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Does Cisco Have the Inside Sponsor Track for Niners’ New Stadium?

February 9, 2012 by

Fair warning: This is all conjecture, and not based on any interviews or inside information. But based on some cognizant observations as well as just sheer geography, it is our guess that networking giant Cisco might have the inside sponsorship track for the new football stadium being considered for the San Francisco 49ers.

Now with $200 million in NFL money in hand, it appears that the Niners’ planned move south to the Silicon Valley burb of Santa Clara is as close to a done deal as possible. For the moment, our question is, what corporate name will grace the concourses of the soon-to-be-built temple of football from among the many choices in cash-rich Silicon Valley?

At the top of the guess list you can put Cisco, whose main corporate campus lies just a few blocks down Tasman Drive from the new stadium site. Though Cisco’s historic bent has been to pursue sponsorship of a new baseball stadium for the Oakland A’s (first a failed attempt to build one in the East Bay town of Fremont, and now with hopeful plans for a new stadium in San Jose), the company’s Connected Stadium business would have some serious egg on its face if it couldn’t win the big deal just down the street. But we haven’t heard any rumors that Cisco is even the front runner, so which other companies might be in the race?

How about cash-rich Apple, which has nearly $100 billion stuffing its corporate wallet, or nearby search king Google? Though neither company has a history of sports sponsorships a “Google Stadium” or an “Apple Field” could be an international jewel of a marketing vehicle, acting as a base for either company to demonstrate devices, applications and other innovations in a setting that would regularly draw lots of foot traffic as well as national media attention.

Other candidates could include Oracle, whose leader Larry Ellison has been more involved than any other Silicon Valley in sports sponsorship — both via Oracle’s existing name sponsorship of Oakland’s Oracle Arena, home of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, and in Ellison’s out-front leadership in bringing the America’s Cup boat race to San Francisco Bay. And how about the idea of “Facebook Field,” a place where fans could “like” just by showing up. With a huge IPO on the way, Facebook might want to use some of that cash to show up its older Silicon Valley neighbors by sponsoring the Niners’ new home.

What’s your guess? Chime in via the comments. Gratuitous new-stadium video follows.

Filed Under: Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, NFL Tagged With: , ,

MSR Profile: Stadiums a Target for Wi-Fi Gear Maker Xirrus

January 26, 2012 by

Add Wi-Fi gear maker Xirrus to the expanding list of technology providers targeting stadium owners who are looking to better serve the wireless needs of both the fans sitting in the seats, as well stadium owners looking for wireless applications to help run their business better.

Like networking giant Cisco, which has created an entire business unit dedicated to stadium installations, the relative newcomer Xirrus is going to aggressively pursue more stadium clients this year, according to Steven Wastie, chief marketing officer for Xirrus. Last year Xirrus’s high-performance wireless network arrays (the antennas and other gear that provide the wireless link between Wi-Fi user and the network) helped bring video services and Wi-Fi power to business applications inside Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots.

In a snappy video (embedded below) you get not only a customer’s explanation of the benefits Wi-Fi can bring to teams (wirelessly enabling point of sale systems allows for greater building flexibility), but also a quick data point on why you need Wi-Fi to provide features like video highlights — the Patriots’ content guy talks about how each video highlight stream takes up 300K of bandwidth, something that would be nearly impossible to provide using cellular airwaves.

The Xirrus xr4000, which can fit up to 8 wireless radios into its smoke detector-like housing. Other arrays can fit as few as two or as many as 16 radios.

The edge Xirrus brings to the stadium Wi-Fi game is its “high density” arrays, which can fit up to 16 wireless radios into a single device and are highly configurable especially directionally. By comparison, the wireless router in your home or business probably has just two antennas, which are pretty much just set to broadcast out in a circle as far as they can reach.

Being able to have more throughput per device, Wastie said, is key for stadium deployments where there are a lot of people in one place, all trying to do the same thing on their mobile device. “It’s very different from just two years ago,” Wastie said in a recent interview. “Back then high density situations were a niche. Now high density is everywhere.”

