Why the NFL is blocking streaming at the Super Bowl: Blame the network, not the fans

In case you are wondering why you won’t be able to watch the Super Bowl live on your phone while you’re at the game, Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica has a good story about why the NFL is blocking streaming video inside MetLife Stadium. To quickly recap, NFL CIO Michelle McKenna-Doyle told Brodkin that streaming video takes up too much bandwidth, and that it could hamper overall wireless communications on game day, so the league is proactively blocking live feeds at the game.

While I agree with her assessment of the situation and the solution (blocking live video), I don’t agree with her claim that the “vast majority of our fans want to watch the game on the field, watch the replays on the jumbo board, and participate in the event more than they want to be checking their phone,” and I’m surprised that Brodkin didn’t put up more of a challenge to this claim. Her follow-on claim that the league is doing the “vast majority” a favor by blocking the few video viewers rings hollow and reminds me of the old “data hogs” arguments the carriers used to use against people who were exercising their rights to their unlimited data contracts. My point: don’t blame fans who want to watch live video as being the people ruining the network for everyone else. Put the blame where it deserves to be, namely on the in-stadium networks that can’t yet handle the demands of a large crowd that wants video at the game.

We’ve talked before about why people want to stay connected while at the game. It’s not for everyone, but the desire to be online in your stadium seat is way more widespread than just a few people. Trolls will comment and say “watch the damn game and shut up” but plenty of real sports fans want the replays and closeups they are now accustomed to on TV. And not every seat has a good view of the big screens inside the stadium, and many times those things are showing ads, not replays. Then there is the time standing in line for a beer or bathroom. Why shouldn’t you be able to watch the game you are paying big bucks to be at, instead of being penalized because the stadium doesn’t have enough beer vendors or urinals? How about watching a replay while the game is in one of its lengthy TV timeouts? Or catching up on a play that you missed during halftime? Isn’t just having to listen to Bruno Mars punishment enough?

It will be interesting to see what the user statistics are like when the San Francisco 49ers’ new Levi’s Stadium opens this year, if its much-touted network delivers as hoped. The cynic in me is also guessing that when the NFL finally gets its digital video strategy figured out — meaning they clear the rights contracts and find a way to start charging fans more to watch more video online — the stadium network problems will suddenly be solved, and you’ll be able to watch all the live video you can afford.

We’ll be the first to acknowledge that putting networks in stadiums isn’t easy. Our recent Stadium Tech Reports series is designed to profile those in the industry who are trying to bring a quality wireless experience to their fans, so that others may follow. Already, we see places like Barclays Center and Gillette Stadium pushing the envelope when it comes to features like streaming video. In many ways, getting there is a long road that we’re just at the start of. If there is one bit of analysis I can provide after covering this field for the past 3 years, it’s that I don’t think anyone has gotten the stadium-network thing completely figured out just yet — and that any network put in over the past couple years is probably already in need of an upgrade, due to user demands already exceeding capacity. And that’s before most places are even thinking of providing live video feeds.

So sure, go ahead and block live video if it’s going to crash the network. But stop saying it’s something that just a few fans want, because there’s no proof behind that idea. Until the league and carriers like Verizon offer up real data on stadium network usage, there’s no way of telling exactly how many people at a game want to watch video, and whether it’s just for a replay or two or if they want a constant stream going at their seat. I’d be willing to bet more than a pint with McKenna-Doyle that if she polled an average NFL crowd and asked them if they’d like replays at their seats, a “vast majority” would vote for replays on their phones, and not in favor of settling for jumbotrons and PA announcers as she claims. So again, if you need to block the video, fine, but put the blame for the action on the network’s lack of capacity, and not on the fans who are just trying to enhance their own experience.

Stadium Tech Report: Verizon, AT&T DAS upgrades at MetLife Stadium await Super Bowl Sunday

Verizon branded gate at MetLife Stadium. Credit: Verizon Wireless

Verizon branded gate at MetLife Stadium. Credit: Verizon Wireless

Super Bowl foes the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos have only had two weeks to prepare for each other. But Verizon Wireless and AT&T have been preparing for the roman-numeral date at MetLife Stadium for more than a year. Will the Verizon Wi-Fi and DAS, and AT&T’s separate DAS be able to handle the wireless needs of the fans at the NFL’s biggest game? Tune in Sunday to see!

We might be one of the only news outlets who care more about the wireless networking at Super Bowls than the game itself, but for many in the stadium tech industry the biggest single game in America’s most popular sport is always somewhat of a wireless watershed. Perhaps at no other event do attendees spend so much time shooting selfies and posting them as they do from the site of Super Bowl Sunday. Even in the expected cold, it should be no different this week at Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where game time is scheduled for around 6:30 p.m. Eastern.

