AT&T sees 6.4 TB of data used on stadium DAS for Final Four weekend

AT&T’s cell on wheels tower outside the University of Phoenix Stadium for the Final Four. Credit both photos: AT&T (click on any photo for a larger image)

AT&T said that it saw 6.4 terabytes of wireless data used on its cellular networks inside the University of Phoenix Stadium during this past weekend’s Final Four games of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, one of the biggest numbers yet for AT&T during the biggest weekend of college hoops.

While we don’t have full wireless-use totals from last year, totals of DAS and Wi-Fi from this year’s semifinal games from Saturday and Monday’s championship game (won by North Carolina, a 71-65 victory over Gonzaga) should surge past the last official mark we have, of almost 11 TB recorded at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis back in 2015.

That weekend saw 5.3 TB on the stadium’s Wi-Fi network and the rest on DAS systems; we are currently waiting for both the Wi-Fi numbers from UoP Stadium as well as any DAS stats from Verizon or Sprint (or T-Mobile, which wouldn’t give us a total usage number from the Super Bowl so we are guessing we won’t see any from Final Four weekend either).

AT&T COW in downtown Phoenix

And while we always take those estimates about how much big events contribute to the local economy with a huge grain of salt, there is no disputing that big events bring big wireless usage to an entire host city, especially when like at a Final Four or Super Bowl, there are official events just about everywhere you look.

AT&T said its temporary and fixed networks around Phoenix saw more than 10.5 TB of traffic over the weekend, a sign that cities with big-event venues probably need to start thinking of how they might need to beef up macro and small-cell networks around town — or help the carriers deploy towers and other devices more quickly so that fans can stay connected throughout their visits.

Our favorite tweet from Monday’s championship game was one where someone we follow had a picture of himself watching live baseball on his phone while at the UoP stadium during the championship game. While it may be a subtle comment on the painful play (and refereeing) it was certainly a vote in favor of the great connectivity in the building, whether it was on Wi-Fi or cellular. Stay tuned for more figures as we get ’em.

March Madness viewing: More digital options, plus some virtual reality

MML_iPhone_01-WatchRemember when college basketball tournament season only had a small slice of games available online? Or when you had to pay extra to watch online? It wasn’t that long ago. Thankfully though the future is here now and for 2016 the college hoops postseason has even more ways to watch games mobile or online, including one option to watch games via virtual reality programming.

Like last year, if you have a qualifying cable contract, you are basically covered and should be able to watch all the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament games live, on whichever platform you want. The best way to start is to head to the NCAA’s March Madness home page, where you should be able to find any and all information on devices, apps and other avenues to streaming coverage. According to Turner Sports, the NCAA and CBS Sports the games will be available live on 12 different platforms, including Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku players and Roku TV models. The new March Madness Live app isn’t avalable until Thursday, so check back soon for the go-to app for everything March Madness.

Also like last year, you should be able to watch a few minutes of the first game you see without having to log in — great if you are just trying to catch a buzzer beater. The games of course will be available on regular TV, and the March Madness home page has what may be a great time saver, a widget that helps you find those obscure cable channels other than CBS or TNT where the games might be on. Since we’ve just moved, MSR’s NCAA viewing team might make good use of the Zip Code-powered channel finder.

Screen Shot 2016-03-08 at 12.14.34 PMEven if you don’t have a cable contract you can still watch a lot of games that are streamed online; games broadcast on CBS will be available for no charge on desktop, mobile and tablet platforms, while games broadcast on the other channels (TNT, TBS, truTV and local channels) should be available on those providers’ websites. Again, if you get stuck or lost just defaulting back to the March Madness home page should give you a path to whatever game it is you’re looking for.

Big East tourney available in VR

If you have a NextVR platform you will be able to watch the 2016 Big East tournament (it starts Thursday, March 10) thanks to a partnership between FOX Sports and NextVR. We’re not VR-savvy here at MSR headquarters yet but with seven games and 15 hours of programming scheduled this might be a cool treat for VR fans. NextVR has an instruction page on how to watch the games in VR; if anyone tries this out, send us an email with a report on how it worked (or didn’t) and we’ll let everyone else know.

