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MLS embracing Social Media

March 12, 2012 by 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: Online Audience for College Hoops Soaring — Now Just Wait Until the iPad 3 Arrives!

March 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Even before the new Apple iPad arrived to save humanity and burn through wireless data plans, ESPN said that people watching college hoops on small screens this season set new records, with 1.6 billion total minutes and 283 million visits across the worldwide leader’s various online entities, representing increases of 16 percent and 5 percent respectively compared to 2010-11.

While these stats aren’t really unexpected — I mean, what’s not to like about watching hoops on an iPad? — it is pretty amazing on one hand to consider that in just a few short years mobile devices like the iPhone, Android phones and the iPad and its imitators have become fixtures in the sports-audience landscape. Want more stats? The most-viewed game online this year, according to figures provided to us by ESPN, was the Duke-North Carolina game on Feb. 8, with 4.4 million online minutes generated across computers, smartphones and tablets.

ESPN called that event the “most watched college basketball game ever” for online, but we are betting that it gets quickly eclipsed sometime during the upcoming NCAA men’s tournament, when all those shiny new iPad 3s get turned on and tuned in.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, ESPN, ESPN3, NCAA Hoops, WatchESPN Tagged With: , , ,

Can ‘Gridiron Grunts’ Grow? App That Lets Players Talk to Fans Getting Pictures, Videos for 2nd Season

March 6, 2012 by 1 Comment

After a self-proclaimed successful rookie year, the team behind the “Gridiron Grunts” app — which lets NFL players and fans talk to each other via recorded voice messages — is beefing up for its second season with plans to add picture- and video-sharing capabilities.

According to ex-NFL lineman Jeb Terry Jr., who is co-founder and CEO of Grunts parent company Gridion Ventures Inc., adding picutre and video sharing is just another way of adding value to an app that was “built just to talk about football.” If you’re not familiar with the Grunts app, a “Grunt” is a short (less than 45 seconds) audio message that can be recorded from a phone to the app.

The big attraction are “Grunts” left by NFL players, though fans who download the app can send Grunts to players, as well as “Grunt” to other fans. Fans pay 99 cents per month to listen to grunts of a specific player, or $4.99 a month to listen to all pro grunts. Fan-to-fan grunting is free, and the app is available for both iPhone and Android devices.

The “Grunt” label comes from the way football players talk on the field, a language Terry and his co-founder Ryan Nece used often as teammates on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “We used to knock heads in practice and then go out and have steaks afterward,” said Nece, who was a linebacker for Tampa from 2002-07.

After leaving the NFL following the 2008 season Terry went back to school to get an MBA, and then hit his old training partner with an idea for bringing fan-player interaction to a wider audience.

“It’s all about giving the fans the ability to engage with a player at their convenience,” said Nece. Terry said the pick-up-a-phone-and-grunt also makes it easy for players to participate.

“It’s convenient and easy to do, and gives players another way to control their own brand,” Terry said. “And fans can listen to a grunt at their leisure. You can’t always listen to radio talk shows when they are on the air.” The Grunts app can also deliver alerts to a fan’s phone when there is a new grunt to listen to.

Nece added that Grunts is a way for players who aren’t Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers to get some air time.

“There are a lot of players like we were, with shares of the limelight that were pretty small,” Nece said. “You could be a big fan of a certain player but never hear from him on ESPN. Now everyone can develop their own personality.”

According to Terry the Grunts app kicked off the season with just 15 pros participating, but ended with almost 80 players at the end of the season. One grunter who Terry really liked was Green Bay Packers breakout star Randall Cobb, who scored on both a kickoff return and a punt return last year.

“After that first game when he scored on the kickoff return he was very engaging, with some great postgame grunts,” Terry said. “He was perfectly candid and very excited for the fans.”

The Grunts team said it attracted 20,000 paying customers during the first year, a “beta” season total that Terry is happy with. For this year, after adding photo and video sharing later this spring, the Grunts team is still considering where to expand next, with perhaps a Grunt website and other sports on the drawing board. But first and foremost, the Grunt app will remain simple and powerful, like a blitz: A place to talk and listen football.

“Twitter is fun but tweets might be from friends or associates [of an athlete], so you never know,” Terry said. “We built our app to talk about football, and not about shopping or going to the club. We just wanted to erase the clutter and bring fans content that’s strictly from the players.”

Filed Under: Apps, ESPN, iPhone, NFL, Social Media, Sports Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

ESPN to Broadcast UEFA European Football Championship 2012

March 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Good news for football fans ESPN will have games in June. Sorry I did not mean to get you excited if you misunderstood, it is not American football but the European style, when it broadcasts the UEFA European Football Championship 2012.

The network is staying true to its word about expanding and deepening its coverage of the sport in the US and it will be doing so with all of the tools at its disposal, live broadcasts, tape delayed, mobile and Internet coverage as well.

The broadcasts will be spread across three of its channels with some overlap starting with ESPN Desportes taking the lead with a total of 27 live matches and four tape-delayed ones for a total of 106 hours of programming.

