NFL should take a chance on open APIs and gigabit Wi-Fi if it really wants to engage fans

When it comes to using technology, the NFL talks a really good game — but when it comes to decisions and deployments, the shield moves slower than a 3-yard cloud of dust. And it’s frustrating fans, who are looking for something along the lines of a run-and-shoot.

This week’s announcement of an agreement with Extreme Networks under which the technology company became the “official supplier of Wi-Fi analytics” is a good example of the NFL’s go-slow philosophy. While the deal is a small feather for Extreme and validation of its stadium Wi-Fi smarts, in the end it really doesn’t move many needles since it’s not a binding deal (meaning teams don’t have to use Extreme gear if they don’t want to) and also since many NFL stadiums don’t yet have fan-facing Wi-Fi. So while the NFL uses press events around such announcements to talk grandly of techno-fan engagement, what it really should be doing is spending some of its hoard of cash to help teams install super-fast networks in stadiums right now, instead of waiting for teams to do so on their own.

I get it that the networks are an asset for stadium owners, and in the long run they will want to reap the full benefits of their costs of deployment. And it’s hard to say there are things the NFL could be doing better, since the sport enjoys immense popularity for both its live and televised offerings. But nothing lasts forever. And if the NFL wants to keep justifying its hundreds-of-dollars ticket prices, it should offer its fans a game-day experience like no other — which should include super-fast, aka “gigabit” Wi-Fi. Fast Wi-Fi that connects instantly, and lets fans share photos, videos and more while at the game.

How much would that cost? Several million dollars to 10 million dollars per team? Even at the high end, it’s not like the league doesn’t have that kind of money to toss around. It does. Just its cellphone live-action rights contract alone — $1 billion from Verizon over 4 years — is enough to cover league-wide Wi-Fi deployments and more. And once those networks are in place, the NFL would be supremely set up to control and benefit from the possible coming explosion of in-stadium mobile device use. An explosion which could be even bigger if the NFL takes another radical step to open up its content and information to third-party developers.

Team apps are losing the battle

Right now whenever a stadium network is launched there is usually a grand accompanying plan for a “team app,” which promises just about everything a fan could possibly want, in the team’s eyes. The problem with these apps — which so far are largely being ignored — is that they are all developed from a team’s perspective, not a fan’s. My biggest complaint with most of the team apps (and this goes for other events and sports media channels as well) is that they try to do too much, and instead of being helpful are just a pain in the butt to use, with too much information and too many choices and constipated navigation.

I haven’t been to that many games lately but at the ones I’ve been to, here’s what I see people using their phones for at the games: Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. And text messaging. What’s the common denominator there? Simple, one-step apps that are already built into the user’s social sphere. And they’re more lively, too, with many pro athletes participating in places like Twitter with real, unvarnished conversations, unlike the team apps which are as boring and as sanitized as the only-good-plays replays on the stadium TV screens. If the NFL really wants to engage fans digitally, it should open up its APIs and free its video content, allowing third-party developers to build apps with real NFL content. (Why not try an open version of Megacast?) It’s a strategy that worked pretty well for Apple and the iPhone, where Apple gets a chunk of profits from an incredible ecosystem that was created simply by allowing the outside world to have access to the iPhone screen.

My guess is that what will happen is the exact opposite — the NFL, watching the success of MLB’s digital efforts, will sometime soon corral all its digital assets into a single NFL-sanctioned bucket, which it will then charge fans even more for. Get ready for your “NFL Digital Package,” maybe $200 more a year to get live video and highlights on your phone. And no, you won’t be able to share that content or create GIFs or Loops or Vines any of the other fun stuff that is going on right now in the sort of Wild West version of the digital sports world. Even though I would probably pay it, that direction sounds like hell. I’d rather see the NFL really embrace the future and let the creativity of all the fans and smart thinkers out there blossom. To revisit our opening metaphor, why not try a few deep downfield passes, NFL? Why keep running the ball inside?

