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Elemental Technologies lands $13m in Series C funding

May 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Elemental Technologies, a young company that is focusing on creating video solutions for multiscreen content delivery has closed its third round of funding after landing $13 million in a Series C round of funding.

The round was led by Northwest Venture Partners (NVP) and was joined by three additional partners; General Catalyst, Voyager Capital and Steamboat Ventures, all of whom are previous investors in the company.

This brings to $27.6 million to the company, which was founded in 2006, has managed to raise in the past few years. It closed its Series B round in July, 2010 after raising $7.5 million and $7.1 million in its first round in July, 2008.

In that time it has signed more than a 100 customers including number of top tier players including ESPN, Comcast and HBO, been named to Forbes Magazine’s Most Promising Companies in America list and more.

One of the most interesting is the deal it landed last month that calls for it to be part of the backbone to the systems that will be broadcasting the upcoming London Olympics to viewers in Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada and a dozen countries in Latin America.

Filed Under: Comcast, Elemental Technologies, ESPN, General Catalyst, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Northwest Venture Partners, Startup, Steamboat Ventures, Venture Capital, Voyager Capital Tagged With: , ,

Comcast Subscribers Finally Get WatchESPN Access

May 8, 2012 by 1 Comment

Screen shot of ESPNWatch TV ad with the cowboy in the horse trough -- note the disclaimer text.

If you are a paying Comcast cable subscriber, the day of sports freedom has finally arrived — you are now part of the lucky group that is able to use the WatchESPN app to get sports content wherever you want it, on basically any mobile device.

While this does mean that approximately 40 million more Comcast customers can now watch games and other ESPN programming in the horse trough should they so desire, it still isn’t quite the Internet freedom you get from watching events that are served up live to anyone with an Internet connection, like say The Masters or the Super Bowl. But it’s hard to argue with the fact that content must be paid for in one form or another; and since the cable providers pay ESPN a hefty fee to have the channel available for their regular services, it makes sense that ESPN would require the cable-subscription validation in order to consume that same content on other platforms.

Still, I would like to see ESPN offer some kind of separate, Internet-only subscription fee and I expect that someday we may see such a serving. But not anytime soon, because it makes no sense for ESPN to bite the hand that feeds it so well. For now.

Filed Under: Apps, Comcast, ESPN, WatchESPN Tagged With: , , ,

The NFL Metes out Punishment to Saints Players — This could be a Long Battle

May 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment

After a week delay NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has come down on the New Orleans Saints players that were most active in the notorious bounty program installed by defensive coach Gregg Williams by suspending four players for various lengths of time.

Suspended without pay are Jonathan Vilma for the entire 2012 season, Anthony Hargrove (now a Green Bay Packer) was given an eight game suspension, Will Smith was suspended for four games and Scott Fujita, now with the Cleveland Browns, was given three games. Vilma’s was the most sever because he supposedly put his own cash up for anyone that would injure Brett Favre in the 2010 NFC Championship game.

The four players are not taking this sitting down and have already pledged to fight the issue in the courts as well as appealing the ruling. I did a quick look and cannot find anybody that has won an appeal from Goodell, I guess that might be because he has to decide if his original ruling was correct and he goes with his first impression.

The court battle could be a protracted affair and I wonder of a judge will order the league to let the players participate n games while the matter is being disputed? I wonder how Goodell will react to being over ruled by a judge, if that happens?

On top of the lawsuit and the appeal, the NFL Players Association has issued a short release that simply said that the NFL has still not provided it with details or specific evidence of these players involvement in the pay-to-injure program.

There is one other interesting aspect to this mess, and that is the numerous lawsuits against the NFL regarding concussions will take a good look at this program At least one of the has already cited the bounty program, that only leaves about 50 lawsuits and 1,200 plaintiffs to go!

Filed Under: ESPN, Lawsuit, NBC Sports, New Orleans Saints, NFL, ProFootballTalk, The Big Lead, USA Today Tagged With: , ,

ESPN turns the heat up on Soccer Coverage

May 1, 2012 by 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: , ,

The 2012 NFL Draft is in the Books-Did Your Team Win or Lose?

April 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

There is a nice piece in Sports Illustrated by Richard Deitsch that quite clearly shows the difference between ESPN and the NFL Network’s approach to covering last weekend’s NFL draft. It breaks down to one with a relatively minimalist approach (ESPN) and the other went with ‘kitchen sink” approach.

Of course over the course of three days the cast of characters changed a bit and the dynamics of the broadcasts changed with them. I tend to favor a smaller group because I find I learn more and hear more interesting bits of information when there are fewer people vying to be heard.

