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Verizon and the NFL: Pals Now, but What About the Future?

January 9, 2013 by

NFL commish Roger Goodell at CES. Credit: Paul Kapustka, Mobile Sports Report

On the surface the appearance of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell at the Verizon CES keynote was all happiness and light, as chairman Rog traded pleasantries with Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam. But if you listened between the lines there was a bit of a disconnect, making us here at MSR wonder how in sync the two current partners will be in the near future.

The two areas where Verizon and the NFL seem headed in different directions are in mobile content delivery and in-stadium wireless networks, two huge matters for both entities. Currently Verizon is the NFL’s exclusive partner for providing mobile access to live NFL games, available only on Verizon devices via the NFLMobile app. Verizon currently can show live games on Thursday nights, Sunday nights and Monday Night Football, as well as the RedZone channel, which shows a lot of live content from games all around the league. Verizon paid something on the order of $700 million for the deal, which is said to expire after next season.

The unexpected appearance of Goodell during McAdam’s speech led us to initially believe there was some renewal announcement in the air — but instead Goodell left without talking about the future of NFL Mobile. Our guess for most of this season is that the NFL wants to take full control of its mobile/digital content offerings and sell them to fans at a steep cost, like Major League Baseball does. The silence in the presence of Verizon’s CEO can’t be good news for the phone carrier.

Likewise, Goodell has said he wants all stadiums in the league to install high-capacity Wi-Fi networks, to better serve fans with mobile content, social media and other connectivity options while they’re at the games. McAdam’s company, unlike its main competitor AT&T, has not made public Wi-Fi a priority and McAdam talked at CES about his hopes to use the company’s new 4G LTE video broadcast tools to help bring fans mobile coverage of events like the Super Bowl. He even made a pass at Goodell, telling the commish on stage that “we’d love to broadcast the big game [Super Bowl] in the 2014 time frame.” Goodell didn’t bite and didn’t comment. That doesn’t sound like much of a deal or even a promise. Akward stuff for a CEO to be floating, in front of thousands of witnesses.

Though we haven’t yet delved fully into how Verizon’s LTE video broadcast technology works, we’re skeptical that it can handle the big traffic demands of a full stadium of mobile users — more than half of whom are likely not Verizon customers and therefore unable to use any Verizon network technologies. Our guess is that the NFL will keep looking to Wi-Fi to solve stadium network issues — leaving Verizon on the sideline.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, NFL, Super Bowl Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The No Connection Section — Stadiums Without Networks Are Whiffing on Revenues

December 5, 2012 by

Editor’s note: Please join me in welcoming special projects editor Keith Newman to the pages of MSR. Keith has been a long time supporter of MSR and is now adding his voice to our blog.

When I come to the game and my phone doesn’t connect, I am more confused than the Oakland Raiders’ offense. Don’t stadium managers, sports team executives and concessions marketers realize we are here watching the game and our wallet and smartphones are with us the whole time? Don’t they also realize that their job is to make sure they optimize the combined viewing experience while maximizing our spending activity?

So why does it continue to be so hard to text friends, tweet an update from our game to our followers, find out who else is at the game, call up other scores (or God forbid a video highlight from another game going on)? Some stadiums like AT&T Park get it, but they are in the minority. They do so at their own revenue peril.

With almost every new smartphone or tablet sold, another Wi-Fi connection comes into the marketplace. We understand that so many phones in a compact space like a stadium can overload the cellular network. So Wi-Fi is needed to answer the call. And while some stadiums are getting ahead of the curve, others, like Candlestick Park, remain Wi-Fi dark. It’s still unusual to find a good signal at a stadium. And because of that, there are dollars in my wallet that the stadium owner and operator will never see.

So, has the time has come for fans to cry out? To demonstrate? No. But sports fans may go on strike when it comes to attending games live. The sports fan is OK with staying home and watching the game in HD with awesome replay, store/forward, and Sling/TIVO ability. The weight is on the shoulders of these other bodies who are losing money, fans and potentially an increasing amount of revenue by not taking advantage of the enormous opportunities to improve the experience and increase revenue. It’s game time. How’s your network?

Filed Under: Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , ,

Wi-Fi Whispers: Is Time-Warner Cable Deal With WeFi About Mobile Sports Content?

December 5, 2012 by

The news that came out last week continued an interesting question: why would a cable company want to expand its free Wi-Fi services? Could it be that a big cableco sees free Wi-Fi as a way to keep its current cable customers — by making sure they can watch sports content wherever and whenever they want?