But well before that, fans will be testing the Verizon-built Wi-Fi network and both of the big carriers’ DAS deployments inside MetLife. According to reps from both companies that we spoke with last week, the carriers are ready.

Verizon spokesman David Samberg told us via email last week that an upgrade of the Verizon DAS in MetLife this past season means there are now more than 500 DAS antennas inside the facility. See some of the photos provided by Verizon that show the clever hiding spots Verizon engineers have found over the last 18 months as they’ve added capacity to a network built just a few years ago.

AT&T has also put in a brand-new DAS over the past year, with another 500-plus antennas of its own. “For the last year or so we’ve been working on our pre-game and game day network playbook in an effort to provide the best possible wireless experience for our customers,” said Michael Maus, assistant vice president of network services at AT&T, via email. “In anticipation of the huge volume of data and voice usage expected [for the Super Bowl], we’ve built a new state of the art antenna system inside the stadium, we’re rolling in portable cell sites both at the stadium, and to support the tailgate areas, and we’ve augmented coverage in New York City to support the activities there.”

Rooftop DAS equipment. Credit: Verizon Wireless

Rooftop DAS equipment. Credit: Verizon Wireless

For Verizon’s own customers, 4G LTE capacity at MetLife has been quadrupled since last year, according to Samberg, who said that all stadium upgrades were completed by October, giving Verizon multiple chances to test its system against crowds at New York Giants and New York Jets home games. So far, Samberg said, so good.

More traffic than last year’s Super Bowl already

While yours truly opined earlier this year that this year’s Super Bowl might not set a wireless traffic record, we didn’t take into account some simple numbers — mainly, that MetLife Stadium’s official capacity of 82,566 is bigger than the Superdome’s 72,003. So, even if it’s cold, having 10,000 more people on hand probably means more bandwidth consumed, even if this year’s game doesn’t have a power blackout in the second half. (And even if it does, Samberg said the network shouldn’t go down since Verizon has backup power supplies on hand.)

Find the DAS antenna! Credit: Verizon Wireless

Find the DAS antenna! Credit: Verizon Wireless

Our only problem with record wireless numbers from Sunday’s game is that we probably won’t ever see an actual number, since Verizon historically shies away from providing a score. Instead it just issues press releases saying things like “way more traffic this year than last!” and then expects us all to believe that without numbers. The good news for fans at the game is that the in-stadium Wi-Fi network, also built by Verizon, is free and open to customers of all carriers, or basically anyone with a device that has a Wi-Fi chip. But Verizon, like big competitor AT&T, has been beefing up its DAS installations significantly because most people try cellular first, even at stadiums, before instructing their phones to find a Wi-Fi network. AT&T, to its credit, usually does deliver a wireless scorecard quickly after big events. So at least from AT&T’s perspective we should find out if this year’s game sets another record.

Aside from the stadium improvements, Verizon will be showing a demonstration of a technology this week that could make DAS more of a competitor to Wi-Fi on the high bandwidth side of things. Called LTE multicast, the technology basically establishes set channels for LTE devices that will “broadcast” video, like a TV channel. (This idea is similar to the StadiumVision Mobile technology Cisco uses at stadiums like Barclays Center.) Theoretically, LTE multicast could let fans use a cellular connection to view multiple video streams, something you would need to use Wi-Fi for it to have any chance of working. But the multicast demo won’t take place at MetLife, but instead at Bryant Park in Manhattan this week. If you are in the city, check out the demo and let us know what you think.

No NFL Mobile at MetLife

And here’s something else you won’t be able to use at MetLife during the Super Bowl: Verizon’s own NFL Mobile app, which outside the stadium will be the only smartphone platform you’ll be able to watch the game on. (The Fox streaming site and app will only work with tablets and desktops or laptops, per the league’s rights agreement with Verizon.) Next year, the rights for NFL Mobile will change and if the local game (like, say, the Super Bowl) is on TV, you’ll be able to use NFL Mobile to watch it even if you’re at the stadium. But not this year! (To give one answer as to why, if you are at the game, you might want to watch it on your cell phone, we say: Bathroom or beer lines!)

More stadium infrastructure photos below:

AT&T DAS antennas at MetLife. Credit: AT&T

AT&T DAS antennas at MetLife. Credit: AT&T

AT&T's new head-end building at MetLife, where its DAS gear is housed. Credit: AT&T

AT&T’s new head-end building at MetLife, where its DAS gear is housed. Credit: AT&T

Inside the AT&T head-end building at MetLife. Cables! Credit: AT&T

Inside the AT&T head-end building at MetLife. Cables! Credit: AT&T

Fox: We’re ready for big Super Bowl streaming audience

While nobody can predict how things like a stadium blackout or a polar vortex might affect the broadcast of an event like the Super Bowl, executives at Fox are doing all they can to prepare to make sure this year’s online coverage of the NFL’s championship game goes off as well as possible.

