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

January 11, 2014 by

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.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Fox Sports, iOS, NFL, NFL Mobile, Seattle Seahwaks, Tablets, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

New Year’s Prediction: No wireless data record at 2014 Super Bowl

December 31, 2013 by

Even though the steady march of smartphone and tablet use at sporting events seems to show no sign of decreasing anytime soon, I am going to go out on a small limb here on the last day of 2013 and predict that we will NOT see a new record for mobile data use at the upcoming Super Bowl XLVII.

Why? Because it’s outside, in New Jersey, and it will very likely be cold or snowy — so the lucky fans who get to freeze their behinds off will most likely keep their fingers inside their gloves or mittens, and not expose them to the elements just to text, post photos or view handheld video. Well, some if not many people probably will, since MetLife Stadium has (reportedly) one of the better Wi-Fi installations in the NFL. And maybe there will be a power outage, which is always good for more wireless use. But still — it’s not such a stretch to think that fewer people will be using their phones at MetLife than at the Superdome from last year, right?

Or will new records be set anyway, since probably more fans will have more devices and more people now know that they can get a decent signal inside a stadium? If you are reading this blog you are probably among the select crowd who cares about such statistics, so stay tuned and we will provide you with updates since we usually get them from the cell providers and stadium operators the week after the big game. For now, happy new year to all and here’s to a great 2014 in stadium technology and mobile sports.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, NFL, Super Bowl, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium isn’t a fit for MNF

December 13, 2013 by

The San Francisco 49ers will be playing in a brand new stadium next season but no matter how well the team performs on the field it looks unlikely that it will have any home games broadcast for Monday Night Football, at least for the first season.

The soon to be finished facility — in Santa Clara, Calif., well south of the team’s namesake city — does not have enough of its own parking spaces and is planning to use neighboring office lots for its weekend games but these spaces are in use when the fans start to arrive for the games on weekdays. According to a report in the San Jose Mercury News the team isn’t asking for any of the sought-after prime-time MNF games or the Thursday night games until it can figure out how to fit all the fans’ cars in lots jammed by the folks who work in Silicon Valley.

One option the team is now considering is asking its neighbors to change their work hours to accommodate the team. Wonder what Marissa Mayer thinks about that idea?

BlackBerry history
If you are one of the few, the proud, the remaining BlackBerry users this is a pretty interesting read from Bloomberg. It is an oral history of the rise and fall of the BlackBerry, a device that probably did more than any other to kill the pager and usher in the age of smartphones.

Bloomberg conducted dozens of interviews to get a good picture about the rise of the platform and then its sad decline. Interesting to see if any of the current tech behemoths will follow the same path.

Google Glass takes another hit
Google Glass may be banned in another state as Illinois is now considering banning drivers from using the wearable computing devices, joining Delaware, New Jersey, West Virginia and Great Britain as well as sundry businesses and bars.

Mobile Marketer makes a spirited defense of the technology but it seems to me that they missed the point in a few places: they are not the same as a security camera and does anybody honestly believe that having a second image in front of a driver’s eye will make them safer?

A Heisman tale
As the college football season winds down the talk about who deserves the Heisman always starts coming to the forefront. Should they look at more than just offensive players, did so and so’s stats really put him in the race.

Well the Washington Post has taken a different tack and did a very interesting piece on the history of the first 78 trophies, where they are now and how they got there. It’s a fun read.

NBA to embrace its inner geek
Baseball in the last decade or so has undergone a revolution in the way that stats are looked at, with the time honored numbers such as RBIs, Wins and HRs getting re-evaluated in terms of how they relate to the team and individuals performance.

Football is also undergoing that same revolution to a smaller extent and now the NBA has joined the fun with the launch of NBA.com/stats web page that will feature detailed box scores and video from all of its games.

Super Bowl will be no walk in the park
The rules for parking, tailgating and generally schmoozing at the upcoming Super Bowl in New Jersey are out and it looks like if you are attending you had better leave the house early if you don’t want to miss the game.

No walking through the parking lots, you must either drive or take mass transit, no tailgating or BBQs allowed and a host of other restrictions. Who says that NFL stands for No Fun League?

Filed Under: Baseball, Basketball, BCS, BlackBerry, Google, Major League Baseball, Monday Night Football, NBA, NCAA Football, NFL, Super Bowl Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

USA Today gets into sports-event ticket business

December 12, 2013 by

usatody

I think fans everywhere agree that there are a huge number of sporting events that they would be interested in attending, at least once in their life, but finding out how to apply for tickets much less working your way through the red tape will always be an impediment.

Now leaping to the (possible) rescue is USA Today Sports Media Group which has teamed with QuintEvents to launch a joint venture called USA Today Sports Events that promises access to the biggest sports events.

