provide these and other programming such as WatchESPN as a live and on demand digital stream to computers, tablets and smartphones using the DISH anywhere app.

However the digital portion of the deal requires that users subscribe to DISH Networks at a prescribed level in order to receive the services. Other properties such as Disney Junior, ABC Family, Disney Channel and Fusion also fall into the broadcast, live streaming category. There will also be expanded on-demand content availability including content from ESPN Deportes and from ESPN Films.

As the digital environment evolves, and most likely expands, going forward the deal has spelled out how they can go about taking advantage of this space. It provides a structure for other advertising models such as dynamic ad insertion and advertising on mobile devices.

Overall the deal will enable approximately 14 million satellite television viewers to have access to ESPN both on their televisions and as a second screen option going forward.

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