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Watching Golf this Week: HP Byron Nelson Championship

May 17, 2012 by

After burning out a bit watching the Players Championship last week, I might be like Tiger and take a week off. After all, without ol’ Lord Byron around to pass judgement from his lawn chair this tournament just doesn’t feel like it has the same meaning. Plus, I am not sure I want to wallow in the Keeeeeegan Bradley “first win” BS that is sure to emerge. I am not a Bradley fan, mostly due to the long putter. I may not ever like the guy because I was pulling for Dufner in the PGA finale last year. Is that a rivalry worth worrying about? Maybe not. But even if I don’t watch, there will be golf this weekend.

And with Phil and Ernie Els in the field there is some star power, though anything other than the U.S. Open right now feels like practice. Well maybe the Memorial will be worthwhile. Certainly the PGA Tour seems to think so, because that is when we will next see live online coverage of golf — none this week from Texas. And we’re back to shortened times for Golf Channel and CBS so — maybe this week is for hard-cores only.

Here’s where to follow the action:

HP BYRON NELSON CHAMPIONSHIP

(all times Eastern)
TV COVERAGE
Thursday, May 17 — Golf Channel, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.
Friday, May 18 — Golf Channel, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.
Saturday, May 19 — CBS, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.
Sunday, May 20 — CBS, 3 p.m. — 6 p.m.

RADIO
SIRIUS XM (Satellite)
12 p.m. — 6 p.m., Thursday-Sunday

ONLINE
The PGA’s Live@ is gone. All you have this week on your computer is…

PGA SHOT TRACKER
Get another online fix via Shot Tracker for the HPBNC.

TOP TWITTER FEEDS TO FOLLOW

Geoff Shackelford — well known golf writer.
Golf Channel — official Golf Channel feed
@PGATOUR — official PGA Twitter feed
@StephanieWei — great golf writer who is a Twitter fiend (though she is taking this week off too; but she’s still fun to follow, as her twitpics of mini golf this week showed)

WHAT’S THE COURSE LIKE?
The TPC Four Seasons Las Colinas sounds like the hotel at the mall at the end of the world. Here’s some info on the layout.

WHO WON THIS THING LAST YEAR?
Do you have to ask? KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEgan.

LOCAL FLAVOR
If you don’t know anything about Lord Byron, time to hone up on your history. The tournament’s legacy page is a good place to start. When Tiger was challenging Nelson’s 11-in-a-row streak a few years back a lot of folks learned a lot more about one of golf’s more silent heroes. And then there’s the Dallas Morning News for local reporter-type coverage.

FEDEX CUP LEADERS
1. Hunter Mahan, 1,378 points
2. Bubba Watson, 1372
3. Rory McIlroy, 1,290
4. Phil Mickelson, 1,220
5. Carl Pettersson, 1,215

See the full standings for the FedEx Cup points list.

WORLD GOLF RANKINGS
1. Rory McIlroy; 2. Luke Donald; 3. Lee Westwood; 4. Bubba Watson; 5. Matt Kuchar.
See the official World Golf Ranking list.

Filed Under: CBS Sports, Golf, Golf Channel, PGA Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Sponsor Post: Can Fiksu Help You Promote your App?

April 17, 2012 by

Congratulations — you have built a mobile app, and are ready to stake your claim to your share of the exploding app marketplace. But maybe getting noticed isn’t as easy as you thought it would be, and you’re having a hard time getting potential customers to find your product in the sea of apps.

Lost at what to do? Try starting with some good advice from the folks at Fiksu, who have put together a free white paper titled Best Practices for Growing your Mobile App Business. Though we don’t have a mobile app here at MSR (yet) I did read through the paper and found it does a great job of explaning how to optimize your app-finding strategies. In the end, you might want to contact the Fiksu folks to see if their Fiksu platform technology can help you improve your app-promotion cost/performance curve, and get more loyal followers and customers. The contact info is at the end of the white paper, which you can download here. For the price of an email address, that’s a first choice that’s easy on any budget.

Fiksu is a sponsor of Mobile Sports Report.

Filed Under: Apps Tagged With: ,

How Should Sports Sites Make Money? A Great Post and a Great Line

February 18, 2012 by

Since Mobile Sports Report ran a story and picture of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition this week (after all, it is a big story that the issue is available online), the whole discussion about how to drive traffic to sports sites and how online news sites make money off advertising got moved to a new level with this post from Outkick the Coverage. Read it if you are in the sports marketing biz. I think the ideas contained are radical, but deserve consideration.

I was pointed toward the article from another post over at The Big Lead that was talking about how the Boston Courant makes money because it doesn’t have a website. FYI, a guy named Dave Price, who I don’t know personally but went to school at Colorado the same time I did, does the same thing at a local daily near here in Palo Alto — no online stories to protect print ads.

You can debate if that is a realistic long-term strategy, but — I loved the line at the end of the Big Lead post by Ty Duffy, so I’ll quote it below:

This story highlights a basic fact: no one has figured out how to monetize the Internet effectively. For typed words to stand alone, media must cross two fundamental barriers. First, we need a better metric to sell to advertisers than straight pageviews, before we all burn out and/or introduce Softcore Saturdays. Second, traditional media must find some way to make a non-invasive paid subscription model work.

“Softcore Saturdays,” I love it. Of course I should also mention that on the same page as Duffy’s post there is a link to the MissCollegeFootball.com poll. So maybe softcore Saturday is already almost here.

