Watching Golf this Week: RBC Canadian Open

July 26, 2012 by Paul Kapustka

Like a lot of the pro golf field your MSR golf writer is taking some time off this week following the most recent major. But newly minted British Open champion Ernie Els isn’t, and is heading to Canada for this week’s RBC Canadian Open.

After the orgy of online and broadcast coverage of last week this week you are back to the Golf Channel Thursday-Friday, CBS Saturday-Sunday routine. I wish I could get more excited about this event but — gotta recharge for the end of the season, the PGA, the Ryder Cup, and the FedEx Cup chase. So just the basics below. More in-depth analysis next week.

Here’s where to follow the action:

RBC CANADIAN OPEN

(all times Eastern)
TV COVERAGE
Thursday, July 26 — Golf Channel, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.
Friday, July 27 — Golf Channel, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.
Saturday, July 28 — CBS, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.
Sunday, July 29 — CBS, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.

RADIO
SIRIUS XM (Satellite)
12 p.m. — 6 p.m. every day

ONLINE
No Live@ video this week — the PGA’s live online video doesn’t return until the Barclays in late August, so you will need to get your online fix from…

PGA SHOT TRACKER
If all you want is shots and distances (which can be addicting) get your fix via Shot Tracker.

FACEBOOK PAGE
Nothing not to like about the RBC Canadian Open Facebook page.

TOP TWITTER FEEDS TO FOLLOW
The RBC Canadian Open has its own feed.
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.
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?
The Hamilton Golf and Country club has its own site.

WHO WON THIS THING LAST YEAR?
Sean O’Hair.

FEDEX CUP LEADERS
1. Tiger Woods, 2,132 points
2. Zach Johnson, 1,988
3. Jason Dufner, 1,888
4. Hunter Mahan, 1,705
5. Bubba Watson, 1,662

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: CBS Sports, Facebook, Golf, Golf Channel, PGA Tagged With: British Open, Ernie Els, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, PGA, RBC Canadian Open

ESPN’s British Open Coverage Scores on Cable, Internet, Mobile

July 24, 2012 by Paul Kapustka

There must be an algorithm somewhere to write the inevitable press releases for broadcasters after any big event now, that begins with “record viewership” and then plugs in the terms online and mobile. ESPN’s coverage of the British Open last week and weekend certainly fits in, with big gains in just about every measurement category, including a 140 percent growth in the amount of live coverage watched on ESPN’s mobile and online platforms.

But — it could have been a lot bigger. Remember, ESPN limits its mobile access to people who pay for cable plans from Verizon FiOS, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, and Comcast. How much bigger could the audience be if ESPN allowed non-cable subscribers the right to see things with a one-time fee? (Right now, the WWL’s answer to that is it’s not gonna happen.)

One guess is that since ESPN added Comcast to its list of approved cable-contract partners whose customers get access to all WatchESPN and ESPN3 content, the jump in online viewership was probably a given since the Comcast deal added about 40 million potential new viewers to the number that could see ESPN’s online streams. Even without any new partnerships that number should easily grow again next year, when ESPN should have support for Comcast customers with Android platforms, who were shut out this year.

I still think that ESPN could vastly improve its online coverage of big events, especially golf, by mimicing the excellent presentation done by the folks at the Masters. Right now the event coverage like the British Open is lumped in next to every other thing that ESPN covers, which as you know is quite a lot, so the experience dims. It would also be great to have an integrated chat/social experience on the same screen, so you could perhaps talk golf smack to friends and other fans without having to switch between multiple screens. I’d add in a window to keep track of the excellent ESPN Majors fantasy game, and my online golf experience would be complete. Well, we’d need the TigerCam too. But I’m not greedy.

ESPN Press release on its awesome British Open numbers.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, British Open, ESPN, ESPN3, Golf, PGA, The Masters, Tiger Woods Tagged With: British Open, ESPN, Golf, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Tiger Woods, WatchESPN

PlayUp Brings its Fan-Interaction App to the Olympics

July 24, 2012 by Paul Kapustka

Fan interaction app PlayUp, which made its name this spring with several pro-athlete chat rooms for big events, is stepping up its own game with a new release of the app just in time for the London Olympics.

