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MSR Launches First ‘e-Report,’ an In-Depth Look at ‘The Connected Event Dilemma’

August 9, 2012 by

It’s no secret to any cell phone user that finding a good signal at a big sporting event is sometimes a challenge. But what exactly are the reasons behind why it’s hard to bring wireless access to crowded places? And what are the business opportunities for stadium and event operators, application developers and sports marketers once high-quality wireless is installed?

The answers to those questions and more can be found in The Connected Event Dilemma, the first in-depth “e-report” from Mobile Sports Report. Available as a free download thanks to a sponsorship from Wi-Fi gear vendor Xirrus Inc., our completely objective report (meaning, the sponsor did not control our research or reporting) looks at the dilemma faced by many operators of big events that draw lots of connected attendees — how do you best bring Internet access to the crowd, and what are the benefits of doing so?

In a nutshell, the report explains why traditional cellular infrastructures can’t handle the current and expected future demands of the connected fan, and why high quality Wi-Fi is needed to keep up with the rapid advancements in personal digital device technology, and fans’ desires to stay connected and to share experiences while at large public events. But there’s lots more in the 11 pages of editorial goodness, including explanations about:

– How fan behavior has recently shifted to include heavy use of wireless devices while at big events or games
– Why the current regular cellular infrastructure can’t keep up with big-event demands
– What leading teams and stadium organizations are doing to address their wireless Internet access needs, now
– How you and your organization can start crafting a plan to ensure your stadium, event or other large public space isn’t left behind

This report is designed for readers who may be part of a stadium or event ownership group, or developers, investors and entrepreneurs looking to break into the rapidly growing space of stadium- and event-focused apps. It is also a great primer for sports marketers who need to get quickly up to speed on the “connected event” trend. And the great thing is — it’s free to you for just filling out a quick contact form.

We should have a version available for Kindles fairly soon, but you can download the PDF today. Please do so and let us know what you find interesting or missing from the first of what we hope is many long-form reports.

Filed Under: About MSR, Apps, DAS, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Market Research, MSR Guides, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , ,

PGA’s Mobile Device Policies a Bit At Odds With Tourney’s Online Promotions

August 9, 2012 by

The golf hasn’t started yet but as we look through the spectator guide for the PGA Championship we ran across the mobile device policy, which seems pretty sound. Turn your phone to vibrate, you can check data and send messages, just no picture-taking during the golf. And certainly no video. Otherwise you will be asked to surrender your device, which you can then pick up later you naughty online phone user, you.

Of course, this rule will apparently NOT apply to PGA staffers, since the championship is making a big deal of its social media coolness this weekend in Kiawah. The tournament even has an Instagram page and will be hosting some fun Viddy videos, probably shot on phones. Just not on fan phones. So, yes, the PGA Championship is into social media. Just not any social media created by, you know, people.

Scrolling down a bit on the user guide we see that the PGA is suggesting that folks leave distracting items at home like dogs and milk crates, as well as iPods and iPads. But the news release for the tournament’s digital coverage notes that a lot of items will be designed to take advantage of the iPad:

Optimized for iPad – the official PGA Championship site and PGA Championship LIVE will be optimized for the iPad. The site and video player will take advantage of the iPad’s large, multi-touch display to provide fans an enriched viewing experience.

Seems like with the inevitable rain delays, an iPad could be a handy thing to have out there on the island. So don’t bring it. But if you do, enjoy the iPad optimization.

Our favorite bit from the user guide, however, has nothing to do with digital — unless it’s the digits on your hands that you save by not being utterly stupid:

DANGER FROM WILDLIFE
Please do not disturb or feed alligators, snakes or other
natural wildlife while on the grounds of the Ocean Course.
Use caution when walking in areas near ponds and tall grasses.

