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Know your baseball? You could win $1 million from MLB!

May 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I follow the growing number of apps and games that are emerging from Major League Baseball with solid approval. While not everything MLB does is great (I hate interleague play for instance) but most of the apps and programs serve to enhance baseball’s fans experience.

I only glanced over the Million Dollar Pick’em game the first time I noticed it but did not really give it any thought. Then while waiting for some of the Friday night games to start so that I could have one running on my computer I noticed an article at MLB.Com.

It talked about how three fans were in the running to win a million dollars this weekend playing the game, and laid out a number that had won thousands of dollars already playing the game.

The game is simple to understand, but hard to win. All you have to do is pick all of the winning teams on both Tuesday and Friday in the same week to win the $1 million prize. Picks must be in by 7 pm ET, but can be changed up to that point A few other rules, US citizens only, you must be at least 18 years old to play. Easy right? I tried it for Friday and did not win, and was not that close to be honest.

The game is free, so the entry price is no barrier, and the top weekly score is $1,000. I am a bit surprised that no one has won yet, or if they have I have not seen it publicized yet. The reason is not that I see a lot of experts picking games, instead I view it much like the NCAA’s March Madness, there always seems to be someone that picks everybody, or close to it, and since this keeps repeating, there are more chances.

Filed Under: Baseball, Contests, Major League Baseball Tagged With:

ESPN Sees Strong Online Soccer Viewership Ahead of Euro 2012

May 21, 2012 by 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: , ,

The War of Words begins between ESPN and NBC Sports

May 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

ESPN has had an emerging rival in the all-sports all day broadcasting model in recent days with the rise of NBC Sports Network, and while the two have not had much to say about each other that may be changing.

According to USA Today the war of words began earlier this week when ESPN President John Skipper made some comments about rival NBC during ESPN’s upfront presentation that on the face of them did not seem to extreme, but that lit the fuse.

NBC shot back deriding ESPN’s quality and the value they deliver for the dollar they charge, ESPN shot back that more people use its mobile app than watch NBC, and so it goes. I expect that this will continue for some time, mostly at events such as the upfront presentations.

For those of you with a long memory you will recall the battles between ESPN and rival Fox when Fox was working on establishing itself as a 24/7 sports network. They sniped at each other; put their logos over all sorts of images to prevent rivals from using them and a host of other actions, many of them infantile.

Ah, the good old days. First they seemed to come to an understanding and ceased over use of their respective logos and refrained saying trite and petty things about each other and then finally Fox eventually threw in the towel and dropped its efforts, although rumors have recently come that it might be reexamining the idea.

While in some ways this current fight has no impact on sports fans, in other ways I believe that it will have a positive one. Competition is good for fans because hopefully it means the players involved will raise their game. I think that the rise of MLB’s network has made ESPN raise the level of Baseball Tonight, for instance.

One issue is that there is little overlap, ESPN has a large range of premium sports and NBC does not, although it does have the upcoming Olympics and a few other sports such as the NHL’s Stanley Cup Playoffs, which are seeing a strong resurgence in viewership. Other events such as the Volvo Ocean Race 2011-2012 and the Amgen Tour of California, while very good, just do not have the viewership of or the range of games that ESPN rolls out.

Filed Under: Baseball, Contests, Cycling, ESPN, Fox Sports, Live sports via mobile, NBC Sports, NFL, Sailing, Volvo Ocean Race Tagged With: , ,

Start Your Browser Windows: Indy 500 Events Already Ramping Up

May 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Memorial Day holiday is just over a week away and that of course means a lot of things to people, honoring the nation’s men and women who died while serving, parades, BBQs and of course the roar of the crowd at the Indianapolis 500.

While there will be more to report next week this is a look at some of the events that will be upcoming next week, and a mention of a few events that already occurred because you can start enjoying the racing now. This race and the Coca Cola 600 will make for a great day of racing next week.

More than 400,000 fans head over to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to watch the race that has been called ‘The Greatest Spectacle in Racing’, yet that is just the end of an eventful week that will start this Saturday or to be more accurate two weeks since the official Opening Day was last Saturday with the Celebration of Automobiles.

While all this week there have been practice rounds available to the public, and the qualification draw is Friday night the event gets to the real beef starting Saturday when qualification begins. It should be noted that it is also Armed Forces Bump Day and there will be an enlistment ceremony in the morning.