Announced today, version 3.1 of the PlayUp app for the iOS platform adds some interesting new features, including third-party content and sports news, as well as targeted sports feeds by the user’s geographic location. This feature, PlayUp said, brings the most regionally relevant content to the forefront when a user launches the app. PlayUp can be downloaded free from the iTunes store.

The PlayUp app, which gives sports fans the ability to track teams, scores and to converse with other fans in either small or large, or private or public groups, will now bring that interaction to the Olympic games, which begin July 25 and go until Aug. 12. The PlayUp app will give fans real-time results, standings and leaderboards for almost all the events, in addition to the app’s signature ability to let fans talk smack, agree and cheer, or otherwise communicate with friends and fans worldwide about their favorite sports.

What should be interesting is to see how third-party entities contribute to the PlayUp app to make the experience richer for PlayUp users. (You may even see some Mobile Sports Report content there soon, so keep your eyes peeled.) The app already has news feeds featuring stories from Yahoo, ESPN and CBS, so PlayUp has you covered when it comes to quick coverage from the top media outlets. The MSR take here is that more integration and aggregation is better for fans, who don’t have to leave an app to check, say, a Twitter feed. The challenge for PlayUp will be to convince partners that their app can bring in new sports-savvy users.

“Now sports fanatics can turn to PlayUp to get sports content, stats, Twitter feeds and more, and can be assured to get their sports fix even when no live games are being played,” said PlayUp CEO Dennis Lee in a press release. “We now also have the opportunity to connect brands and developers with sports fans and provide these third-parties with more effective ways to connect with potential customers across the globe. There is no bigger and better event to showcase PlayUp’s new features than the Olympics.”

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, iOS, Olympics, PlayUp Tagged With: Dennis Lee, London Olympics, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, PlayUp

Xirrus Gets Yellow Jersey for Successful Tour de France Mobile Wi-Fi Network

July 23, 2012 by Paul Kapustka

That white circular thing at upper right is a Xirrus wireless array, doing its duty in a Tour de France press room. Credit: Xirrus.

Just like Britain’s Bradley Wiggins, Wi-Fi gear vendor Xirrus had a pretty good Tour de France, as its wireless arrays finished off a successful string of supporting the demanding needs of the world’s media during the 21-stage event.

According to a Xirrus press release, the company supplied its gear to French wireless supplier Orange, which delivered Internet access to the race’s start and finish areas, a challenging task that involved quick setup and teardown in the host cities. The Xirrus release said that its network for Orange supported “125 TV broadcasters, 2,300 journalists, 70 radio stations, and 450 newspapers transferring enormous amounts of media-rich files from the Tour’s Start Village, Timing Locations, Sprint Locations, Media Centers, and Finish Lines.”

If you’re not familiar with the demands of sport media, the still cameras alone at a big event like the Tour de France can account for millions of megapixels. Typically the photographers, who spend most of race days on motorcycles, decamp at the finish line press tents and start immediately downloading huge files of photos to their main offices, where the images are posted on web sites or readied for print publications. And they are just a subset of the throng of local broadcasters, national and international print writers and radio commentators who all need big broadband pipes to get their information from race site to website.

That’s where Xirrus and Orange came in, designing a highly mobile network infrastructure that featured Xirrus’ modular access points, which can be configured with more radios as are needed to handle bandwidth demands. That Xirrus was as up to the task as Wiggins and all the other riders who traversed the race’s thousands of kilometers was proven in part by the money quote from the apparently satisfied client, Henri Terreaux, Events Projects Manager at the French Operation Division of Orange:

“Orange is focused on providing the Tour de France, NBC Sports, government dignitaries, and thousands of media professionals during the race with reliable, high-performance wireless connectivity. Xirrus makes it easy to support the thousands of devices, simultaneously transferring large amounts of video and photo files through a robust network that, due to the race, must be redeployed on a daily basis, across 21 cities, in extreme environments. The array-based platform is the most powerful and trusted solution we’ve tested, and very quick to set-up.”