Stadium Tech Report: DAS, Wi-Fi puts end to no-signal problem at Denver’s Sports Authority Field

PeytonThese days, Denver’s Sports Authority Field at Mile High is the new home of the NFL’s most prolific signal-caller. With a record season for passing yards and passing touchdowns, Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning is recognizable for his animated pointing, shouting and line-of-scrimmage audibles, the ultimate practicioner of last-second communication.

Not too long ago, the fans at Mile High might have had to resort to the same tactics to communicate, using hand waving or shouting, since getting a cell signal was next to impossible. “Forget making a phone call, you couldn’t even send a text,” said Rick Seifert, communications manager for the Broncos’ stadium management company. “And it wasn’t just the fans. We [the staff] couldn’t make calls in the stadium to do our jobs.”

But in 2012, the Broncos changed all that with the installation of a full-featured distributed antenna system (DAS) deployed by TE Connectivity, and a fan-facing Wi-Fi network installed by Verizon Wireless.

Russ Trainor

Russ Trainor

The Broncos also put in a huge new digital scoreboard and robust back-end connectivity provided by Comcast as part of their blitz of networking improvements, and this past fall, AT&T joined in by upgrading its connection to the stadium’s DAS. By next year the Broncos hope to add AT&T and Sprint to its roster of Wi-Fi service providers, reflecting what vice president of information technology Russ Trainor sees as a “never ending growth” of wireless in-stadium consumption.

All carriers on board, slowly

One of the biggest problems with DAS deployments in stadiums is convincing major cellular carriers to work together. Since each carrier wants to deploy systems to do the best job for its customers, there is often a difference in opinion on strategy and operations, which is often followed by similar snags in contract negotiations. Trainor said that the stadium, built in 2001, presented unique RF challenges to wireless with its primarily exposed-steel construction. Verizon and Sprint were the first carriers to sign up for the neutral DAS, followed by AT&T this fall.

DAS equipment at Sports Authority Field. Credit: Denver Broncos

DAS equipment at Sports Authority Field. Credit: Denver Broncos

“It was tough to get them [all the major carriers] to agree on DAS, but we have good engineers on the back end and we came up with a nice solution for everybody,” said Trainor. While the antennas and stadium network are neutral, each carrier provides its own back-end gear, much of which at Mile High had to be placed in a building built outside the facility specifically to house telecom gear. In many stadium DAS deployments, the telecom gear can take up thousands of square feet, which can be challenging to find in facilities built before such needs were known.

“There’s no room inside for all the space they [the carriers] wanted,” Seifert said.

The Wi-Fi network, deployed by Verizon, uses Cisco equipment and is also a neutral host infrastructure, meaning that other carriers could use it to provide Wi-Fi connectivity to their clients if they so choose. According to Seifert, AT&T and Sprint will offer Wi-Fi services to customers next season, in part to answer the consistently growing demand. Like in other stadiums, fans at Sports Authority Field know what to do when they finally find bandwidth: Use more.

Steady growth in wireless use

When Sports Authority Field is at its listed capacity of 76,125 on game days, it becomes the 14th-largest city in Colorado, Trainor said. The team has already seen 525,000 downloads of its mobile application, which provides such in-stadium features as four different video replay angles, a connection to the NFL Network’s RedZone channel, and a direct link to the radio feed from hometown sports station KOA. The application is geo-fenced to ensure that the video rights are only used inside the stadium, and to give fans there a unique game-day experience.

Wi-Fi antennas on stadium overhang. Credit: Denver Broncos

Wi-Fi antennas on stadium overhang. Credit: Denver Broncos

According to Trainor, the team usually sees an average of 4,000 simultaneous connections on the Verizon Wi-Fi network on game days, though on colder days when fans need to wear gloves that number can drop in half. Trainor said the Cisco infrastructure is designed to accomodate 25,000 concurrent connections, a number the team hasn’t yet reached. However, the team did have to double the back-end capacity already for the Wi-Fi network, which is being used more as more fans find it.

“Word of mouth really gets [usage] going,” said Trainor, who noted that at a Kenny Chesney concert last year, the stadium crew saw data uploads outpace data downloads for the first time — a sure sign that fans in attendance were using the network to do things like share pictures and videos with their social-network connections.

