Soccer – Page 5

Bantr Seeks to bring Soccer Fans Together

June 18, 2012 by Greg Quick 3 Comments

With the Euro 2012 tournament up and roaring along with the first round of eliminations I got to wondering about what type of chat and viewing options that was available for fans to catch up on scores and possibly talk a bit of trash to rivals and went looking.

Not surprising there is a number of apps available for a fan, including some we have talked about here previously such as Fancru. One i found that caught my eye was Bantr, an app that is designed to bring together soccer fans.

What made it noteworthy was it was one of the first fan interaction sites I have seen that is dedicated to a single group of fans, it is only about soccer, which I suspect is just fines with fans of that sport because the cross over talk would probably get pretty heated.

The free app is currently only available for products that run Apple’s iOS operating system including the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone. It is obviously designed for European soccer and supports English, German, Northern Sami and Spanish.

It shares many similarities with other interactive fan sites: you can select your teams that you support, check into games; chant or banter with other fans and predict outcomes. Some interesting touches include in game voting on if a player dives, on cards and penalties and the worthiness of substitutions. You can also vote for player of the match, rate players, refs and matches, and vote on manager and player approval.

The company was founded in 2010 and has secured $328,000 is seed money, according to Crunchbase. If you want to get a taste of what is available but do not want to download the app just yet, or do not have an iPhone (Android support is supposedly coming) you can head over hear at Facebook and take a look at what is available.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, ESPN, Euro 2012, Facebook, iOS, Soccer, Startup Tagged With: Apple, Bantr, Soccer

ESPN’s Soccer Push Pays off with Euro 2012 Viewership

June 13, 2012 by Greg Quick 3 Comments

ESPN has reported preliminary numbers for its UEFA Euro 2012 broadcasts and it is showing the sports giant that there is great potential in the sport. The opening match for the Group C teams Italy and Spain, both powerful squads, garnered an average of 2.1 million viewers.

While in terms of other major American sports this might not be that impressive but it, along with results from the Premier League show that increasingly ESPN can draw in viewers for a variety of soccer matches. It should be noted that the matches do not include a US team so there is no nationalistic urge to watch the sport.

According to ESPN the Italy vs Spain match was the biggest Euro match viewership aside from the championship match four years ago that had a 3.76 million viewership. Overall through the first six matches the network is averaging a hair over 1 million households and 1.3 million viewers on its English language broadcasts.

This represents a increases of 198% and 214%, respectively, versus the first six games of the UEFA EURO 2008

Last Sunday’s UEFA EURO 2012 match between Italy and Spain at on ESPN, a 1-1 tie and tournament opening match for both Group C teams, was seen by an average of 2.113 million viewers, bigger than any UEFA European Football Championship 2008 match except the final on ABC. That game, Germany vs. Spain, was watched by an average of 3.760 million viewers.

Through six matches, ESPN’s English-language presentation of the event is averaging 1,007,000 households and 1.328,000 viewers — up 198 percent and 214 percent, respectively, versus the first six games of the UEFA EURO 2008 (338,000 households and 423,000 viewers in ’08). The second most-watched game to-date in 2012 is Saturday’s Portugal-Germany match up – a 1.1 household coverage rating, 1,244,000 households, and 1,798,000 viewers, second to only one ESPN game in all of 2008.

Then there is the viewership from the rest of the networks broadcasting arms. ESPN Deportes is showing a 147% increase in households watching over 2008, and has reached 166,000 households. It is also getting strong viewership on its digital platforms, not a surprise since many of the matches are during work day hours for most of us.

Its ESPNFC.com has globally logged 876,000 daily visitors, 8.5 million page views and 33 million minutes, up 45%, 11% and 191%, respectively from four years ago. ESPN3 and WatchESPN, which reach a broad array of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as well as PCs has generated 65.8 million minutes to both the English and Spanish language feeds.

It will be interesting to see how the numbers grow as we head to the elimination rounds and more weekend matches. It is tough to head out to the TV, or even watch at work, with matches that occur when your boss is expecting you to be productive.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN3, Euro 2012, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Soccer, Uncategorized Tagged With: ESPN, Euro 2012, Soccer

The Euro 2012 Tournament Starts this Weekend-ESPN Will be there for all of the Matches

June 7, 2012 by Greg Quick 1 Comment

The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship aka the Euro 2012 starts today to see which national soccer team will emerge victorious in the 14th European Championship which sees 16 nations vying for the title. In the next championship, in 2016, the field will expand to 24 teams.

Aside from bragging rights the winner gets something much more substantial, an automatic entry into the 2013 FIFA Confederation Cup that will be held next year in Brazil. The event, which will carry on for the next month will see matches held in eight cities sprawled across two nations-Poland and the Ukraine.

While I enjoy a good match I am really in no position to predict who is a favorite or which teams are the top ones to follow. I would suggest heading over to The Big Lead and look at Ty Duffy’s body of work on the subject.

The tournament has had a touch of scandal currently, with the continued growth of the match fixing scandal in Italy, something that initially helped kill that nation’s bid for the tournament and now sounds like it might have killed the national team’s chance of participating.