Here are some more details on the Xirrus blog.

Filed Under: Cycling, Sports Photography, Tour de France, Wi-Fi Tagged With: Mobile Sports Report, Orange, Paul Kapustka, Stadium Wi-Fi, Tour de France, Wi-Fi, Xirrus

ESPN Mobile and British Open App Fail at Live Video, Audio Coverage for Some Platforms

July 21, 2012 by Paul Kapustka

Sunday Update: After deleting and re-installing the British Open app things seem to be working better. We can get a live commentary show and a live link to WatchESPN (which we can’t watch because we are on Android — see below). The Open’s own radio is working, with the great BBC commentators, but the Open app’s link to ESPNRadio isn’t working. The ESPNRadio app, however, is working today so if we need to we can go native for the final round. Original Saturday post follows.

Before the British Open started we were impressed by the online and mobile options for viewing and listening to live coverage of the year’s third golf major. But after trying and failing to connect in several fashions Saturday, we’re less than impressed with the mobile performance from both ESPN and the Open’s own app.

On the ESPN side, the online live version of the TV broadcast worked fine, as long as you can remember to enable pop-ups for your browser (we spent a frustrating minute clicking on the screen to no avail before we saw the little pop-up warning in our Chrome browser and enabled the WatchESPN window). As a paying Comcast subscriber I expected to also be able to watch the coverage live on my Android smartphone, but when I loaded WatchESPN there was no Comcast option for authentication.

After a couple frustrating auto-replies from ESPN help I finally got an answer from “Jack” in customer support that says Comcast Android users are still second-class citizens. As in, no mobile video for you!

For Comcast XFINITY subscribers, WatchESPN is available for use on the following mobile devices: iPhone, iPod and iPad (must have OS 4.0 or later).

The WatchESPN application is not yet available in Android devices for Comcast subscribers, but we will be launching the service soon.

Maybe I’m a harsh judge but this is kind of unacceptable for a company like the WorldWide Leader, which presumably has lots of programming assets at its beck and call. I thought I might be able to do an end-around by using the Open’s own app, but even as the third round leaders were early on the back nine, the app’s audio and video coverage were “off the air,” with no explanation. From what I can tell it might be a problem in that the app has live coverage via the BBC for viewers in the UK, but if there is some way to switch to US-available coverage here, I can’t find it in the app. On the good side, the app has great archived video, which works superbly like a well-edited midday highlights package.

ESPNRadio worked well in my car, but the Open broadcast also didn’t work on the Samsung Stratosphere Android handset from Verizon that I have. Again, I suspect there was some issue with the Android handset not being supported by the necessary Comcast authentication. We are emailing ESPN folks now and will relay a better answer if we get one.

The bottom line is, out of the three majors so far this year the folks behind the British Open online coverage, namely ESPN, are in third place. The Masters is far ahead of all tournaments, with its solid multiple-camera options, and its good performance in online and mobile platforms. While the U.S. Open had fewer choices, its delivery and access were also far superior to the muddle that was the ESPN/Open app arrangement for the British Open. Plus, ESPN’s online menu of British Open options was mixed in with all the other things the WWL was showing on its online menu. I get it, ESPN’s got a lot going on. But is it so hard to wall off the British Open selections on a separate page? And maybe include all the other golf-related stuff there? Too many times it seems like ESPN doesn’t get it right when they are covering individual events, and the British Open is one of those times.

While I understand and respect ESPN’s decision to base online access on whether or not customers have a valid cable contract, the whole what-is and what-isn’t online for ESPN is still muddled, and the point failures for the Open are proof that ESPN still needs to figure out what its priorities are in the online/mobile space, and how it can make it less confusing for people to figure out how to get access. The fact that I, as a paying Comcast subscriber, couldn’t get access on an Android phone, should have been something ESPN called out beforehand, not buried in a support email after the fact. And I think event organizers should take a harder look at who they sell coverage rights to, if the digital access is going to be so constrained. Just seems like it’s harder than it needs to or should be.