“We haven’t seen any true bottlenecks yet, but usage is consistently rising, game after game, for concerts, soccer and football,” Trainor said.

Rick Seifert

Rick Seifert

A good sign from the Wi-Fi networking statistics is a shift in usage from the often crowded 2.4 GHz bands to the 5 GHz bands, which Trainor said is likely due to fans using the latest 5 series iPhones, which support the 5 GHz Wi-Fi frequency. And no matter what happens to the Broncos in the playoffs, Trainor and Seifert know what they will be doing this summer: Upgrading the network components, in the never-ending battle to provide bandwidth.

“Verizon and Sprint have already made significant upgrades to their DAS deployments because of demand and changes in technology, like LTE,” said Seifert. “And next year we’ll probably see AT&T circle back again. It’s very dynamic.”

“As smart phones get smarter it’s a never-ending challenge” to provide connectivity, Trainor said. “It’s a job that’s never finished.”

Wi-Fi News: Chiefs Announce New Wi-Fi Stadium Network and Mobile App; Enterasys Sold for $180M

Can they get another one? The Chiefs' trophy from Super Bowl IV is on display at Arrowhead Stadium. Credit: Paul Kapustka, MSR

Can they get another one? The Chiefs’ trophy from Super Bowl IV is on display at Arrowhead Stadium. Credit: Paul Kapustka, MSR

For the attendees of the SEAT Conference in Kansas City last month one of the highlights was an evening tour of Arrowhead Stadium, home of the NFL Chiefs. The Chiefs have a very cool history/museum area in one part of the stadium, with lots of gear, programs and assorted memorabilia from the old AFL days.

And now, the Chiefs and Arrowhead have one of the newest toys, a brand-new Wi-Fi network that will officially go live this weekend along with a new Chiefs mobile app. At the SEAT Conference one of the more outspoken proponents of Wi-Fi in stadiums was Mark Donovan, president of the Chiefs. The Chiefs, he said, were moving to Wi-Fi now because they wanted to upgrade the in-stadium fan experience sooner rather than later — “We’ve got to challenge the HD experience fans get at home,” Donovan said at SEAT. “We need to make the stadium experience better.”

With a mobile app from YinzCam, the supplier to most of the NFL teams who have apps, Chiefs fans using the stadium Wi-Fi network will have access to a lot of live video, including the NFL Network’s popular RedZone channel. For Donovan this is only the beginning of what he sees as a host of possibilities to bring the game closer to fans via technology.

One idea Donovan talked about at SEAT was the idea of making the coach-to-quarterback radio conferences available to fans, much like NASCAR makes its crew-to-driver conversations public. Though NFL coaches are probably unanimous in their opposition to such moves, Donovan said “those questions need to be asked” if the NFL wants to make the stadium a special place to visit.

“Two years ago, we put the official replay videos on our [stadium] replay boards, and the positive response to that was overwhelming,” Donovan said at SEAT. Using Wi-Fi to make available features like RedZone or updated fantasy app stats are just recognition that fans in the stands are not only Chiefs fans, but “fans of the game,” Donovan said. Cheers to the Chiefs, the newest addition to the wired world of stadiums.

Enterasys Sold for $180 Million

We had no idea that stadium Wi-Fi provider Enterasys was on the block, but then in this world everything is for sale, and it makes sense that there would be some consolidation on the equipment provider market. That happened today with the news that Enterasys was being acquired by Extreme Networks. We’ll dig some more to find out what this means for Enterasys’ stadium network business but in the meantime read this post by ZK Research’s Zeus Kerravala, which nails down the whys and hows of the purchase.

NFL, Verizon Introduce New NFL Mobile App

New NFL Mobile app; photo courtesy of NFL.

New NFL Mobile app; photo courtesy of NFL.

If you, like me, enjoy watching live NFL action on your Verizon smartphone, things are probably going to be a lot better this season as the league and Verizon have teamed up for a full refresh of the NFL Mobile app, which will also be available to smartphone customers of other carriers, with the only catch being that those customers won’t have access to live game action.