Second at bat will be ESPN with 22 matches as well as pre- and post- game shows while ESPN3 will have six matches and the additional pre-and post-game programming as well. All 31 of the matches will be available on ESPN Deportes Radio, WatchESPN and 25 matches will be live on ESPN Mobile TV. All broadcast games will be in HD for the first time.

While pre- and post-game shows are a staple for American football fans this will mark the first time that ESPN will be including them in its UEFA broadcasts and including some of the traditions such as the teams walking onto the pitch, the national anthems and ceremonial handshakes that are a cornerstone of European pregame ceremonies.

The tournament begins Friday, June 8, and runs through Sunday, July 1, in eight cities across Poland and Ukraine. If you are on vacation, graduating from school, or working during the games all 31 matches will be archived and can only be accessed on ESPN3 through July 31, 2012, and non-exclusively through the end of the year. All matches will be available for replay on ESPN3 shortly after completion.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN Radio, ESPN3, Soccer Tagged With: , ,

ESPN Answers CBS With API Push to Developers

March 5, 2012 by 1 Comment

Could mobile applications be the next big “network” for sports content? Nobody knows yet, but Monday’s news about ESPN opening up its programming application interfaces to independent developers is another sign that the current content kings want to make sure they’ve got their hooks into any possible innovation that might dethrone them.

In non-geek terms, what ESPN announced today was a way for developers of applications to add features like ESPN headlines and stats to whatever new app they develop. Early partner Foursquare is a good example, with an app that gives fans access to ESPN headlines when they “check in” at a stadium using Foursquare. On one level, ESPN’s well-thought move seems to be a bit of a response to a decision made earlier this year by CBS Sports to similarly open up its fantasy-league content to developers, who might combine whatever innovation they can dream up with the network’s extensive sports information.

Though these initiatives are all in very early days, on one level it seems to make a lot of sense for a developer, especially a small firm, to take advantage of whatever free goodies it can reap from the worldwide leader or from CBS. From a quick look at ESPN’s developer FAQ it appears that developers wouldn’t have to start paying any royalty fees until they started selling a lot of apps or driving a lot of traffic. In that case, pretty much everybody is happy because they are simply sharing a bigger pie of revenue.

For ESPN and CBS, the moves are an easy way to keep potential competitors close to the vest, by offering them assistance with the parts of the business (sports newsgathering and compilation) that is often beyond the reach of most resource-constrained startups. So far, there hasn’t been a sports app to surface that was significantly different or disruptive to what the big players have been able to put out themselves. But by allowing developers to include their content APIs, ESPN and CBS seem to be taking no chances, allowing innovators to become part of the Borg if they so choose.

Filed Under: Apps, CBS Sports, ESPN Tagged With: , ,

The Big Ten Network expands to Mobile Devices with BTN2Go

March 2, 2012 by 1 Comment

Fans of Big Ten sports who are on the road can now take a piece of the conference with them, a sporting piece as the conference has expanded its Big Ten Network (BTN) presence to cover both mobile users as well as expanding its footprint on the Internet.

The BTN2Go features the live sports feed of the programming that fills BTN, it is simply made available to users of smartphones, tablets or access the site via the Internet. The BTN has done a staged rollout of the program, it debuted with the start of the football season last year as an Internet-only feature and then expanded to the iPad and iPhone quickly afterwards. A version for Android-based phones is expected within the next month or so.

The goal of the effort to provide fans of Big Ten sports access to games anywhere, at any time on any device, said Michael Calderon, BTN’s vice president of digital and interactive media. The network is currently looking at other platforms such as Windows Phone and connected devices including game consoles and expects to launch a new platform with the start of next year’s football season, Calderon said.

Users have to be subscribers of the participating cable or broadband providers, a list that includes Bright House Networks, Charter, Cox Communications, DIRECTV, Dish Network, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.

If you fall into that category then BTN2Go is free with no addition subscription needed and this gives you access to a huge amount of both current and past programming. First and foremost for many fans is the ability to watch live games. However games that are broadcast by BTN’s partners such as ABC and ESPN will be available the following day on-demand.

Calderon noted that a real benefit the program brings is for fans that do not live in the Big Ten area, where a game that are interested might not be broadcast, it will still be available on BTN2Go. Also when an event runs long, say the first of a basketball doubleheader, a user can still go to BTN2Go to watch the opening of the second game if that is the one they are interested in viewing.

The BTN has benefited from its founders foresight. When it was founded five years ago in ensured that it had control of all its digital rights so that the licensing issues that have the potential to stymie a program such as this do not exist.

Then there is also access to archival footage from earlier this season broadcast by both BTN and its partners. Of course there is highlight reels and coaches shows on a regular basis. The BTN also creates home grown series such as Original series such as The Journey, Big Ten Icons, Big Ten’s Best and The Big Ten’s Greatest Games that are also available for viewing.

Going forward the network is looking to add additional features to BNT2Go including possibly a social media module for Facebook and Twitter users, but for the first generation of the platform it focused on delivering a top video experience, Caldera said.

Filed Under: ABC, Android, Apple, Apps, Big Ten Network, ESPN, Facebook, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, Time Warner Cable Television Tagged With: , , , ,
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