Miss the round? Here are the highlights courtesy of the Mothership:

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, BBC, British Open, Comcast, ESPN, ESPN Radio, ESPN3, Golf, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, PGA, The Masters, Tiger Woods, US Open, WatchESPN, Xfinity Tagged With: British Open, ESPN, ESPNRadio, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Samsung, The Open Championship, Tiger Woods, Verizon 4G LTE

Ruckus Powers Wi-Fi — And Mobile Betting — at Famed Saratoga Race Course

July 20, 2012 by Paul Kapustka

If you follow horse racing you probably know of the famed Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York, the oldest horseracing track in the U.S. Thanks to some gear from Ruckus Wireless that facility now has one of the newest technologies, a Wi-Fi network, which is not only bringing wireless access to fans but also powering mobile betting, where fans at the track can place bets from their seats, with a smartphone app. The network will be ready to rock for today’s opening of Saratoga’s 144th season, according to Ruckus.

We’re scheduled to speak directly with the Ruckus folks soon, so we’ll get more inside info on their overall sports network strategy (which has already seen contract wins at places like the 24 hours of LeMans and the Preakness) but getting into Saratoga is like winning the Kentucky Derby when it comes to scoring a sporting infrastructure contract. The real key to this system may be the ability for fans to use the Fastbet mobile betting app at the track, which will make it easier — and more lucrative for the track — for fans to make an impulse wager without having to stand in the traditional betting line.

And the New York Racing Association, which operates the 149-year-old track, will not just be using the Ruckus network for fan access, but also for other stadium applications, like ticketing. According to a press release, the NYRA also hopes to use the network to support streaming video and digital signage applications in the future.

Here’s the money quote from the NYRA, which hits on the main themes we’ve seen with stadium and event Wi-Fi: Fans are bringing phones to sports events, so adept operators are making moves to keep their patrons connected:

“Saratoga Race Course is one of the premier tracks in the country, and has been a place where racing fans and spectators have enjoyed the sport for nearly a century and a half,” said Tom Thill, CIO for NYRA.

“In very recent years we’ve seen the number of smartphones and mobile devices in use increase dramatically, and we knew we needed to deliver a wireless experience of the same caliber that we’ve always been committed to at the track.”

According to Ruckus, it took 45 of the company’s ZoneFlex dual-band 802.11n wireless access points (both indoor and outdoor units) to fully cover the 350-acre Saratoga site, including the main clubhouse, all restaurants, the outdoor track, fan seating areas, and the racetrack’s large picnic grounds. The network was installed and will be managed by the Albany, N.Y.-based system integrator Deep Blue Communications.

According to the NYRA, this is how the betting system will work:

Patrons will be able to utilize the new Wi-Fi network to link to United Tote’s FastBet Mobile, a wagering application available exclusively on-track and designed for use on smart phones and tablets, including iPhones, iPads and most Android based tablets and phones.

To use the application, NYRA Cash Cards will be available and can be loaded at any voucher window throughout the track. Further deposits, and any withdrawals, can be made at any window. Patrons may then access the FastBet page via the new Wi-Fi network with their device. Patrons enter the card’s account number and pin into FastBet to begin wagering. Once finished, patrons can choose to keep their account balance on their NYRA Cash Card or cash out at any teller window.

One more quote from Thrill? Why not:

“With the scalability and reliability that the Ruckus system delivers, our new mobile on-track wagering system will provide a significant revenue stream for us, while also helping the racecourse maintain its reputation as a top destination for watching state-of-the-art horseracing.”

Bonus: Here is a good Q&A with Ruckus’ CEO, Selina Lo, which covers a lot of ground on Ruckus’ business and notes the company’s impending IPO.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Betting, Horse Racing, Wi-Fi Tagged With: FastBet, Horse Racing, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Ruckus Wireless, Saratoga, Saratoga Springs