I’d watch out for Tigers too. They tend to attract big crowds, and will turn on anyone using a camera phone to record their brush with greatness.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Golf, iPad, iPhone, PGA, Startup, Viddy, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , ,

Watching Golf this Week: The PGA Championship

August 9, 2012 by

Good news first: The 94th running of the PGA Championship will have a boatload of online and viewing options, and all kinds of web-enabled goodies to allow you to enjoy the year’s last major from the comfort of your desk, laptop, or iPhone or iPad. (Here’s the link to live video.) The bad news? It may not wrap up until Monday given the probability of thunderstorms likely to hit the Island Course in Kiawah, South Carolina. At least during the inevitable rain delays, you will have all kinds of diversions like the PGA’s new Social Caddy page to let you watch Twitter streams of players and caddies waiting out the rain.

A quick note on the online stuff — though we had written before that the PGA Tour and Turner Sports were parting ways, the relationship between Turner and the PGA Championship is a different beast — and as such Turner will be pulling out all the stops with TNT coverage Thursday, Friday and before CBS on the weekends, and a whole bunch of good website stuff, including lots of photos and videos.

Several things that we are going to look closely at for the live online video (which starts at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Thursday and Friday) are the multiple camera views and featured groups that Turner says we’ll be able to follow online. We were disappointed at the U.S. Open’s somewhat limited online options, so let’s see if Turner can do better at the PGA. So far, the Masters is still far and away the online king of majors. We are heavily disappointed that the PGA app is iPhone only — c’mon folks, there are a heckuva lot of Android phones out there. Bad form to not have an Android app ready. Like in gymnastics, we’re taking a full point deduction there.

As for the actual golf… once again it really is all about Tiger, and whether or not he can get the job done at a major. Kiawah really doesn’t suit his perfectionist game — weirdo target golf — but when he is on, he really is the Usain Bolt of golf. I think it’s good to note here that had he not three-putted on that disaster bunker hole and not gone over the green on the par-3, Tiger would be your defending British Open champion. Just saying, the guy didn’t have anything near his “A” game and he still almost took the jug. He’s still the rock lock on my ESPN Fantasy team, but behind him I see… maybe Jason Dufner? An incredibly consistent year and good performances in the majors. Like last year, he could be standing near the end while others are falling.

Who else? I like Dustin Johnson’s ability but fear that Dustin is his own biggest enemy. At least there are no sand-trap rules for Johnson to worry about. Unlike the PGA two years ago where there were bunkers everywhere, there is a lot of sand at Kiawah but… according to some weird rule none of the sand is a bunker. So expect to see a lot of guys grounding their clubs, and a million calls to the PGA offices to follow. Watch the video and learn why it’s not a problem.

Finally my dark horse pick: Someone who historically plays well in South Carolina coastal courses, someone who has been surprisingly sharp at times this year… while he puts together his Ryder Cup team. That’s right, I am giving some love to the Captain, DLIII, Davis Love the Thirdly, to find another rainbow and win a second major in the gloaming of his career. I watched Love for a hole at Olympic during the Open, and his game seemed anything but old, striping a 2-iron off the tee and outhitting a younger playing partner who went 3-wood. Nice. In reality Love will probably be on the sidelines Saturday and Sunday, watching to see if Phil Mickelson can give him a reason to make him a captain’s pick for the Ryder roster. Enough Olympics already. Let’s get this war by the shore started.

Here’s where to follow the action:

94th PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

(all times Eastern)
TV COVERAGE
Thursday, Aug. 9 — TNT, 1 p.m. — 7 p.m.
Friday, Aug. 10 — TNT, 1 p.m. — 7 p.m.
Saturday, Aug. 11 — TNT, 11 a.m. — 2 p.m. — 7 p.m.; CBS, 2 p.m. — 7 p.m.
Sunday, Aug. 12 — TNT, 11 a.m. — 2 p.m. — 7 p.m.; CBS, 2 p.m. — 7 p.m.

RADIO
SIRIUS XM (Satellite)
Coverage starts at 12 p.m. Thursday & Friday, 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

ONLINE
As we said above, there is going to be a lot of online video, including marquee groups, par 3 coverage and press conferences. HERE IS THE LIVE VIDEO PAGE.

