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Stadium Tech Report: THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL ISSUE looks at university Wi-Fi deployments

December 15, 2014 by

collegethumbIf there was a college football playoff for stadium wireless network deployments, which four teams would be in? Electing myself to the committee, I think my top picks would be the same venues we’re profiling in our latest Stadium Tech Report – Baylor, Nebraska, Stanford and Texas A&M. All four are pursuing high-end networks to support a better fan experience, leading the way for what may turn out to be the largest “vertical” market in the stadium networking field – sporting venues at institutions of higher learning.

To be sure, network deployments at major universities in the U.S. are still at the earliest stages — in our reporting for our latest long-form report, we found that at two of the top conferences, the SEC and the Pac-12, only four schools total (two in each conference) had fan-facing Wi-Fi, with only one more planned to come online next year. Why is the collegiate market so far behind the pro market when it comes to network deployment? There are several main reasons, but mostly it comes down to money and mindset, with a lack of either keeping schools on the sidelines.

Leaders look for NFL-type experiences

But at our “playoff” schools, it’s clear that with some ready budget and a clear perspective, college stadiums don’t need to take a back seat to anyone, pro stadiums included. The networks, apps and infrastructure deployed for this season at Baylor’s McLane Stadium and Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium are among the tops anywhere in sports, and the all-fiber infrastructure being put in place at Texas A&M should make that school’s Kyle Field among the most-connected if all work gets completed on time for next football season. Read in-depth profiles on these schools’ deployments, along with team-by-team capsule technology descriptions and an exclusive interview with Mississippi State athletic director Scott Stricklin in our latest report, available for free download from our site.

We’d like to take a second here to thank our sponsors, without whom we wouldn’t be able to offer these comprehensive reports to you free of charge. For our fourth-quarter report our sponsors include Crown Castle, SOLiD, Extreme Networks, Aruba Networks, TE Connectivity, and Corning.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, Cisco, DAS, iPhone, MSR Guides, NCAA Football, Pac-12, SEC, University of Oregon, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Extreme announces strategic partnership with IMG’s college division

December 9, 2014 by

In a move that could net Extreme Networks some more college stadium Wi-Fi deals, Extreme announced it had entered into a strategic partnership with marketing giant IMG, as the “Official Wi-Fi Provider of IMG College.”

Though the partnership doesn’t guarantee that Extreme will sell Wi-Fi gear, being the “preferred supplier” to IMG College’s stable of 90 collegiate “institutions” — a list that includes schools, conferences and venues — gives Extreme a leg up as those entities decide on providers for wireless network deployments. While IMG College might not be the final decision-maker when it comes to network deployments, its wide-ranging representation of media rights, licensing deals and other tasks for its clients certainly won’t hurt Extreme’s chances when it comes to picking a Wi-Fi gear supplier.

For what it’s worth, Extreme signed a similar non-binding deal with the NFL in January of this year, which did not require teams to purchase Extreme equipment. However, prior to this season four new teams — the Seattle Seahawks, the Tennessee Titans, the Cincinnati Bengals and the Jacksonville Jaguars all signed deals to use Extreme gear in their Wi-Fi deployments. We haven’t spoken to Extreme or IMG yet so we don’t know if the college partnership will offer IMG clients discounts on Wi-Fi gear, like Extreme does for NFL teams. Extreme recently also won the Wi-Fi gear bid for the new McLane Stadium at Baylor University, which is an IMG client.

Filed Under: Basketball, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Niners’ CEO gives Levi’s Stadium operations a ‘B’ grade

December 5, 2014 by

Jed York, Niners CEO, speaking at tech summit at Levi's Stadium. Credit all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR

Jed York, Niners CEO, speaking at tech summit at Levi’s Stadium. Credit all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR

San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York, who caused a stir last week by apologizing for his team’s play on Twitter, on Thursday gave the operation of his club’s new Levi’s Stadium an above-average grade of “B” for the first four months of its inaugural season.

Speaking at a technology-focused fan-experience and innovation summit held Thursday at the stadium’s “501” club, York said “I’d give us a ‘B’ on our execution [at Levi’s Stadium] this year,” citing parking issues and foot-traffic flow into the stadium as problems not yet fully solved for the 68,500-seat facility in Santa Clara, Calif.

Given the new stadium’s complicated location — in the middle of a busy corporate-headquarters area and right next to the Great America theme park — it was probably somewhat of a given that there would be parking struggles the first season, as fans, police, traffic directors and stadium workers all figured out how to make the dance work. Though some progress has been made during the season, York said that “parking and just getting people here” remain the biggest issue he sees at Levi’s Stadium.

While the Niners have tried to use technology to solve the problems of getting fans inside (with app-based parking maps and wayfinding), York said that despite plans to funnel fans through the correct gates to get more quickly to their seats, many fans still just head for the gate that’s closest to their parking or train arrival spot, which has sometimes led to big backups at the check-in lines.

On the networking side of things, York said all seemed to be going well with the stadium’s Wi-Fi and cellular networks, which have performed well in a series of ad hoc tests conducted by MSR in visits this season.