With viewership expected to exceed last year’s total of 3 million unique online viewers, the live stream of Super Bowl XLVIII will be available on iPads in the Fox Sports Go app and via a browser at FoxSportsGo.com. The online feed will be available free to anyone with an Internet connection starting at 12 a.m. ET on Sunday, Feb. 2, and will also include access to a Spanish-language broadcast.

But remember: The live streaming from Fox is only available for desktops or laptops, or via an iPad using the FoxSportsGo app. Because of NFL rights contracts, to watch the game live on a smartphone you need to be a Verizon customer and have the $5 per month premium version of the NFL Mobile app installed.

No matter which platform you choose to use, as always the Super Bowl should be a compelling story, even if that tale is something other than the game between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks. Super Bowl XLVIII is scheduled to start around 6:30 p.m. ET from MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where snow and cold may be part of the equation.

“It should be interesting, with [possible] weather in New Jersey,” said Clark Pierce, senior vice president of mobile and advanced platforms for Fox Sports, in a phone interview earlier this week. “We’re ready for traffic to spike at some moment when something happens, and we get a lot of concurrent users. We’ll see how we do.”

Tablet audience keeps fueling growth

Granted, the online viewer numbers for the Super Bowl are completely dwarfed by the regular TV viewers, which for last year’s game totaled 164 million. But having 4 million unique viewers online is a huge digital audience, and it’s one that Pierce said Fox has been planning for over the past few years.

“We know what CBS did [for streaming] and we know what NBC did,” Pierce said of the networks which had the Super Bowl broadcast the past 2 years. “And we’re working with [content delivery network provider] Akamai, and it’s not their first rodeo. So I think we’re ready for whatever can happen.”

Perhaps the biggest number of online viewers for this year’s Super Bowl will come via Apple iPads, the market leader in the tablet form factor. While Fox has not yet released viewer numbers by device or platform for its restricted streaming of the NFC playoff games, it did say it had a record 2.4 million visitors to its FoxSports.com website on championship Sunday, a 53 percent increase over the previous year. Pierce said increases in digital viewers are partially due to the expanding tablet market, and tablet owners getting more comfortable watching sports on a smaller screen.

“The concept of watching TV on a smaller screen is another year down the road and people are just that much more used to it,” said Pierce, who also said that online viewers may choose tablets over laptops or desktops due to clearer pictures.

“People are getting spoiled by Apple and Android devices with really high screen resolution,” Pierce said.

Streaming delay inevitable

What doesn’t work so well with any live streaming option is trying to use it as a “second screen” alongside a live TV broadcast. Because of the technical necessities of putting a live signal online — which includes mainly taking the TV feed and encoding it to the Internet — delays between “live” TV and the show online can be from 20 seconds to a minute or more, Pierce said.

“It does take time to take a big HD picture and encode it into IP,” Pierce said. “There’s just no way around it.”

In the future, Pierce hopes to help Fox add more features to its online offerings, maybe making them something like what broadcast engineers see in the event production studios, with multiple monitors offering different feeds and live stats. Still, just having a free online broadcast is a huge leap forward from the recent past.

“It’s been exciting to build it, and in the future our team hopes to add more content and features,” Pierce said. “The horizon is pretty exciting.”

NFL Championship games live streams: Fox for Niners-Seahawks, CBS for Broncos-Patriots, Verizon NFL Mobile for both

Are you ready for some streaming football? In case you won’t be near a TV for either of Sunday’s championship games, you still may have a chance to watch the games live on a PC, a tablet or a smartphone. Here are the details:

If you’re a customer of a participating provider for Fox Sports Go, you can watch Sunday’s NFC championship game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Seattle Seahawks on the Web or on an Apple iPad using the Fox Sports Go website or mobile app. The Fox Sports Go website address is foxsportsgo.com, and the list of participating providers includes AT&T U-Verse, Comcast Xfinity, Suddenlink, Optimum, Midcontinent Communications, and Wow!. Coverage starts with the FOX NFL Sunday pregame show at 6 p.m. ET. Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Pam Oliver, and Erin Andrews will call the game at 6:30 p.m. If you’re like me, the mute button on Buck/Aikman comes into play at about 6:35.

CBS will also live-stream its coverage of the AFC championship game from Denver, starting at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday. The games can be watched online at CBSSports.com’s NFL page, or via the CBSSports app, which shows the games via a web page. I did see a little disclaimer that says live streaming is only available via iOS mobile devices.

If you are a Verizon Wireless customer and want to watch the games on your 4G LTE smartphone, you can sign up for Verizon’s NFL Mobile app and its live NFL service, which costs $5 a month extra to whatever cell plan you have. NFL Mobile customers will be able to see live streaming action from both championship games as well as the Super Bowl. Though it suffered glitches earlier this season, Verizon’s NFL Mobile app has been rock-solid for me, with lots of air time during my daughter’s Sunday afternoon music lessons. Don’t get caught without football this weekend, these games are possible classics you don’t want to miss.