Nobody knows for sure yet, but in all the numerous news reports of the recent deal between cable giant Time-Warner Cable and Wi-Fi aggregator startup WeFi, there were a lot of details on the what but hardly any on the why.

Like other cablecos, TWC has been moving forward aggressively with a Wi-Fi hotspot deployment. By tapping WeFi’s capability to help people find free hotspots, TWC is buying rather than building, taking advantage of the idea that private networks may get built out farther and faster than even the biggest service providers could manage. But the question still lingers — why?

GigaOM’s Kevin Fitchard in the story linked above touches a bit on an idea — he quotes a WeFi exec’s idea that “cable providers want to encourage their customers to access their broadband connections and video programming outside of the home, making those services that much stickier.” But I don’t think it’s just about the sticky. I think it’s about maximizing the access to the content that is king over all other types, namely live sports content.

Sports remains the far and away No. 1 reason people watch TVs — just go find a list of the top viewed programs ever. Or check out stats from this summer’s Olympics. And a lot of that viewing is going to move to mobile screens, like tablets. So why is TWC putting Wi-Fi hotspots on the beaches of Southern California? Surprise, surprise, TWC last year paid $3 billion to snag the rights to L.A. Lakers basketball games. So now Lakers fans who are TWC subscribers can watch the games while they’re on the sand. But most importantly to TWC — they won’t cancel their cable subscriptions, meaning that TWC doesn’t have to shell out the $500 or so that is the estimated cost of finding a new subscriber.

Since it’s LA those subscribers may also be watching things like Dancing With the Stars or American Idol, but don’t kid yourself — you don’t see anyone ponying up billions in just rights fees for reality shows. And people don’t cancel cable subscriptions or buy pricey ones just to watch those shows. They do for sports, and I’m betting that cable’s big move to provide free Wi-Fi is all about making sure sports fans can watch the content they’ve already paid for — instead of, say, paying Verizon $5 extra a month to watch NFL games on your phone.

Here’s the news coverage of the TWC/WeFi deal:

Jeff Baumgartner at Light Reading —
Todd Spangler at Multichannel News —
Kevin Fitchard at GigaOM —

And the LA Times story about sports rights, also a good read: Joe Flint and Meg James, LA Times (HT to Spangler’s Twitter feed for the link)

Filed Under: 4G LTE, ESPN, Time Warner Cable Television, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Guest Blog: Pickmoto Players as Good as ESPN Pickers?

December 1, 2012 by

Editor’s note: This blog is a series from Pickmoto, a fantasy sports mobile app.

WEEK 12

We’ve put a bullseye on the ESPN “Experts” this season. We’ve dissected who among the dozen is label worthy (Mort, Wickersham) and who is definitely not (Jackson, Ditka, Allen).

This week, instead of comparing ESPNers, let’s take a look at how they fare as a group against another tribe of opinionated NFL fans: the Pickmoto community.

The most interesting games are those with the strongest disagreement. So, we isolated games where each team received 4 to 8 of the 12 ESPNers’ picks. So far, 43 games qualified (8 in Week 12 alone).

For each of those games, we awarded a point to the group with the higher % that correctly picked the winning team. For example, for Redskins v. Cowboys, ESPN scores a point because 7/12 or 58% of ESPNers vs. 51% of Pickmotoers took the ‘Skins.

The final total is ESPN 22, PM 20, Tie 1. It was tied, but the ESPNers inched ahead with a 5 to 3 advantage in Week 12.

If you’ve read this far, then numbers and %s don’t nauseate you. So for the 4 of you left, we’ll continue.

Among the 43 games, there were 9 games with a 20+% difference. PM won 7 to 2. And among the 25 games with a 10+% difference, PM won 14 to 11… Wow you’re still with us!

Ok ok, just one more semi-interesting stat. The Falcons and Steelers had the most wins of the 43 games. Pickmotoers were 4-0-1 in the Falcons wins and 0-4 in the Steelers wins. So, the PM community is savvy to the Falcons and underestimates the Steelers.

We can go on and on slicing the numbers and trotting out slight hypotheses. Bottom line, the “Experts” and the PM community are about equal. The ESPNers have a slight edge if you include all 43 games. The Pickmotoers have an edge in games with the clearest difference of opinion.

Bottom-er line, you guys don’t call yourselves “Experts” so neither should ESPN.

ESPN Experts Leaderboard – Week 12
-Everyone starts with 300 points.