“We haven’t had any [network] glitches, but we’ve been doing a lot of tweaking,” York said. The Levi’s Stadium app has been the center of most of that tweaking, with continual upgrades to add features and fix problems like an Android bug that surfaced in a mid-November revision. York said that the Niners have been careful to make sure the human engineering behind the technology is solid before launching new things, like having enough runners to support the feature that allows food to be ordered and delivered to seats.

Levi's Stadium ready for the Pac-12 championship game

Levi’s Stadium ready for the Pac-12 championship game

And though it hasn’t been officially confirmed yet, York said the team might debut a planned feature of having team merchandise available for purchase and delivery to seats at the next home game, Dec. 20 vs. San Diego. John Paul, CEO of Levi’s Stadium app developer VenueNext, also spoke at the summit Thursday and said in an interview that the Dec. 20 game might also see the debut of a new feature that adds in mass transit and Uber wait times. (A good idea for fans going to the stadium is to check on game day morning for any updates to the app.)

On the app side, York said one surprise was the fairly low uptake of fans using the app’s instant replay features. After fans watched 7,800 replays during the regular-season home opener (the first game replays were available in the app), usage has gone down, with less than 4,000 replays watched during the last home game against Seattle.

“We thought that mobile replays would be absolutely a home run feature, but it hasn’t got that much traction,” said York. The culprit, he said, might be the twin HD displays above each end zone at Levi’s Stadium, which are somewhat stunning in their clarity. “We do have great video boards,” York said.

In his talk York also thought out loud about the possibility of using wearable technology to both better help prevent player injuries as well as being able to provide more rich detail for fans, like how hard a hit was on the field. But he also stressed that technology at Levi’s Stadium was not meant to be used for technology’s sake, but instead to improve the experience of being at the game. And improvement on the stadium staff’s execution, York said, will go a long way to making it all work together.

“When we get to an A, or A+, people will really be blown away,” York said.

Levi's Stadium at twilight

Levi’s Stadium at twilight

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, DAS, NFL, Seattle Seahwaks, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Levi’s Stadium update: Wi-Fi traffic steady at 2.3+ TB per game, Amazon and Google lead apps use

December 4, 2014 by

Scoreboard promo for the Levi's Wi-Fi network

Scoreboard promo for the Levi’s Wi-Fi network

Usage of the Wi-Fi network at the San Francisco 49ers’ new Levi’s Stadium continues to hold steady at 2.3-plus Terabytes of data offloaded per game, according to the most recent statistics provided by the Niners’ network staff.

Though he’s no longer the team’s vice president of technology, former Levi’s network guru Dan Williams remains as a game-day consultant to the team, and he shared some recent network statistics with MSR, including some app usage marks that show Amazon Cloud Drive and Google APIs being among the top two applications being used over the Levi’s Stadium Wi-Fi network.

According to Williams’ numbers, for the Niners’ Nov. 23 day home game against Washington, the Levi’s Stadium Wi-Fi network had 22,095 unique users, 35 percent of the total attendance; the peak number of concurrent users was 14,700, reached at 2:50 p.m. (near halftime), and the total data used was 2.31 TB, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

During the Thanksgiving day game against the Seahawks, the network had 23,371 users (36 percent of attendees) who used 2.38 TB of data, with a peak of 16,800 concurrent users at 7:15 p.m.

Video-replay statistics from the Levi’s Stadium app apparently do better when there are more home-team highlights to watch. During the victory over Washington, 1,074 fans watched 4,885 replays, with the 30-yard TD pass from Colin Kaepernick to Anquan Boldin racking up 953 total views from 398 unique users — meaning many users are watching the same replay more than once (maybe showing it to people sitting around them?). For the Seahawks game, 1,407 fans watched 3,875 replays, with a Kaepernick pass to Michael Crabtree accounting for the most views, 487 total from 180 unique users.

The top 4 apps used by fans on the network varied a bit from the two close games, but according to Williams Amazon Cloud Drive was the top app for both recent games. For the Seahawks game, the next three top apps were Google APIs, Facebook and SnapChat, while for the Washington game the next three top apps used were stadium video, Google APIs and Apple iTunes.

Filed Under: Amazon, Apple, Apps, DAS, Facebook, Google, iTunes, NFL, Seattle Seahwaks, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

YinzCam gains huge access to college market with Learfield partnership deal

December 3, 2014 by

Sports stadium app developer YinzCam, the Pittsburgh-based concern that has numerous app development wins across the NFL, NBA and NHL, scored a big entree to the collegiate market with a deal that makes YinzCam the “preferred supplier” of mobile apps for Learfield Sports, the giant marketing firm that sets up media, sponsorship and promotional deals for many of the nation’s top universities.

In a press release announcing the deal, Learfield said YinzCam would become a preferred solutions provider for the nearly 100 colleges and conferences Learfield represents — a list that stretchs alphabetically from the Alabama Crimson Tide to the Xavier Musketeers — as well as for the 750 college programs that use Learfield subsidiary Sidearm Sports‘ digital production services for websites and other sports-related content.