An interesting side note is that while the two networks had a gentleman’s agreement not to tip picks prior to the announcements, but that did not include Twitter. While the reporters for the respective networks did not tweet all of the picks, they did so on a number of them.

We found that following twitter was much better than following the broadcasts for the most part, not only because the information came fast and furious, but also you could much more easily cut out the noise from announcers filling air time.

There are of course a number of post draft appraisals available for fans to peruse but it is worth listing a few here. Bleacher Report did a nice job, I believe in rating the draft team by team. USA Today had very different impressions on a number of teams compared to the BR ratings so it is interesting to see why they differed and where they agreed.

In the past I have read a few, not from BR, that seemed to give everybody an A or B grade. Sorry, I don’t buy it. Some picks are just strange, and some teams seem like they went too far in breaking from group thinking. Of course it is hard to tell until a few years have gone by, for the most part, but you can make some informed statements based on what is already know about the players, and the teams they are going to.

For a general view of the draft I could point you back to Sports Illustrated and Peter King’s Monday Morning QB column where he talks about how there were a great many stories in the NFL draft. I would have never guessed. As a counterpoint you could always read Kissing Suzy Kolber’s rude interpretation of Peter King’s column instead.

I usually watch the draft switching between the two networks while looking at twitter. A buddy has two TVs going, using his computer to watch his favorite team’s war room and watching twitter feeds on his phone while scratching names off a list he keeps. Wonder what he will do until next year? Well now that the draft is over how long until training camp officially opens?

Filed Under: bleacherreport, ESPN, Kissing Suzy Kolber, NFL, NFL Draft, NFL Network, Peter King, Richard Deitsch, Sports Illustrated Tagged With: , ,

Virginia is for Lovers, and this weekend NASCAR

April 27, 2012 by 3 Comments

Last week’s run in Kansas resulted in a nice win by Denny Hamlin, his second of the year by passing Martin Truex Jr. on the 31st to last lap and then hanging on for the checkered flag. Truex hung on for second while the rest of the top five was filled out by Jimmie Johnson and Greg Biffle.

Who would have believed that a little sunlight had that much of an effect on the race? For most of the race Truex was dominating in the cloudy weather and then as the conditions changed with the arrival of late afternoon sun, his car started performing poorly, becoming very loose while Hamlin’s #11 car had the exact opposite experience. Well they are once again under the lights this week.

Sprint Cup Standings
1) Greg Biffle
2) Martin Truex Jr. -15
3) Matt Kenseth -17
4) Dale Earnhardt Jr. -21
5) Denny Hamlin -23

The Track
This week they are running at Richmond International Raceway in the Capitol City 400 Presented by Virginia is for Lovers, a race that marks the 60th anniversary of racing at the RIR. The track is a ¾ mile D shaped oval.

Broadcast
Coverage begins at 7 pm ET on Fox

Twitter feeds
@RISinsider- Tracks official Twitter feed
@NASCAR-Official NASCAR feed
@NationwideNNS-Nationwide Official Twitter
@NASCAR_NNS-NASCAR Nationwide feed
@NASCARONFOX-Fox Sports feed
@AllWaltrip-3 Time NASCAR Champ and Fox announcer
@PRNLive-Performance Racing Network
@EdHintonESPN-ESPN Columnist Ed Hinton

Nationwide Series
The Nationwide Series also returns to the lights, this time on Friday night with the running of the Virginia 529 College Savings 250. The highlight of the race could be the debut of Travis Pastrana, at least he has been heavily touted by ESPN, which maybe not coincidentally is broadcasting the race.

Still he has taken an interesting road to get a car in Nationwide. He has been a winner at a variety of other tangentially related sports including supercross, motorcross, freestyle motorcross and rally racing.

He formed a partnership with Michael Waltrip to form the Pastrana-Waltrip Racing. He was originally expected to start racing last year but after one race was injured in an accident in the X-Games which put off his racing efforts until this year. It will be interesting to see how well he does and if his X-Games following will cross over to NASCAR. Anybody want to make a prediction?

Broadcast
Friday 7 pm ET ESPN 2

Nationwide Series Standings
1) Elliott Sadler
2) Ricky Stenhouse Jr -4
3) Austin Dillon -20
4) Sam Hornish Jr. -54
5) Michael Annett -64


Video of the week
Brad Keselowski is rapidly becoming my favorite racing personality. First he sends an in-track Twitter of an exploding race car and now I find this. He has a series of Q&As on YouTube that are just silly but well worth viewing, especially if you just need to perk up your day.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, ESPN, Fox Sports, NASCAR, Richmond International Raceway, YouTube Tagged With: , ,
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