PGA SHOT TRACKER
No Shot Tracker this week.

FACEBOOK PAGE
If it looks like the beach, it’s the PGA Facebook page for Kiawah.

TOP TWITTER FEEDS TO FOLLOW

HASHTAG FOR THE PGA IS: #PGAChamp

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. Who won’t be going back to Akron anytime soon.
Doug Ferguson is the lead golf writer for AP. Good Twitter insights that often aren’t part of your wire-service lead.

WHAT’S THE COURSE LIKE?
You’re kidding, right? Like you haven’t heard of the Island Course. Or seen numerous recaps of The War by the Shore. Well here is the official page, knock yourself out.

WHO WON THIS THING LAST YEAR?
Keegan “long putter” Bradley. Outlasting our man Duf.

FEDEX CUP LEADERS
1. Tiger Woods, 2,204 points
2. Zach Johnson, 2,018
3. Jason Dufner, 1,983
4. Hunter Mahan, 1,739
5. Bubba Watson, 1,712

See the full standings for the FedEx Cup points list.

WORLD GOLF RANKINGS
1. Luke Donald; 2. Tiger Woods; 3. Rory McIlroy; 4. Lee Westwood; 5. Webb Simpson.
See the official World Golf Ranking list.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, CBS Sports, Golf, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, PGA, Tiger Woods, TNT, Turner Sports, Twitter Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

PGA Goes Big With Social Media at Golf’s Final Major

August 8, 2012 by

Screen grab of the PGA's Social Caddy page. Credit: PGA

We’ll have a separate Watching Golf this Week post tomorrow with all the details as usual, but I think it’s worth taking a quick look today at how the PGA is going big with social media for the year’s last major, the PGA Championship, which starts tomorrow.

Aside from the usual flurry of tweets and posts from the tour, it appears that the PGA is leaving no social media stone unturned this week. Starting with something they are calling the Social Caddy — a catch-all portal page with a bunch of links to things like Twitter streams and Instagram photos — the tour also has people roaming around grabbing fun, pointless little Viddy videos like this near-worthless “inside” meetup with World No. 1 Luke Donald.

There’s other stuff too, like assigning a writer to capture the predictions of fans from the PGA’s Facebook page. Pretty neat. But I’m not sure where I stand on the whole Social Caddy page idea — one thing I hear from a lot of people is that they are at the social media exhaustion level, and the idea of having to monitor or join one more place to share is not very appealing. But that may just be the media/golf insider thing. It may very well be that there are a lot of golf fans who are new to things like Twitter and need a helping hand to find Twitter handles for players, golf writers and other interesting folks who might have something worthwhile to say. (It looks like a lot of self-promoters and golf advertisers have found the PGA’s “fans” column on the Social Caddy Twitter feed so I am not sure how worthwhile that stream will be going forward)

So far it also looks like most of the “social” content is being generated by PGA.com types, which can be amusing (there is a Viddy clip of someone standing at the back of the driving range, challenging players to hit him) but will probably get stale soon. It would be much better if the PGA’s Instagram page, for example, had Instagram pix from the players themselves — as we’ve learned from Kevin Love and the Olympics some of that real-insider stuff can be pretty good and bring us a lot closer to the athletes than ever before.

Though golfers are notorious for being cell phone addicts — like Rickie Fowler, who tweets from his private plane — I also seem to see that most of them shut down the streams when the tournament starts. And it’s really not so hard to assemble your own golfing social caddy, by just finding and following people who are interesting in your main Twitter feed. And, I am guessing a lot of this effort is going to be lost anyway due to the atttention conflict with the last weekend of the Olympics. But when it comes to social media, clearly the PGA is trying hard.