Also, don’t forget — this year for the first time the NCAA Men’s Championship game, scheduled for Monday, April 4, will be on TBS, NOT on CBS, the first time the champs game has been only on cable. And, there will be streaming options as well during Final Four weekend, according to the official announcement:

For the NCAA Final Four National Semifinals on Saturday, April 2, from Houston, NCAA March Madness Live will provide three distinct live video streams of both games to provide unprecedented viewing options for fans – live streaming of the traditional game coverage provided on TBS, along with “Team Stream by Bleacher Report” coverage or team-specific presentations offered via TNT and truTV. This year’s NCAA Tournament will include the National Championship airing on TBS, the first time the championship has ever been televised on cable television.

AT&T: Final Four sees 1.52 terabytes of DAS traffic, almost double last year’s total

Lucas Oil StadiumSometimes we feel like a broken record when talking about data usage at big events — is the total ever going to stop growing? Not at the Final Four, apparently, where this year AT&T saw almost double the traffic on its in-stadium DAS, even at a smaller venue, the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

According to AT&T, its customers used a total of 1.52 terabytes of data on the in-stadium DAS at Lucas Oil Stadium during the three Final Four weekend games, a huge jump from the 885 GB of DAS traffic AT&T saw on its network at the last Final Four, held in AT&T Stadium. Remember, these numbers are for AT&T cellular customers only, and does not include traffic for any other wireless carriers or for the Lucas Oil Stadium Wi-Fi network. We have calls and emails in to the various players to see if we can get more numbers, but for now AT&T’s almost-double growth is pretty interesting.

Normally we’re not big fans of infographics but the one accompanying the AT&T press release about Final Four traffic is pretty interesting, since it simply shows just how much data use at big events keeps growing. AT&T’s DAS traffic numbers for the last four Final Fours (New Orleans, Atlanta, Texas and Indy) start respectively at 376 GB for 2012, then jump to 667 GB for 2013, then to 885 GB last year and the 1.52 TB mark this year. Maybe the release of the new iPhones this past fall helped with the ever-increasing totals, or the fact that new rich media applications like Vine and Instagram are gaining in use? And with new livestreaming video apps like Meerkat and Periscope joining the fray, how will wireless networks at large venues hold up?

For AT&T, big events now mean lots of resources not just inside the building, but in the surrounding public areas as well, to better handle the big crowds as they move about the event locale. Like it did for the recent South by Southwest festival in Austin, AT&T brought its big-ball antenna to Indy for the weekend, and supplemented downtown coverage with outdoor DAS deployments and improvements to the outdoor Wi-Fi hotspots it built for Super Bowl XLVI held at Lucas Oil in 2012.

AT&T Infographic about Final Four DAS data use

AT&T Infographic about Final Four DAS data use

NCAA Tournament Wi-Fi and DAS: Send us your stats!

Nationwide Arena. Photos Credit: Columbus Blue Jackets

Nationwide Arena. Photos Credit: Columbus Blue Jackets

Given that the games are numerous and spread out far and wide, it’s our guess that wireless-data consumption totals from the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament regional sites are not quite approaching the “big game” numbers of say, a Super Bowl or the recent College Football Playoff championship game. Still, there are probably some interesting peaks and totals so as an open request to all involved, please send us any and all Wi-Fi and DAS stats from the weekend’s games and we’ll compile a list of what we get next week.

AT&T, as usual, was in with some early numbers, namely the DAS stats for the AT&T network in place at the University of Dayton Arena, where the first-round play-in games were held earlier this week. According to AT&T it saw 144 gigabytes of data used on the DAS during the four games over two days, again not Super Bowl numbers but still a big chunk of data and something to think about if your facility is planning to host a similar “big event” in the near future.

So who’s got Wi-Fi and who doesn’t for the NCAA sites? Our unofficial list is as follows:

Wi-Fi for fans available:
KFC Yum! Center, Louisville, Kentucky
Consol Energy Center, Pittsburgh
Moda Center, Portland
Time Warner Cable Arena, Charlotte
Nationwide Arena, Columbus, Ohio
Carrier Dome, Syracuse, N.Y.
Quicken Loans Arena, Cleveland
Staples Center, Los Angeles
Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis

No Wi-Fi
Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena, Jacksonville
CenturyLink Center Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska
KeyArena, Seattle
NRG Stadium, Houston

If any MSR readers are out at the games, send us a speedtest…

March Madness online: All 67 men’s tournament games available to cable/pay TV subscribers on any platform

NCAA hoops on a Kindle? Sure!