A few days ago the Italian team captain, Cesare Prandelli said it would not bother him if the team was withdraws from the event due to the scandal, which has been ongoing since 2006 in one form or another. There were 14 arrests last month and a player was dropped from the squad. As of this writing it has not happened.

In addition the BBC has reported that racism and neo-Nazis could be a problem and that former England team captain Sol Campbell is advising English fans to watch the matches from the safety of their home. And last but not least there are reports from Fox Sports that the jerseys sold at the matches contain toxic chemicals.

The Finalists
Group A
Poland
Greece
Russia
Czech Republic

Group B
Netherlands
Denmark
Portugul
Germany

Group C
Spain
Italy
Ireland
Croatia

Group D
Ukraine
Sweden
France
England

The official site for the tournament is well laid out and carries a lot of current and past information, including how the teams did in the recent batch of friendlies, videos, photos, past history of the event, updates from team camps and general news.

There is the usual data on teams and when the event starts statistics will start to fill in on each game. What I like is that there is a number of games in the fan section where you can make prediction on who wins their group, who will win the Golden Boot, and other events

ESPN has taken the soccer broadcasting bull by the horns and will be broadcasting all of the matches, spread out across the ever growing network of channels and outlets that it owns. It has been working to make itself a much stronger player in the soccer broadcast world and so far it seems to be paying off.

This will be a real test to its commitment and I am looking forward to watching as many of the matches as possible. I will also be interested if I hear anything about this event from a number of friends who suddenly became soccer fans when the US Women advanced in the World Cup but had never mentioned the sport prior or after to me.

Filed Under: BBC, Contests, ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN3, Euro 2012, FIFA, Fox Sports, Soccer Tagged With: ESPN, Euro 2012, Soccer

ESPN Sees Strong Online Soccer Viewership Ahead of Euro 2012

May 21, 2012 by Greg Quick 1 Comment

We have been tracking ESPN’s growing focus on soccer with interest and now the company has put forth some numbers showing that it is getting solid feedback from its efforts, and that could pay off even greater in the next few weeks.

The network said that this season’s Barclays Premier League 2011-2012 season had the highest numbers in the three years that it has carried the league. Of course if you were lucky you could have seen the 3-2 Manchester City victory over Queens Park, a game result that forced Manchester United to abort its victory party. The match was viewed by 600,000 ESPN viewers and an additional 189,000 on ESPN Deportes.

The smartphone, computers, tablet and Xbox crowd was out in support as well with 108,000 unique views for that match using either ESPN3 or WatchESPN, and for the season these platforms accounted for an average of 174,000 unique views and 8.9 million live minutes for the matches on computers. The monthly numbers are up 36% and 73% respectively over last year.

Across the spectrum of digital devices including smartphones and tablets the league had a monthly average of 9.2 million monthly minutes, up 78% compared to ESPN3 numbers last season.

While the numbers are of course dwarfed by viewership for more mainstream US sports such as the NFL, it bodes well going forward as fans increasingly know that they can go to ESPN to see top flight matches.

Still in around two weeks the EURO 2012 tournament will start and ESPN has made a major commitment to showing all of the matches, many of which will be available online. I suspect that as it continues to upgrade and expand its coverage it will continue to see its numbers explode as mobile fans will take advantage of watching games that may occur while they are running errands or at work.

Filed Under: Contests, English Premier Soccer League, ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN3, Euro 2012, Live sports via mobile, Smartphone, Soccer, Tablets Tagged With: ESPN3, Euro 2012, Soccer

ESPN turns the heat up on Soccer Coverage

May 1, 2012 by Greg Quick 3 Comments

ESPN has taken another solid step in its effort to provide full soccer coverage to fans worldwide with the introduction of ESPN FC, an effort that will provide umbrella branding for all of its diverse soccer media coverage.

This appears to be the network’s biggest step yet and will include a multilingual, multi-nation push to expand and brand its coverage and will include television, print, Internet, radio and online aspects to the branding effort.

ESPN’s soccer coverage has been a work in progress, and we mean that in a positive way. In the last few months it has been taking incremental steps to improve its coverage even after it lost broadcasting rights to future World Cup tournaments.

There are a number of ingredients to the ESPN FC effort, and not all of them are in place yet. Looking forward it plans to add local and regional contributors so that it has full 24/7 global news coverage of the sport. Hand in hand with that will be the ability to deliver content based on where a fan is accessing the network weather from a mobile device, the Internet or television.

The channel kicks off the new branding effort with its coverage of the Euro 2012 tournament in the Ukraine and Poland. It already had plans to broadcast the matches; they will now be the first to have the new branding as well. For the upcoming tournament ESPN FC will also have a feature called Euro 2012 Top 40 Player Rankings which will include contributions from the network’s soccer experts.

With the European season winding down the new brand will really see an uptick later this year with the start of the new seasons for leagues worldwide will see coverage of more than just the European leagues. As part of this effort ESPN will bring increased soccer coverage to its Spanish language channel into ESPNdeportes.com as well as produce Spanish-language online, mobile and print content for fans.