In a phone interview with Manish Jha, General Manager of Mobile at the National Football League, we learned about a whole bunch of new bells and whistles, maybe things you won’t necessarily notice, like improved back-end design and more up-to-date score information. What hasn’t changed for the 2013 season is the $5 monthly fee Verizon will charge its smartphone customers to view live NFL games on Sunday, Monday and Thursday nights, along with NFL network coverage and (perhaps most important) live RedZone coverage on Sunday.

(Don’t dismiss the RedZone coverage. If you live in California, like we do, you can sometimes get a full extra live game or two on Sundays because they are the only ones still going on.)

If your phone is from AT&T, or Sprint, or T-Mobile, you won’t be able to watch live action but you also won’t have to fight to find an NFL app that works well to bring you things like video highlights, replays, scores, and fantasy stats. Jha said the NFL and Verizon teamed up to produce one app to rule them all, the new NFL Mobile app which you should be able to find in the operating system app store of your choice. Also built into the new version of the app are some of the features from last year’s experimental Thursday Night Xtra app, which we never felt was fully baked; hopefully some of its interesting social media ideas are better fleshed out this time around.

“We want to make this the definitive NFL experience for a smartphone,” said Jha. And well should the NFL pay a lot of attention to mobile access: According to Jha, during last season mobile traffic to all NFL Internet sites surpassed desktop Internet traffic, even as that latter figure also increased.

Read that again: Mobile traffic to NFL sites eclipsed desktop traffic last year, even as desktop traffic grew. So now you have an idea why Verizon paid $1 billion to keep the rights for 4 more years as the NFL’s exclusive mobile carrier.

The only thing we still argue about is the league and Verizon’s decision to keep live cellular action off tablets; the Verzion NFL Mobile live access only works for devices they consider “phones,” though Jha even admits that such a definition may be a short-time thing, given the trend of phones getting big phat screens.

“We’re staying on top of trends, watching what comes out of Silicon Valley,” Jha said. “Right now we’re being pragmatic, trying to strike the right balance between serving fans and creating value for our sponsor.”

NFL Network has Broad Digital Coverage for 2013 Draft

draft

As any fan knows the 2013 NFL Draft starts on Thursday and while there has been a great deal of coverage leading up to the event, it looks like that will pale in comparison to the massive coverage the league’s network plans.

Most fans I know switch between networks on draft day, checking to see what the experts at ESPN, the NFL Network and elsewhere have to say about each choice. Yet an issue can arise since the draft starts on a Thursday night and even with a prime time start there are many that have to work or have other engagements that might make it impossible to be in front of the television. There is online coverage as well as a mobile app for these types of problems.

For the online user, be it as a second screen or a user watching at work there is the NFL.com Live Presented by Courtyard. Coverage begins at 8:00 pm ET for the online effort and will be hosted by Matt Smith and will include former NFL players LaDainian Tomlinson, Kurt Warner and Akbar Gbajabiamila, as well as former NFL general manager Charley Casserly. The online show will occasionally join with the NFL Network’s broadcast of the event.

Coverage will continue over the weekend with Friday’s starting at 6:30 pm ET for rounds 2-3 and Saturday’s coverage of rounds 4-7 will start at noon ET. Much of Saturday’s proceedings will be simulcast.

For Verizon subscribers there is the option of using NFL Mobile from Verizon that will be streaming the NFL Network’s entire 2013 draft coverage. The network has also added a live draft tracker feature and video on-demand featuring draft and team analysis. NFL Mobile, however, costs $5 a month and you must have a Verizon phone and data plan.

For users of the NFL ’13 app, a free app for both iOS and Android owners, there is now a feature called Draft Xtra that can serve as a companion or second screen to both broadcast NFL Network coverage or the coverage that is available on NFL.Com. It will include both on-demand and live video as well as a range of interactive features.

