PGA bans fan mobile-device videos, audio recordings at all events

Screen Shot 2015-04-30 at 12.40.33 PMThe PGA Tour has issued some new rules governing fan use of mobile devices during tournaments, including a new ban on any fan video or audio recording during any PGA tournament.

In a press release titled “PGA TOUR expands use of mobile devices by spectators at PGA TOUR tournaments,” the Tour claimed it was expanding the days and times fans could use their mobile devices to take photographs, but the accompanying restrictions seemed aimed more at reducing fans’ ability to obtain images, not expanding them. Though the new rules allow pictures to be taken during competition days, it also states that photos may not be taken “within any areas of competition,” including greens, tee boxes and landing areas — maybe leaving putting greens and clubhouses the only “new” areas where competition-day photos can be legally taken.

The new specific rules on audio and video — “Devices may not be used to capture audio/video at any time during tournament week” — may be an attempt to correct a seeming disparity that gained notice last year when a reporter’s PGA Tour credentials were pulled in part for her use of the live-streaming video Periscope app. At that time, fans were still permitted to shoot video and use Periscope at certain times, a strange double standard that the PGA Tour never fully explained. Now, it appears that nobody other than the PGA’s approved media partners will be able to show or record videos from golf tournaments.

Of course, rules are one thing and enforcement is another, and the idea that the PGA Tour could police every instance of fan mobile-device usage is somewhat absurd. Even if Tour officials were watching a fan, it’s hard to tell how the official could determine if a fan was taking a picture or a video, so our guess is the new “rules” are meant mainly as a self-policing measure. It’s possible that the Tour could work with app providers like Periscope, YouTube or Instagram to try to get golf videos removed from those sites, but so far we haven’t heard of any such instances.

We will update this post if and when we can talk to PGA folks. In the meantime, the new rules are below.

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Friday Grab Bag: 3D tablet, Dodgers ruled social media in 2013

It just would not feel like a week has gone by unless there was another iPhone or iPad rumor, and it looks like we will meet that goal once again. While we have already mentioned the possibility of a hybrid iPad this week now comes the possibility of a iPhone phablet.

According to Yahoo there may be one as soon as May, in a line that will be differentiated from the iPhone family. That family should get its next member, now called the iPhone 6, sometime later in the year, it reported.

Google Glass rival coming into focus
Once Google made huge headlines with its Google Glass concept rivals have been shooting at the company touting alternative offerings, and among that pack has been Taiwanese manufacturer ChipSiP that this week showed a prototype effort called Smart Glass.

The Smart Glass looks much like Google Glass, runs a full Android 4.2 operating system and features a 1.2Ghz dual core processor with 1GB of RAM as well as 4GB of storage. ChipSiP, which is an original device manufacture (ODM), expects one or more of its partners to start shipping glasses this year priced in the sub $1,000 range.

Hampoo tp deliver 3D tablet
The latest version a glasses-free 3D tablet has been shown this week by developer Hampoo that said it will release the unmanned tablet later this month to an as yet unnamed price. The display has a 1920 x 1200 resolution and a built-in software conversion engine can render 2D into 3D images without glasses.

Other features include the Android 4.0 operating system, a 1.5GHz TI OMAP4470 dual core processor with 1GB RAM, 16GB storage that can be doubled via an optional MicroSD card and the ability to run 1080p HD movies.

MLB a money making machine
Have you ever wondered how baseball always manages to give players multimillion dollar contracts that are guaranteed while the NFL, always seeming crying poor, usually only guarantees the first year or so?

Well Forbes does a real nice job breaking down how much money baseball actually rakes in, and how it spreads a good deal of it around so that while it is not an entirely level playing field, it is as close as it will likely ever come.

Dodgers ruled sports social media
While the Los Angeles Dodgers may have failed to reach the World Series last year with the team’s $200 million payroll it did reach several other milestones including having the team’s home park, Chavez Ravine, as the most “checked-in” sports venue.

In led the league in 2013 in growth on Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram, according to MLB, and was the fourth most checked-in site overall in the world. And as a minor thing it lead MLB in attendance with 3,743,527 fans.

An interesting year in review of ESPN
Ever wonder why some stories that seem relatively inane or trivial gain so much momentum on ESPN? Or wonder what is actually going on at the World Wide Sports Leader? Well Deadspin has put together a pretty interesting year in review for the network.