It looks as if the Soccernet label will also be a thing of the past as it has renamed its global multi-platform soccer debate and discussion show ESPN FC PressPass and done away with ESPNsoccernet PressPass

Other features will include a new version of GameCast called Live MatchHQ that will provide game data and imagery while also providing news and score3s from elsewhere around the league. The May 18th issue of ESPN: The Magazine will include a Euro 2012 preview section with a feature on Wayne Rooney as the cover story.

Last but not least ESPN FC will launch a pair of fantasy games for the Euro 2012 tournament. One is called Euro 2012 Bracket Predictor and the other is Euro 2012 Manager where fans can select fantasy rosters and win points.

ESPN FC appears to be a great idea from ESPN, unifying coverage that at one time was in multiple places and enabling fans to go to a single source for all of their soccer information. While Fox Sports also increasing its coverage especially Premier League coverage, hopefully the competition will make both provide more that fans want, rather than air time fillers that it occasionally seems.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN Radio, Fantasy Sports, FoxSoccer, Live sports via mobile, Soccer, SportsCenter Tagged With: ESPN FC, Fox Soccer, Soccer

MLS embracing Social Media

March 12, 2012 by Greg Quick 2 Comments

Major League Soccer has kicked off its season last weekend with it its new broadcasting deal with partner NBC. You might have missed the broadcasts because it seems that people are missing NBC Sports a good deal these days leading to very bad ratings.

NBC’s woes might not go away soon due to the fact that the MLS has not yet broken through as a ratings driver. Its troubles in this area are varied, and it has at different times come under fire for everything from when it starts to its trading window. A good look at some of the issues can be found in these transcripts from Eric Wynalda.

Yet if you attend a match the energy is great. Fans are knowledgeable and attendance is growing. So what more can be done? Well using social media and other tools to keep the sport in front of fans is one step, and one that the league is taking.

It conducted a Twitter-based contest last weekend called #FirstKick for fans attending their teams opening match. The rules were pretty simply and any fan with access to Twitter that attended a match could participate. All you needed to do was tweet a photo of you or your friends from a match to win.

The tweet needed a @MLS twitter handle; it needed the #FirstKisk hashtag, proof that you were actually at the game in the photos such as stadium, player, promo or sign visible in your photo and last a link to your photo available on public domain, ex. Twitpic, Lockerz, Yfrog, Photobucket, Flickr, etc.

Submissions were accepted from Saturday, March 10 at 6 PM EST and ends on Monday, March 12 at 11:59 PM EST, so there is still time to send your photo in! There will be a winner draw at random for each day.

Fans that are traveling, or have games that are not broadcast can watch the action via MLS Live, which the league has revamped for the current season. The program, which does have blackout rules, allows fans to watch games via computer, iPad or iPhone, Roku and can be integrated with Apple TV for broadcast as well. Cost for a season is $59.99 and the free preview unfortunately ends on March 12.

The league has the obligatory Facebook page that also has the ability to keep fans in touch with what is going on in games and the league as a whole. I was surprised to find two friends that I did not know were fans not only subscribed to the page but also wrote about the sport in blogs and posts elsewhere. I guess when you have 325,000 likes that is inevitable (the league not me). I did not check Myspace.

I feel that the aggressive use of outlets such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as revamping and increasing its online presence is vital to the success of MLS. The league has a number of soccer only stadiums that show off its product very well. But it is obvious that television alone will not get the message out.

Even as sports powerhouses Fox Sports and ESPN continue to turn up the presence of soccer in their sports programming, MLS often seems to be missing in the mix. Fox captured the World Cup broadcasts in 2018 and 2022 and has increased its broadcasting of soccer matches, just not US MLS. ESPN, after losing the World Cup to Fox has still increased its broadcasting and online efforts with things such as broadcasting the UEFA European Championships and upgrading its online presence.

MLS has been expanding and has seen strong attendance in the new towns like Portland where its games last season were sold out. However television viewership has been flat and this does not bode well for the sport. According to the Big Lead last weekend, MLS averaged 291,000 viewers on ESPN and ESPN2 last season and 70,000 viewers on FOX Soccer. That is just sad.

The league, which is kicking off its 17th season, does not have to worry about out of control salaries for players due to a hard cap, but this is a disadvantage because it will be hard to lure top talent from around the world or to keep talent that hears the siren call of a big payday. Glowing television viewership can change that, but it will take all of its tools, on-line, mobile and broadcast, to achieve this dream.

Filed Under: Apps, ESPN, Facebook, Fox Sports, FoxSoccer, Live sports via mobile, MLS, NBC Sports, Soccer, Social Media, The Big Lead Tagged With: ESPN, Fox Soccer, MLS, NBC Sports, Soccer

Bantr Seeks to bring Soccer Fans Together

ESPN’s Soccer Push Pays off with Euro 2012 Viewership

The Euro 2012 Tournament Starts this Weekend-ESPN Will be there for all of the Matches

ESPN Sees Strong Online Soccer Viewership Ahead of Euro 2012

ESPN turns the heat up on Soccer Coverage

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