Having arrays that support more users also gives Xirrus a technology edge over competitors, since it can cover a stadium with fewer devices and less network infrastructure — often meaning significantly lower costs. Mobile Sports Report will be watching Xirrus closely throughout 2012, to see if its less-is-more wireless message gets across to stadium owners and operators.

Founded in 2004 by CEO Dirk Gates and some of his pals from chip manufacturer Xircom, the Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Xirrus is privately held.

Filed Under: Cisco, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Video Streaming Tagged With: , ,

CrowdOptic Seeks App Opportunities via Mobile Fan Analytics

January 5, 2012 by

CrowdOptic's technology was used at the Bank of the West tennis event this past summer to give fans instant data on any player whose picture they took.

When it comes to mobile advertising, everyone seems to agree that someday the market will be huge — if only the participants could figure out a way to bring reliable analytics to the incredibly complex and highly random act of using a cell phone. Until we know what people are looking at, advertisers often say, we’re not spending on mobile.

For the mobile sports market, a company called CrowdOptic is trying to crack the code with a technology base that can offer real-time mobile analytics about what people at a game are watching to advertisers, teams and other interested parties — while also providing a real-time communications stream back to mobile phone users that could significantly enhance the sporting event they are attending.

Though the San Francisco-based startup doesn’t yet quite have a shrink-wrapped product or service, it has already demonstrated its ability to use its unique triangulation algorithm and augmented-reality app to give fans at a tennis event real-time info about the player they’ve just snapped a picture of. On the back end, CrowdOptic was able to give event organizers detailed information on exactly what the most fans were looking at through their cell phones — a practice the company calls “hyper targeting,” which theoretically could provide incredibly granular sets of data about what exactly is catching people’s attention at a sporting event. It is all wrapped under a banner the company calls “Focus-Based Services,” in an attempt to move the discussion beyond location based services and to a place where you can determine what people are looking at, and not just where they are.

While the augmented-reality app, which was tested at the Bank of the West Classic in Palo Alto this past summer, is one cool way to use CrowdOptic’s technology, the company isn’t yet limiting itself to just one app or service. Since the system can detect, in real time, where a crowd of mobile-phone users is shifting its attention, the possibilities for the platform to support other applications such as stadium security, in-seat advertising or ticketing may be partially why CrowdOptic was able to raise $1.5 million in funding, including a $500,000 round led by Bowman Capital this past October.

“The crown jewel that we have is the algorithm of triangulation,” said Jim Kovach, a former NFL player with the San Francisco 49ers and New Orleans Saints who is CrowdOptic’s chief operating officer. With a small app installed on a phone, CrowdOptic takes info from the phone’s GPS service and its camera, and feeds it into a system that can then provide what Kovachs calls “Google style analytics” to show what the fans are pointing their phones at. While there is still work to be done to build workable apps on top of such a platform, it’s easy to guess that an app bolstered with CrowdOptics-type analytics would be more compelling for teams, advertisers and others than a standalone app that only could broadcast info to fans but provided no back-end aggregate of where fan attention was directed.

As stadiums become better connected — say via the Cisco Connected Stadium approach — a CrowdOptic-type app running above the network plumbing could provide many ways for teams, advertisers and fans to interact in a fashion that not only delivered the best advertising to the most eyes, but could conceivably also assist in matters such as stadium security. For instance, if there was a fight or a safety situation inside the stadium, the incident could be immediately “reported” via fans pointing their cell phones at it. During incidents like the recent blackouts at Candlestick Park, CrowdOptic-connected fans might get a safety message from the stadium telling them what was happening. On a more sane level the app could help teams figure out where to best put advertising banners, and when to change messages for optimal viewing.

“Our system really goes hand in hand with stadiums that have networks like the ones Cisco installs,” Kovach said. “With that kind of connectivity we can jump in there and really raise the bar on the kinds of analytics and capabilities that can be offered to advertisers and to the fans at the game.”

So far, CrowdOptic has only announced tests with sports that are easier for the technology to isolate the participants — like tennis, where athletes are separated across a court, and motor car racing, where the vehicles stay inside discrete boundaries. Kovach said that a sport like football doesn’t lend itself well to CrowdOptic technology (the players are too close together, and move too rapidly and randomly) but baseball is a potential perfect fit (players widely spaced, lots of “pause” time and fans deeply interested in statistics).