Fox Sports Go will live-stream Seahawks-Saints and Niners-Panthers this weekend; CBS will live-stream Patriots-Colts, Broncos-Chargers

Screen shot 2014-01-11 at 9.52.57 AMIf you’re a customer of a participating provider for Fox Sports Go, you can watch this weekend’s NFC playoff games either on the Web or on an Apple iPad using the Fox Sports Go website or mobile app. Here at Mobile Sports Report we love this kind of flexibility, since it lets us watch games on the big desktop PC screen if and when other family members want to use the main TV to watch Harry Potter movies. The Fox Sports Go website address is foxsportsgo.com, and the list of participating providers includes AT&T U-Verse, Comcast Xfinity, Suddenlink, Optimum, Midcontinent Communications, and Wow!.

CBS will also live-stream its coverage of the AFC divisional games this weekend, starting with the Colts-Patriots game at 8:15 p.m. ET on Saturday followed by the Broncos-Chargers game Sunday at about 4:40 p.m. Sunday. The games can be watched online at CBSSports.com’s NFL page, or via the CBSSports app, which I believe gets around the Verizon phone-ban by just showing the games via a web page. I did see a little disclaimer that says live streaming is only available via iOS devices. Someone out there give it a shot (I have an Android phone) and let us know if it works on an iPhone. You do not need to subscribe to any TV service to see the CBS live streams.

For Fox, Saturday’s Seattle Seahawks vs. New Orleans Saints game (4:30 p.m. ET start) and Sunday’s San Francisco 49ers vs. Carolina Panthers tilt (1 p.m. ET start) will both be live streamed, according to a Fox news release. To see the stream you need to validate your pay-TV subscription, and once that’s done you can watch all the other Fox games. The Super Bowl, which Fox is broadcasting this year, will not require a cable subscription.

Though the Fox Sports Go app is available for both the iPad and the iPhone, the Fox news release very specifically notes that the game is available only for the tablet version of the app. We are guessing here but we suspect that Verizon’s deal with the league for its NFL Mobile app — the only app for smartphone live NFL action — precludes Fox’s ability to offer live streaming to a phone-type device. All playoff games this weekend, including the AFC games on CBS (according to my phone), will also be available to NFL Mobile subscribers. NFL Mobile requires a Verizon 4G LTE phone and a $5 per month NFL Mobile subscription.

Someday, the league will get all these rights simplified. But not this weekend.

Sunday Sermon: More Support and Execution Needed for Mobile Sports Apps

So far this NFL season, we’ve had two weeks and two big failures on the mobile football-viewing application front. For the opener there was the (still unexplained) meltdown of Verizon Wireless’ NFL Mobile app, a snafu that probably caused millions to miss live coverage that they had paid for on their phones.

This weekend, we’re still not sure of the extent of the problem (or whether it was something NBC knew about) but I was unable to view NBC’s Sunday Night Football game on the web, even though as a Comcast subscriber and a Mac user NBC’s own site tells me that I can. Attempts to watch in Chrome or Firefox met with error messages pointing me to Safari. And while some of our readers said that disabling an ad-blocking extension allowed them to use Safari to watch SNF online, even using Safari I wasn’t able to connect and neither were other readers. The bigger question is, why, in 2013, is a major network restricting access to different browsers and OSes? Aren’t we past all that?

Apparently not. The bigger problem, I think, is that there’s too much money and attention being spent promoting online and wireless sports-viewing apps, and not enough spent on the coding and technical support. When I finally got through to a Verizon support rep on opening day that person tried to say that errors couldn’t be fixed because “high call volume,” as if that’s a believable phrase anymore, was taking resources away from tech support. And even the NFL Mobile support’s efforts to pass off Verizon’s errors as a “server hiccup” are lame. Verizon makes something like $40 billion a quarter, and can pay $1 billion just for mobile NFL rights. But they can’t keep their phone banks staffed or their biggest sports app working on opening day? That is a priority decision that is a head slap to the users who pay $5 extra a month for NFL Mobile. But it’s apparently about the norm for mobile sports viewing apps.

NBC’s apparent decision to alienate Macintosh users is harder to figure out. At the very least, if they are going to take money from Microsoft and that is behind why NBC is “enhancing” things for Windows viewers online, be honest and tell Mac users upfront that you’re not going to get access.

If I can send any advice to teams thinking about putting in stadium apps, it would be to make sure you also have budget for technical support. I know it’s not easy to design an app or a web service that works with the dizzying amount of client devices and software install versions out in the world today. But when the biggest companies out there now are falling down on the job, it’s not a good sign for the industry overall. More support for mobile apps, please — before users stop trying them out of sheer frustration.

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