NCAA hoops on a Kindle? Sure!

I’m not that old, but I am old enough to remember when the men’s NCAA basketball tournament was on broadcast TV only, and not online mainly because the Internet and world wide web were just getting started. I even can take credit for being one of the first to ever try to put live tourney scores online, a battle that started between my outfit and a little place called Starwave Sports that eventually was bought by ESPN. That’s a funny story but you already know the ending.

Fast forward to 2015, when all 67 games of this year’s tournament will be available live, online, streamed to just about whatever device you want — as long as you have a qualifying cable or pay TV contract. With a revamped March Madness Live app, the powers that be behind the tournament broadcasts — Turner Sports, CBS Sports and the NCAA — are promising to deliver the “ultimate digital destination” for live tournament access.

There’s some new games, new social media stuff and other goodies that you can check out at the March Madness site — including a Rhianna video for some reason — but the key thing for most hoops fans will (and always will be) the games themselves, which this year start on March 17. If you have a cable contract you are set, since all you need to do is log in with your account information and you will be able to get “unlimited live streaming coverage and on-the-go access” to all games, which should make it easier than trying to find the truTV channel on your cable guide.

If you don’t have a cable contract you can still watch all the games that are broadcast on CBS; there will also be temporary “preview pass” for other games, which might be all the time you need if, say, you tune in for the last 2 minutes. Also, the games will be available online at the TBS, TNT and truTV sites, as well as CBS, for those like me who watch sports on their big-screen computer monitor while the other family members are holding the TV hostage.

We’ll do another post as the tournament start gets closer, but for now just revel in the fact that you don’t have to worry about whether or not the games will be available, or whether you will have to shell out $3.99 or $10 more like we did in the not-so-old days to watch the tourney online. It’s the fitting end to a long journey. Grampa Internet says you’re welcome.

UPDATE: Some press-photo looks at the new app and bracket app from March Madness Live below.

Game Center view

Game Center view

Android smartphone look at new app

Android smartphone look at new app

Android tablet bracket view

Android tablet bracket view

TV Everywhere drives strong growth in March Madness viewership

final4

The push to entice digital viewers to follow this year’s NCAA Basketball tournament was a resounding success for NCAA.com and Turner Sports as their NCAA March Madness Live push underwent continued growth in a year when the championship game was down a bit from the previous year on broadcast television.

The broadcasting of the championship game saw a 10% decline in viewership on television. However the match between Kentucky and Connecticut generated two million live video streams, up 30% when compared with last year’s championship game.

The digital streaming effort, which includes its TV Everywhere initiative, maintained strong support from the digital space even in the face of a number of the better know and more popular schools being eliminated early in the tournament this year.

It set a new record for video consumption, as it has in the past few years, with this year’s event with a 42% increase in live video streaming over last year to bring the collective total over all platforms to 69.7 million live video streams. NCAA March Madness Live registered 15 million hours of live video streaming, a new high and up 7% from 2013.

The mobile space, where tablets and smartphones are still undergoing strong growth themselves, experienced very strong growth with an increase of 71% in live streams over the course of the tournament, and the total hours grew by 38% over last year.

In addition to more viewers, they stayed on longer while viewing watching an average of 67% more minutes than non-registered viewers. While a user can register and watch TV Everywhere on a PC, the use of that platform as a second screen appears to be fading in favor of mobile devices. The live streams on logged-in mobile devices representing 52% of the total TV Everywhere usage for the entire tournament

The growth was in a good part helped by the variety of ways that fans could access the tournament aside from mainstream broadcast television that NCAA.com and its partners Turner Sports and CBS Sports made available. There was an option of any one of three web sites available as well as NCAA March Madness Live available via the Amazon Appstore, Apple App Store, Google Play and Windows Store. On top of all of that fans could watch games via live streaming on TNT, TBS and truTV’s digital platforms, as well as participating TV provider websites.

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