Filed Under: About MSR, Sports Illustrated, The Big Lead Tagged With:

On Wi-Fi Day, a Warning: Find Wi-Fi if You Want Sports on Your Phone

August 2, 2011 by

Attention, mobile sports fans: If you are thinking of watching a game anytime soon on your portable device, be prepared to find yourself some Wi-Fi — or get ready to pay Peyton Manning-like dough to stay connected.

Since today is officially “Wi-Fi Day” since the numerical date, 8-02-11 neatly corresponds with the IEEE designation for the Wi-Fi protocol (802.11) it’s a good time as any to start thinking about where you might be able to find a Wi-Fi connection for when you want to watch sports, especially live video, on your phone, pad or laptop. Why? Because the nation’s two biggest cellular carriers, AT&T and Verizon, have recently made it loud and clear that heavy users of wireless data will be forced to pay more for the service the more they use, and may even face data-download slowdowns if they use their phones too much.

AT&T this week let it be known that even those users who still have so-called “unlimited” data plans may see their cellular connections slowed down if Ma Bell decides you are using too much data. And Verizon’s new CEO spent part of the company’s most recent earnings call talking about how “tiered” data plans are inevitable and that cell phone users need to get used to a future where every bit is counted and charged for.

The good news is that both AT&T and Verizon are busy trying to set up free public Wi-Fi networks, especially at major sporting arenas, to help ease the cellular crush being caused by stadiums full of fans snapping pictures and sharing videos from their phones. The alternative is to find a Starbuck’s or other friendly eating establishment where you might be able to use a local Wi-Fi connection to get the bandwidth you’ll need to watch sports live on your phone for longer than a few minutes.

And if you are dead set on using your phone or tablet to watch sporting events via a cellular connection, now might be a good time to take a look at what Sprint has to offer, since as of this writing the No. 3 cellular carrier in the country is the only one still offering truly unlimited data plans for its new, faster 4G network.

We’ll have more on this topic soon but in the meantime it might not be a bad idea to take a look at Wi-Fi aggregators like iPass or Boingo to see if your corporate communications needs can sync up with your desire to stay connected with your favorite team.

Filed Under: AT&T, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Video Streaming Tagged With: , , , , , ,

‘Way harder, intense look’ at Mobile Sports Production Underway at Turner Sports, exec says

June 5, 2011 by

Picture of mobile sports broadcast visionary Michael AdamsonThere’s a large enough audience for mobile sports to spark Turner Sports to take a “way harder, more intense” look at mobile sports production, according to a recently posted Beet.TV video.

According to Michael Adamson, VP of Sports New Products, Turner Sports, the proof is the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament, which saw a 17 percent increase in online sports video consumption and a 63 percent increase in total viewership for March Madness on Demand (MMOD).

More mobile sports viewers “than we thought”

“For the first time, we saw a significant enough portion of our audience consume live games on mobile (to cause Turner) to take a way harder, more intense look at mobile video production,” said Adamson in the Beet.TV video. “It really pushed our numbers higher on mobile than we thought was going to happen this year.”

The “take” numbers across all of Turner Sports, CBS Sports and NCAA online, online streaming and mobile application rates are now large enough to warrant exploration into broadcasts tailored to mobile sports consumers, said Adamson.

“Most of our video streaming experiences that we’ve done for sports have been simulcasts or experiments with alternate-angle live streams,” said Adamson. “Now, we’re starting to think more about how to make sure we sync mobile video with broadcast, or how we sync syncing mobile video with mobile data. How do we make mobile video available as both companion (viewing) and primary (viewing) experience, and tie advertising in?”

Adamson’s comments are good news for the mobile sports consumer. In addition to March Madness, Turner Sports broadcasts NBA on TNT, Major League Baseball on TBS, NASCAR on TNT and PGA Championship and PGA Grand Slam golf.

iPad for sports extraordinary

Adamson said Turner Sports was wowed by the iPad viewership of March Madness, as well as the behavior patterns of mobile sports consumers watching hoops on the device.

“People were using the iPad more like a TV than a mobile device,” he said. “I don’t know that we would have expected that but we definitely saw it.”

Before March Madness, Turner Sports saw the iPad much more as a companion device for people watching sports on television, Adamson said. iPad viewers told Turner Sports through their behavior that iPad is ready for more intense mobile sports programming that embeds video inside a data-rich environment, he added. Watch for broadcasters to begin using iPad applications as a way to show people the games they want to see alongside a rich set of social media and location-based applications in the future, said Adamson.

Adamson made his comments to Beet.TV at paidContent Mobile 2011, held May 18, 2011 in New York.

Filed Under: BeetTV, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Mobile sports pioneers, NCAA Hoops, Turner Sports Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Welcome to Mobile Sports Report!

March 27, 2011 by

Welcome new readers to Mobile Sports Report, the business insider website for the mobile sports marketplace. Please stay tuned as we hit the ground running to bring you focused news, analysis and simple how-to guides for the rapidly expanding marketplace for mobile sports content and fan interaction.

Mobile Sports Report is the latest offering from Sidecut Productions, creators of the well-known and highly regarded Sidecut Reports wireless industry analyst and research site. Led by Paul Kapustka, editor and founder of Sidecut Reports, Mobile Sports Report will cover not only the latest breaking news across the U.S. mobile sports industry, but will also bring simple, hands-on reviews of sports-related plans and devices to help you keep your game on wherever you may roam.

Bookmark this site and get ready for the mobile sports revolution! We’ll be there to provide you with a front-row seat.

Filed Under: About MSR Tagged With: , , , , ,
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