There will be qualifying most of the week, not just for the Indy 500 but also for the Firestone Freedom 100 that starts on Thursday. There will be a range of events all week if you are lucky enough to be in town including vintage car races, autograph sessions, pit stop contests and a live concert by Lynyrd Skynyrd on Friday prior to the Freedom 100.

Sunday May 27th is the day that everybody waits for with events starting at 8:30 am and the race beginning at noon for the 96th running of the Indianapolis 500. However you can start to get your speed fix in now if you wish. The race has a page called Live Timing & Scoring that features live practice and pre-race video so if your sound is off your boss might never know. It also shows the current rank of all of the drivers, lap speeds and engine type.

Twitter
Get the latest updates by tweeting @IMS. Or try #indy500 #brickyard and #IndyGP.

Facebook
Here’s the Indy 500 Facebook page.

Filed Under: Contests, Facebook, Indy 500, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Sports Social Media Tagged With:

ESPN Gameday Contest Draws Fan Interest — Maybe Too Much Interest?

April 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Any but the most casual college football fan has seen the throngs at the ESPN College Gameday sets, with fans in the background hoisting all sorts of signs, occasionally ones that are risqué or outright rude, and during the course of the week we see lots of ads for the program.

Now fans can influence where the ads will be shot in a clever little contest that ESPN and Facebook are hosting that enables fans to vote once a day for their school of choice. The winning school will have a Gameday ad shot on campus and it will include students from that school.There are a total of 120 schools involved and you can vote over at Facebook or ESPN GamedayVote.

I really like the contest on a number of levels. It should generate a great deal of attention between rival schools and rival contests. A quick look at some of the blogs out there already have battle cries that call for votes or else.

For ESPN it just brings additional attention to its football programming, and at a time that it is not usually on the minds of fans. It seems to have already taken off since the ESPN Vote page, and the Facebook one, as of this writing, has been overwhelmed and are down while it verifies the votes. I suspect that it will just get busier before this is all over.

The one flaw seems to be that the powers that be underestimated the popularity of the program. Looking at some of the posts on the Facebook page I noticed both accusations of cheating and complaints that votes were credited to the wrong team. I have to say that if I was in school and knew a hacker I might be so inclined to see if I could ‘rock the vote.’

I would really love to know where the votes are coming from, not in terms of schools and conferences, but are more voters coming from the Facebook page or the ESPN site? ESPN’s Facebook page has one million followers and so can be a tremendous force in this contest.

Filed Under: Contests, ESPN, Facebook, Fanatic Fans, NCAA Football, Social Media, Sports Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

London Olympics Creates Online Social Hub for Athletes and Fans to Mingle

April 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

If you are looking to follow your favorite athletes at this year’s Summer Olympics, the governing body has just set up a system that will enable you to do just that with both famous and those that hope to soon to be famous.

The International Olympics Committee has set up a site called the Olympics Athlete Hub, an effort that hopes to enable fans to make connections with the athletes that are participating in this year’s games as well as past performers.

What the hub does is simply aggregate the Twitter and Facebook feeds of the athletes and provide a single unified spot that brings them all together. A quick look over at the page shows that currently three of the five players are American NBA players.

Once you sign up you can search the athlete directory by athlete name, country, sport, discipline or event. There already 1,000 athletes in the hub and this will grow as qualifying for events is ongoing and as athletes qualify they will be added. There are also former Olympiads such as Mark Spitz, Nadia Comaneci, Edwin Moses, Yelena Isinbaeva, and Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, who pass along tips on training.

Users of the service can post photos and also win prizes for liking athletes on Facebook and following them on Twitter, and the site is expected to roll out a number of additional award programs leading up to the games, including one that can send the winner to the games.. During the games the site will feature a section that will feature real-time chats with athletes that will take place from within the Athletes’ Village.

It really seems that the Olympics as an organization truly understand the advantages of social media as well as the reach and power that a major on-line presence brings. With its broadcast partners making all events online and highlights that can be followed on YouTube it is certainly much easier to follow the contests easier than possibly any other sporting event in the world.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, BBC, Contests, Facebook, NBC Sports, Olympics, Social Media, Sports Social Media, YouTube Tagged With: , , ,
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