Founded by longtime entrepreneur Jon Fisher (who met Kovachs when Fisher was on the board of a non-profit health concern Kovachs was running), CrowdOptic has a small list of paying customers, including IMG Reliance, Bank Of The West, Andrews International and Infineon Raceway — and Kovachs expects that to list to grow before 2012 ends. Clearly, just like the athletes targeted by fans using its apps at sporting events, CrowdOptic is worth watching.

Filed Under: Cisco, Live sports via mobile, Social Media, Wi-Fi Tagged With: ,

Cisco Scoring Big in Europe with Stadium Wi-Fi, Infrastructure Deals

December 1, 2011 by

Warsaw's new National Stadium, soon to be powered with Cisco networking technology.


With a couple new deals for stadium-network infrastructure, U.S. networking giant Cisco Systems is at the start of what could be a big string of wins for its new focus on “connected stadiums.”

A Nov. 15 announcement of plans for soccer powerhouse Real Madrid to partner with Cisco to bring fan-accessible Wi-Fi and other improvements to its home stadium in Madrid was followed by an announcement on Nov. 21 of a deal for Cisco to bring a wide range of technology to the new National Stadium in Warsaw, Poland, where next year’s Euro 2012 soccer tourney will kick off.

Cisco Sports and Entertainment Solutions Group SVP and GM David Holland

Though Cisco is no stranger to sports stadium deals — it helped AT&T build wireless networks inside stadiums like AT&T Park in San Francisco and Stanford Stadium, and is behind wireless efforts at facilities like Kansas City’s Livestrong Park soccer arena — the next year should see Cisco kick into full gear on its “connected sports solutions” group, headed by senior VP and GM David Holland. While free Wi-Fi is of top interest to most fans these days, Cisco’s breadth of networking smarts brings even more to the table for venue owners — including the ability to integrate voice, public safety and other data streams like ticketing and concessions into a tight, secure, single IT infrastructure.

For fans, the benefits of a connected stadium are clear: Personal access to instant video replays, the ability to order food from your seat, and the fun of connecting with fans and friends either in the venue or out on the Internet. For teams and stadium owners, a fully connected stadium not only helps make fans happier, it can also increase advertising and other revenue streams while reducing administration and cost of IT ownership.

Where Cisco has an edge over other technology providers is in its depth of offerings — not only is it the world leader in back-end routing and switching gear, but it is also among the market leaders in wireless access gear, through the expertise of its Linksys division. Unknown to most observers is Cisco’s strength in digital-display technology, which it uses in stadium situations to improve or enhance video display on screens both big and small.

Sports is something Cisco understands

And unlike other consumer-based offerings — such as its failed efforts to crack into the personal video market by buying handheld videocam maker Flip — Cisco clearly “gets” the sports fan’s desire to have better access to technology. Just read this snippet from a Cisco blog about stadium technology, which reads like something we might write here at MSR:

Picture a fan sitting in a football stadium full of tens of thousands of people getting ready for the game to begin. The stadium is roaring with noise, the team takes the pitch, and the fan uses his or her mobile device to snap a picture, capturing an iconic moment.

Like most football fans, and sports fans in general, he or she is a vibrant digital and social media consumer, and therefore tries to share that photo via a social media channel like Facebook.

However, with so many fans in the stadium desiring to do that same thing, or engage with their mobile device in another way, the strain on the existing mobile network at the game is intense. The fan finds the device has a low level of or no connectivity, and is unable to share that moment with friends, family and other fans…an inability to interact – something this fan and scores of others desire.

And going to Europe makes plenty of sense for a global powerhouse like Cisco, mainly because of the more-advanced cellular culture there. In some research we are conducting now at MSR we are finding out that most big stadiums in this country have little or no Wi-Fi access — except maybe in the luxury suites. In Europe the revolution toward fully wired fans is already in full swing, and Cisco is smart to get out in front early. It will be interesting to see how quickly these stadium deals contribute to the networking giant’s bottom line.

Filed Under: AT&T, Cisco, Facebook, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , ,
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