+Seth Wickersham – 743
+Chris Mortensen – 648
+Merrill Hoge – 362
+Adam Schefter – 335
+Ron Jaworski – 332
+Cris Carter – 284
Keyshawn Johnson – 247
Mark Schlereth – 238
Mike Golic – 237
+Tom Jackson – 191
+Mike Ditka – 183
Eric Allen – 71

In Week 12, the strong separated from the weak. All of the Top-6 gained ground. Wickersham and Mort keep climbing. Week after week, they net points with a savvy sprinkling of underdog picks. This week, they went against the grain with the Browns and Jags and those picks accounted for much of their point gains. Wickersham is actually inching closer to the Top 20 Overall on Pickmoto, which is really impressive because he doesn’t use gold pins … and doesn’t even know he’s playing.

Elsewhere, Tom Jackson(!) had the best pick record (12-4) and the best week in points besides Wick and Mort. Note the backhanded exclamation point.

Eric Allen dropped closer still to 0. It’ll be close, but if he keeps picking the Cardinals and Eagles to win football games, he’ll get there.

Pickmoto is fun, quick, easy competition. It recreates the fantasy sports experience on mobile. Its first game for the 2012 NFL season is free for iPhone and iPad. Its second game for the NBA season just hit the AppStore.

Pickmoto asks the most basic question in sports – which teams will win. It’s pick’em with a twist: there’s a crowdsourced scoring system that rewards correct picks based on their popularity – the less popular, the more points.

Filed Under: Apps, ESPN, NFL Tagged With: , , ,

‘Tweeter’ Keselowski Wins Sprint Cup Championship

November 18, 2012 by

I’ve got to admit, I had never really known who NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski was until he sent the tweet heard round the sports world last February. Turns out not only is the guy social-media savvy, he’s a pretty good driver too, capturing his first Sprint Cup title Sunday.

Though the Chase to the Championship was tense, Sunday’s finish was decided early when top contender Jimmy Johnson went basically out of the race with 40 laps to go. That pretty much allowed Kesolowski to coast to the overall win with a 15th-place finish, and after he was done of course the first thing he did was send off a tweet.

Since Daytona, we’ve been following Keselowski and I have to say he has made the sport more enjoyable for me during the season, with his quick post-race comments and regular humor. While NASCAR wisely embraced his Daytona fire-picture moment (and quickly sealed a deal with Twitter to help promote the sport even more), there seemed to be signs of a backlash with NASCAR’s recent $25K fine of Keselowski for tweeting. While some think the fine was more of a punishment for Keselowski’s profanity-laced response to the crashing and fighting at Phoenix, NASCAR should back off on the tweet-fines because the social media world will reject you as quickly as it followed you if you show even the smallest signs of “not getting it.” (MSR free marketing suggestion: Why not partner with GoPro and have automated cameras where the drivers and crews can send auto-tweets and video clips during races?)

Right now, Keselowski certainly gets it, from Twitter to the race track. Enjoy the title, No. 2 car.

(And a big race-fan thanks to senior editor Greg Quick for compiling the weekly Watching NASCAR posts!)

Filed Under: NASCAR, Sprint Cup Series, Twitter Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Wi-Fi Whispers Bulletin: Cisco Buys Meraki for $1.2 Billion

November 18, 2012 by

Why wait until Wednesday? No whispering here, with the news breaking Sunday of Cisco’s $1.2 billion purchase of mesh-networking Wi-Fi provider Meraki. Coming on the heels of last week’s successful public offering by Ruckus Wireless, you’d have to say that Wi-Fi is the hottest topic in the greater tech world right now.

And if you didn’t want to say it, we will.

From a sports-specific viewpoint, it’s not clear how the Meraki purchase might help Cisco’s sports and entertainment group, since Meraki has reportedly had much more success in enterprise/campus deployments, where its easy setup and cloud-based management systems ease the process of deploying wireless networks. Since stadiums are a lot more high-touch — there are unusual RF problems caused by the buildings themselves, and the crowds of fans require fine-tuning of antenna directions — the Meraki gear may not be a big bonus, at least initially. Though according to Meraki, its gear has handled big outdoor events quite well, including the Monterey Jazz Festival. So maybe Meraki will help Cisco in the stadium-network battleground.

From a big-picture view, you can never be too thin, too rich or have too much networking intellectual property. And the billion-dollar-buy (all cash!) is a sign that Cisco, the biggest player at the table, isn’t hesitant about trying to buy a winning hand.

While we here at Mobile Sports Report have been concentrating on the deployment of stadium Wi-Fi networks, it’s clear that as a whole the greater public Wi-Fi market, of which stadiums are a part, is set to get bigger, faster. This weekend’s big cash events are just the start.

Filed Under: Cisco, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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