The effort seeks to establish USA Today Sports as the go-to site for fans looking for tickets and packages to events such as the NFL’s Pro Bowl and Super Bowl, Kentucky Derby and the NBA All-Star game, among others.

It does not just offer tickets but much more in some cases such as access to players and coaches, the ability to walk a field or arena prior to an event, hospitality tent and parties access, and other amenities. The packages it offers are not third-party ones that cobble together hotels, seats and transportation but ones from the official sponsors of the events.

A look at the website shows it is offering tickets for the upcoming Super Bowl next year, with a clock counting down the days, hours and minutes. It has a link to different ticket packages, then a second to extras that can be added to your package, then a seating chart and so on. Currently tickets max out at $11,799 each.

The Level White Package starts with seats at $5,899 and has seats in the corner of level 100 at MetLife Stadium. The amenities include a $100 In-Stadium Super Bowl XLVIII merchandise coupon, preferred on-location parking (for an addition fee for the actual parking) and access to the NFL On-Location venue.

It does seem that all but well-heeled fans are increasingly phased out of the modern sports picture and while I like the idea of this and if I had the cash might actually try and use the service but increasingly fans of teams are the last that get served by the leagues when the biggest events come around, forcing them to try all sorts of maneuvers to get tickets. Maybe USA Today can also start a business finding bargain seats for real fans who aren’t loaded with cash?

Filed Under: All Star Game, Baseball, Basketball, BCS, Daytona 500, FIFA, Major League Baseball, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NFL, NHL, Rose Bowl, Stanley Cup, StubHub, Super Bowl, Tennis, The French Open, USA Today, Wimbledon, World Baseball Classic Tagged With: , , , , , ,

AT&T: Fans Set Cellular Data Record at Super Bowl, Again

February 4, 2013 by

According to the folks at AT&T, fans in the New Orleans Superdome Sunday night set another record for cellular traffic, with 388 GB traversing AT&T’s in-dome network during the game between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers. What’s somewhat staggering about the number is that it doesn’t include any of the traffic that was sent out over the in-dome Wi-Fi network recently installed by Verizon and Cisco; AT&T’s numbers are just for the cellular infrastructure and the DAS deployment Ma Bell put in the Superdome last year.

Guessing that Verizon’s numbers will also be bigger — according to a recent story in Ars Technica Verizon saw 225 GB of bandwidth used during last year’s Super Bowl in Indianapolis, where AT&T saw 215 GB of usage on its networks. If Verizon’s numbers are similar to AT&T’s (from reports we saw on Twitter the Wi-Fi network performed well, even during the third-quarter blackout) then there was probably something like 800 GB of data flying out of the Superdome Sunday, maybe even close to 1,000 GB if you throw in Sprint and T-Mobile numbers, which we probably won’t get.

So it’s pretty damn clear: Fans like using mobile devices at big sports events. And we haven’t quite reached the peak yet, since every successive Super Bowl sets a new record. We are guessing this trend will continue for some time, since there isn’t even a good in-stadium app yet to really make people do things other than send pictures and texts to people who aren’t at the stadium. So — this journey has really just begun.

Some other interesting nuggets from the folks at AT&T, who said that their network didn’t go down during the blackout:

— AT&T’s peak hour of data usage at the Big Game occurred during halftime and during the stadium’s temporary power outage, from 8 to 9 pm EST. AT&T customers consumed 78 GB during this hour on the in-stadium mobility network, which is nearly double the amount of data that AT&T customers used during the peak hour at last year’s Big Game in Indianapolis.

— During the hour of halftime and the stadium’s temporary power outage, from 8 to 9 pm EST, customers made more calls, sent nearly twice as many SMS texts and consumed approximately 10 GB more data than they did during any other hour of the event.

— AT&T customers also made more than 73,000 mobile calls during the game.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, NFL, Super Bowl, T-Mobile, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Super Bowl Gets Wi-Fi Network, Will be Checking for Rogue Hotspots

February 1, 2013 by

There’s a new Wi-Fi network in the Superdome, and they will be checking you at the door to make sure you’re not screwing it up with a rogue hotspot or a camera that is broadcasting a Wi-Fi signal.

You can read an excellent article at Ars Technica, which breaks down the new Verizon-Cisco network inside the stadium. Verizon is quietly getting more involved in stadium networks, but is not publicizing their deployments — maybe because they don’t want everyone asking for the sweetheart deals Verizon may be giving NFL stadiums? Remember, Verizon and the NFL have an agreement over mobile coming up for re-negotiation soon… maybe Verizon is trying to win favor with Rog and the boys by putting in Wi-Fi for free? Stay tuned or tell us what you hear… the Wi-Fi whisperer is listening.

Filed Under: AT&T, Cisco, NFL, NFL Mobile, Super Bowl, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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