While YinzCam has already scored several college-app development deals thanks to its NFL experience (like the recent Baylor University app and a forthcoming app for Texas A&M University), YinzCam founder and CEO Priya Narasimhan said the Learfield deal could provide a far more rapid expansion path into the university mobile-app market.

While we are working on a much deeper in-depth profile of YinzCam — coincidentally, we just finished a long (and long in planning) interview earlier this week with the always-busy Narasimhan, who provided some background information on how YinzCam has basically come from nowhere to leading the stadium mobile-app development field in its 5 years of existence. One thing we’ve always wondered about is how a 30-person company in Pittsburgh is able to develop apps for 20 NBA teams and 25 NFL teams, among its 91 customers. The secret? Automation.

According to Narasimhan, YinzCam is able to scale well because it automates most of its core app functionality — for instance, when it comes to making replays available to the mobile device, Narasimhan said a YinzCam algorithm breaks down the video feed, instead of having someone doing the task by hand. Narasimhan also said that the company uses all its clients as a kind of crowdsourcing idea pool, and quickly shares any new innovations with all existing clients. Narasimhan also said that YinzCam’s core app has “well documented third-party guidelines” for integrating outside feature-apps like ticketing and seat upgrade programs, which can then be melded into an overall YinzCam-produced team app.

One final YinzCam nugget for now:

— Where did the name come from? Narasimhan says YinzCam is a mashup of the Pittsburgh term “You ones” (a linguistic equivalent of the Southern “y’all”), which when pronounced quickly in a Pittsburgh accent sounds like “Yinz” and “camera” for the personal video the app supplies.

Stay tuned for more on YinzCam and the Learfield deal…

Filed Under: Apps, FanVision, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NBA, NFL, NHL Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

CBS to stream 27 college hoops games online and via app

December 2, 2014 by

Just like it did for college football this fall, CBS Sports is going to make a bunch of its men’s college basketball broadcasts available online or via a mobile app, according to a press release out today.

Beginning with Saturday’s all-cheesehead game between Wisconsin and Marquette, CBS’s College Basketball Live will appear online 27 times during the 2014-15 season, with not only a full stream of video but the cool “DVR” functionality as well (which allows you to go back and see highlights from previous parts of the broadcast). CBS says there will also be a “social stream” as part of the online offering, but we can only hope that with the social-media stuff CBS doesn’t make the error NBC seems prone to commit in its online broadcasts, namely having a window that shows tweets with info that hasn’t yet happened in the video window.

The full schedule (all times Eastern) is below, and it already looks Kentucky-heavy — we see at least four games with the No. 1 Wildcats scheduled so far. There’s also a big dose of Big Ten action, just in case you like that style of play. If you don’t want to stay tuned to the schedule, you can also follow the CBS Twitter handles @CBSSports and @CBSSportsCBB which will give you handy scoring alerts so you know when to fire up your app or browser to catch the action in real time.

CBS HOOPS ONLINE SCHEDULE 2014-15

Sat., Dec. 6 Wisconsin @ Marquette 12:30 – 3:00 p.m.

Sat., Dec. 13 North Carolina @ Kentucky 12:00 – 2:30 p.m.

Sat., Dec. 20 CBS Sports Classic

North Carolina vs. Ohio State 1:00 – 3:30 p.m.

UCLA vs. Kentucky 3:30 – 5:30 p.m.

Sat., Jan. 3 UConn @ Florida 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Maryland @ Nebraska (Women’s) 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.

Sat., Jan. 10 Kentucky @ Texas A&M 1:00 – 3:30 p.m.

Sat., Jan. 17 Florida @ Georgia 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Michigan State @ Maryland 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.

Sun., Jan. 25 Indiana @ Ohio State 1:30 – 4:00 p.m.

Sat., Jan. 31 Arkansas @ Florida 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.

Sun., Feb. 1 Michigan @ Michigan State 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.

Sun., Feb 8 Michigan @ Indiana 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.

Sun., Feb. 15 Illinois @ Wisconsin 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.

Sat., Feb. 21 Florida @ LSU 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.

Sun., Feb. 22 BIG TEN WILDCARD 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Ohio State @ Michigan

OR

Iowa @ Nebraska

OR

Indiana @ Rutgers

Sat., Feb. 28 Georgetown @ St. John’s 12:00 – 2:00 p.m.

Arkansas @ Kentucky 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.

Sun., Mar. 1 SMU @ UConn 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.

BIG TEN WILDCARD 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.

Michigan State @ Wisconsin

OR

Purdue @ Ohio State

Sat., Mar. 7 Florida @ Kentucky 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Sun., Mar. 8 Memphis @ Cincinnati 12:00 – 2:00 p.m.

BIG TEN WILDCARD 4:30 – 6:30 p.m.

Wisconsin @ Ohio State

OR

Maryland @ Nebraska

OR

Penn State @ Minnesota

Sat., Mar. 14 Big Ten Semifinal #1 1:00 – 3:30 p.m.

Big Ten Semifinal #2 3:30 – 6:00 p.m.

Mountain West Championship 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Sun., Mar. 15 Big Ten Championship 3:30 – 6:00 p.m.

Filed Under: Apps, Basketball, CBS Sports, NCAA Hoops Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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