Filed Under: Facebook, Golf, PGA, Social Media, Sports Social Media, Startup, Turner Sports, Twitter, Viddy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

New Antenna Design Helps AT&T Improve Stadium, Event Cell Coverage

August 7, 2012 by

When it comes to cellular phone innovation, the things that immediately come to mind are the highly advertised advancements, like 4G networks and the latest handsets. But AT&T has turned to the often overlooked cell-tower antenna to find an innovative way to help improve cellular reception in crowded public places, like big outdoor events and sports stadiums.

According to an AT&T blog post as well as an interview with some of the team members behind the innovation, Ma Bell has found a way to significantly improve cellular reception in crowded spaces by by building a new antenna that splits a regular signal into five separate “beams.” By splitting one spectral signal into several smaller but more focused ones, AT&T says it can gain approximately a 5x increase throughput from each antenna, a big necessary jump when confronted by crowds of tens of thousands of smartphone users.

Without getting too deep into the physics, the multi-beam approach is roughly the equivalent of adding four new cell towers, without the added expense of having to site, install and maintain new antenna placements. Though there is a tradeoff of having a narrower range of coverage (since the multi-beam signals are smaller in geographic footprint than those from traditional antennas) that isn’t a problem inside stadiums or at events, where phone users don’t move too much. AT&T has produced a cartoony video that kind of explains the advancements, albeit in a great-for-AT&T way (see end of post for the video).

According to AT&T folks we talked to the antenna was developed jointly by AT&T and a “boutique” antenna manufacturer AT&T declined to identify. The need for a better-performing antenna came out of AT&T’s challenges of bringing cellular service to the crowds at the Coachella music festival in Southern California, an event that can attract up to 85,000 fans each day.

Though we don’t have a geekout photo to share with you, the AT&T folks we talked to said the antennas are already being rolled out to numerous big-event venues, including NFL stadiums in Nashville and Minneapolis, collegiate stadiums in Hawaii and North Carolina, as well as golf and tennis events. The antenna seems to be a valuable part of AT&T’s ongoing arsenal of tricks to improve wireless coverage overall, which includes DAS installations as well as expanded Wi-Fi. For cell users at big events, any and all advancements are welcome.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, NFL, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , ,

No Surprise: NBC’s Online Olympics a Huge Success

August 2, 2012 by

According to multiple reports from an NBC press call today, the network’s massive effort to put the Olympics online is an equally massive success, especially on mobile platforms. Paid Content’s Robert Andrews has a complete wrapup of the numbers, but the ones that stick out for us here at Mobile Sports Report are (and these are all digital numbers, not broadcast):

— 64 MILLION total video streams served so far

— 5.3 MILLION hours of live video

— 45 Percent of all digital video streams are coming from a phone or tablet, and not an online laptop or desktop

What this tells us — and what we hope NBC and other old school broadcasters can digest — is that despite massive online consumption of content, the golden-goose prime time broadcasts aren’t harmed. In fact prime time is even bigger and better than ever for NBC, despite all the criticisms which we believe are warranted.

It seems chic for a lot of media types to surf the second wave of follow-me journalism, namely criticizing the criticizers for being a bunch of Twitterheads who don’t matter to “real people” who have “real jobs” and can only watch TV late at night. To that we say nerts. It’s pretty obvious from the online numbers that there is an entirely new audience out there who wants to consume content on their own schedule, or as close to real time as possible. Those people who smugly say Twitter and phone-watchers “don’t matter” need to get out of their own stereotypes and realize the world of the future is going to be one where more, not fewer, people get their content through mobile devices, with perhaps those mobile devices and their connectivity powering that big screen grandpa used to call “the TV.”

I’ll start the third wave — the critics of the critics are wrong. NBC’s own numbers are showing that online and digital can be huge without detracting from prime-time production numbers. There’s a whole new audience out there who consumes sports on mobile devices, and they are right to stand up for what they want, telling broadcasters like NBC directly through the mediums they live in. They are the growth of sports media. What is your sport doing to find them?

Filed Under: NBC Sports, Olympics Tagged With: , , , ,
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