Of course there has been a great deal of coverage both online and on the broadcast arm of the NFL and that will increase as the draft nears and will include predraft predictions and post draft analysis. Look here for a complete listing.

Mobile Sports Report Grab Bag: New Tablets from ZTE & Huawei and MNF Flop

Toys 'R' Us Tabeo

Tired of losing your pricey iPad to your kids and then they yell when you try and take it back? Well Toys “R” Us has stepped in with a product that just might save the day with its Tabeo offering. A 7-inch tablet that runs the Android operating system will be available in stores Oct. 21, but will start shipping Oct. 1.

The $149.99 device will feature 4GB of storage that is expandable to 32GB, but the big plus for parents is that it will come with more than 50 books, games and educational apps preloaded including such popular ones as Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. The Tabeo is now available for preorder.

Chinese vendors ZTE & Huawei catching tablet fever?
DigiTimes is reporting that both Huawei Technologies and ZTE have both shown a good deal of interest in entering the tablet space. The move is seen as an effort to expand their respective footprints globally as well as take advantage of the huge Chinese market.

First Monday Night Football game of season a flop with fans
The first MNF games have come and gone, and thank goodness if you were forced to watch them. Apparently not that many did as Sports Media Watch reports that the opening game, a Ravens blowout of the Bengals only managed an 8.1 rating.

Monday Night Football

The season opener, shown on ESPN, was down 21% from last year when the Patriots and Dolphins played and down 23% from the Jets vs. Ravens in 2010. It was the lowest rated MNF broadcast by ESPN since it took over broadcast duties of the iconic show in 2007.

However just a few days later the NFL Network, with a much better matchup with the Packers vs. Bears, received the highest rating in its short history. However its numbers, at 6.3, are hurt because it still is not carried anywhere near as much by cable operators as ESPN.

Analysts predict 58 million iPhone sales in 2012
The iPhone orders only start today after the introduction earlier this week with the first phones expected to ship next week but analysts are predicting a tsunami of sales for Apple’s iPhone 5 smartphone in 2012.

According to a survey done by Bloomberg and reported in Mashable the consensus from analysts is 58 million sold this year and FBR Capital Market analyst Craig Berger is predicting 250 million over the life of the device.

Is Samsung’s LTE threat an issue still?

Samsung mentioned that if Apple included LTE in its iPhone 5 there was a high likelihood of Samsung suing Apple. Samsung owns a huge number of patents in this area and has a healthy business in the LTE area that is spate from the smartphone business.

Now so far Samsung has not acted but it might just be that the company is looking at the technology that is used in Apple’s LTE offering to make sure that it has it right. We could always hope that maybe the two are actually talking and can settle things out of court.

Samsung & MLB partner on contest
Speaking of Samsung the company has entered into a contest with Major League Baseball called Photo Hunt. It is a pretty basic game, one I think even I would have a decent chance at. Every week MLB, at @MLB, will tweet out a Samsung Photo Hunt item using the hash tag #SamsungMLB.

All a user has to do is take a picture of the item and share it with @MLB. Winners will get a Samsung S III phone and two free tickets to a game of their favorite team.

Kindle opens to lukewarm reviews
I was impressed by what I saw during the Kindle HD press conference last week, but reviewers with hands-on experience with the device have been less than complimentary. Some seems to be valid complaints, such as the speed apps load and a few issues with software.

Some of the complaints appear to be, well it is not an iPad, and that really is Amazon’s fault for proclaiming it the best tablet in the market. I still like it, but it is obviously what Amazon said it was at its introduction: a device that opens up other Amazon services to customers. It seems to me to make a product like that (in hindsight) that there will be features that are not included that a general purpose tablet user might want.

USA Today to look like iPad?
I have not been down to the local newsstand but it appears that USA Today will be sporting a new look starting this morning. The paper, which in many ways revolutionized the way papers look and how much space they devote to a story, is now taking on a sleeker appearance.

The paper took a lesson from the Web and how many sites present information. It will also feature input from social media users, including comments from Twitter and Facebook. Its web page will function more like an iPad, according to a piece in the New York Times.

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