One of the more interesting pieces is how by having all of its different talking heads repeat something on all of its different channels it can blow something way out of proportion, and the example of that was its big Colin Kaepernick story.

Facebook seeks to expands sports reach with Sportstream relationship

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Facebook is working to make vague sporting references a thing of the past. OK not all of them but its recent partnership with Sportstream should help shed some light on many of the references that can be found in peoples’ posts.

The relationship will enable Facebook to better compete against rivals such as Twitter where there is a huge amount of sports chatter, something that Facebook would like to gain a much larger share of going forward.

Sportstream already has the ability to parse through the publicly available data on sports from sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as well as following all of the games, league news and other relevant information such as athletes’ social media accounts to present a picture of what is going on in sports.

Now Facebook will be opening the kimono and providing information that it culls from posts in its Keyword Insights API which aggregates what users are posting privately about as well as to what they are posting publicly via its Public Feed API.

While plenty of leagues and teams have Facebook pages, they are not usually one of the primary stops for fans to converse with each other. The deal with Sportstream will help Facebook track what fans are talking about and viewing, and help it present that information in context.

The deal represents a major step forward for Sportstream, which started out delivering apps for consumers that was in many ways a glorified football chat room. From there it morphed into a broader based sports app that followed multiple sports and provided filterable Twitter and other social media feeds.

It has a number of products but it is its Sportsbase solution, that enables teams to create custom social media products that enables customers to create custom team pages that track what is being said on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as well as what representing what is happening on the field.

The company has been seeing a growing interest in its analytical capabilities and has some impressive clients including the UCLA Bruins, Oregon Ducks, and the Miami Hurricanes.

There are other players in the field of collecting, collating and presenting social media with TigerLogic and its Postano platform offering very similar capabilities. However it appears to be primarily focused on providing that information to individual teams, but that can change.

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

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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.

Ever wonder how adept your NFL team is with social media?

The news from earlier this week that the aptly named AT&T Stadium that the Dallas Cowboys play in had a record amount of Wi-Fi traffic for the teams’ season opening game , 3x over last year, is no surprise to the people at social marketing firm W20 which has rated all of the NFL stadiums for their social media prowess and the Cowboys come in second.

Now this is not just a barometer of Wi-Fi traffic by any means and judges teams on a variety of metrics, but when it is all said and done you need the hardware and networking infrastructure to have a solid approach to social media and AT&T Stadium had 25,000 Wi-Fi connections using up 1.3 million Mbytes of data.

W20 has attempted to rate all 32 NFL teams on their ability to use social media to connect with their respective fans. It used use a proprietary algorithm that indexes social engagement scores from a wide variety of social media sites including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

Even with a spanking brand new stadium it had to be upgraded during the off season to meet expected demand. The interesting thing is that the 49ers, who play in an old, dilapidated stadium, are number one. However the 49ers, being adjacent to Silicon Valley are quite aware of the importance of social media and are in a place where all of the expertise needed to support it is near at hand.

The team’s new stadium, slated to open next season, is expected to be a state of the art wonder including its wireless infrastructure that it claims will be state of the art.

The interesting thing about the poll is how quickly teams drop in the ratings. The 49ers rate a perfect 100, yet the #5 team, the Washington Redskins, has only a 66.87 rating while the last place Cincinnati Bengals have a 26.91. I think my high school would rank higher!

The NFL is only now catching on that Wi-Fi and other associated social media apps are now a basic component in fans lives. They take pictures from tailgaters to post on Facebook and Instagram, check fantasy results, trash talk friends and a host of other activities.

However they do not just create social media data, they consume it. The teams have a captive audience that is obviously receptive to looking, reading and participating. An Instagram effort to get fans pictures posted, Facebook contests at stadiums, best Twitter commentary, all help to engage fans and are functions teams could be doing, but for the most part are not.

There are a number of other rating systems that have judged the same thing for the NFL, but as we reported earlier the league badly lags in developing and delivering the hardware, networking and apps needed to be at the forefront of the convergence of sports and media.

While the NFL is king of the hill in American sports , the league has been worried about the slow erosion in attendance. New stadiums often push old time fans to poorer seats, expensive parking, seats and food and beverages add on. A big screen at a friends house and NFL Red Zone each weekend might cost a fan just a six pack as the rice of admission. By providing access to social media and the greater world outside the NFL can in some ways make the stadium experience more enjoyable for fans and so help keep them in the parks.

Something to think about next time you are sitting at a game with 5 bars and no connection.

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.