You are here: Home / Archives for ESPN

How to get customized ESPN radio feeds on your smart phone, iPad

September 22, 2011 by 1 Comment

ESPN RADIO

Until now, mobile sports fans who wanted to listen to such popular ESPN programming as “Mike and Mike in the Morning,” The Herd with Colin Cowherd” and “The Scott Van Pelt Show” couldn’t cache the programs on smartphone memory cards. Listening to ESPN radio required a network connection and drew down battery life. A solution to that problem has arrived, for a fee.

This week, ESPN went into partnership with San Diego-based Slacker Inc. to provide ESPN on Slacker Radio, including premium services priced at $3.99 and $9.99 per month which allow people to store radio programming locally.

If you don’t want to pay to listen to what you want, when you want, Slacker is also delivering a near-instantenous free feed of content from The Death Star (ESPN) 

Slacker is the first digital radio distribution service to feature ESPN Radio, and the agreement turns up the heat on such competitors as Last.fm and Pandora to angle for similar deals with ESPN. The deal signals that ESPN is unafraid to be aggressive in flowing digital rights to its content for mobile distribution, which is considered key to the growth of the mobile sports viewing experience. According to Juniper Research, mobile sports content and services like the Slacker/ESPN offering could reach $3.8 billion in 2011.

Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA and AT&T subscribers can bill premium services directly to their accounts via Android and Blackberry smartphone applications, which are already available. A similar iOS application for iPhone and iPad is pending Apple’s approval.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, AT&T, Baseball, BlackBerry, ESPN, iPad, iPhone, Major League Baseball, NBA, NFL, NHL, Slacker, T-Mobile, Uncategorized, Verizon Wireless, WatchESPN, Wimbledon

Colorado State Hoops Goes Big on Twitter

September 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment

There might not be a media outlet more confused about Twitter than ESPN — after watching an NFL Gameday “feature” from this past weekend on the league’s use of Twitter that could have been filmed a couple years ago (it lightly touched on the Chad Ochocinco non-controversies and then quoted NFL PR exec Greg Aiello as saying Twitter is fun), you then can’t find the feature archived anywhere on the network’s site. But you also can’t avoid Twitter on other programs and shows, like the new NFL32 show where live Tweets are run crawler-style under the video, and athlete Tweets are repurposed nearly every minute.

The good news is, it seems like ESPN’s younger reporters and bloggers are completely dialed in to the microblogging service, and quickly spot good uses of it, like the hilariously cheesy videos being cranked out by the Colorado State University basketball team like the one embedded above.

As a CU grad it chafes a bit to think that some Rams from Fort Fun are doing a better job of having fun with social media than my beloved Buffaloes, but let’s see if Colorado can catch up. More importantly, let’s see if Tad Boyle and the Buff hoopsters can win some games. Then they can worry about the in-state YouTube/Twitter competition.

Filed Under: ESPN, NCAA Hoops, Twitter, YouTube

ESPN’s New MNF Deal Shows That for Mobile Fans, the NFL Rules

September 8, 2011 by 1 Comment


Though the details of the new 8-year deal that ESPN and the NFL announced today are centered around broadcast rights for the popular Monday Night Football franchise, the incredible growth in viewership of digital ESPN NFL content is a sign that for mobile sports fans, football is king.

How big is mobile consumption getting? From the ESPN press release today, chew on these numbers for NFL content on the cable channel’s digital platforms:

— ESPN averaged 42.2 million unique visitors on the site in fall 2010; Sundays during the NFL season are the highest trafficked days of the year for ESPN.com

— During the 2010 season, NFL content represented 39% of the page views generated on ESPN.com, highest of any sport.

— The NFL fan spends over 50% more time with ESPN media than the average person;

— ESPN.com NFL coverage on Sunday and Monday (including the home page, NFL section and Fantasy Football section) averaged 47.4 million visits and 271.4 million minutes of usage during the 2010 season, a year-to-year increase of 20% on visits and 20% on minutes.

— NFL coverage (incl. NFL and Fantasy Football section) on the ESPN Mobile web site and ScoreCenter app in 2010 delivered 14.5 million visits and 101.4 million minutes each week, increases of 66% and 61%, respectively, versus the prior year.

With the season starting with tonight’s Green Bay/New Orleans matchup it will be interesting to see how many fans try to watch games on mobile platforms, either via direct connections (like Verizon’s NFL app or via the Sunday Ticket mobile platform) or through some other means like using a Slingbox. Clearly this is an area we’ll be watching closely so stay tuned for price and quality comparisons as the season rolls on.

Filed Under: Apps, ESPN, Monday Night Football, NFL, Tablets Tagged With: , , ,

NCAA/Turner Alliance to expand its Football Presence

August 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The alliance between NCAA and Turner Sports will be showing increased activity this Fall

With the start of college football just days away the NCAA and its partner Turner Sports have stepped up with a range of programs for fans and followers of NCAA football including a 30 minute preview show every week.

The show will be hosted by Vince Cellini and SEC college analyst Dave Archer and will cover not only the Football Bowl Subdivision but also the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), Division II and Division III, which should make for a very busy 30 minutes.

The move is just one of many as the two partners start to move forward in a joint effort to expand the NCAA’s on-line and broadcast presence. Last year the NCAA singed a pair of deals with Turner Sports, one of which included CBS as well.

The first deal called for a 14-year television, Internet and wireless rights agreement with CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting. It gave the two the rights to present the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship beginning in 2011 and continuing through 2024 for more than $10.8 billion. This includes all the games being broadcast live, over a combination of four networks-CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV.

Included in the deal are joint marketing effort between the NCAA , CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting. At the time this was labeled the start of a new partnership and so it was as a second deal was cut soon after.

The second deal was just between Turner and the NCAA and it called for Turner create and mange NCAA Digital and which also covers 14 years. No terms of this deal were made available. NCAA Digital will cover all 88 NCAA championships and is designed to heighten awareness and interest in them, including running NCAA.com, the primary web site for all of the championships.

Included in the Fall football push will a number of expected features including a live scoreboard, power rankings and game recaps. There will be live statistics from ongoing games and a Heisman Watch as well as the ability to call up video highlights and watch features produced for the site.

It will be interesting to see how this impacts ESPN who currently is the unchallenged king of on-line and broadcast sports. I expect that will raise the bar for much of the channels analyst, much as the Baseball Network seems to have done, in my opinion. However the 30 minute show has a tough hill to climb to surpass the very popular ESPN College Gameday program.

Filed Under: CBS Sports, ESPN, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, TNT, truTV, Turner Sports Tagged With: , , ,

Sports Media Pages Load Too Slow, Researcher Says

August 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Technology performance company Gomez Benchmarks said Friday Aug. 26 that only one in 12 sports media websites can load pages in five seconds or less, disappointing millions of sports fans every time they use their smartphones to get news and buzz.

A division of Compuware Corporation, Gomez Benchmarks measured four carrier/device combinations — AT&T/iPhone, Sprint/HTC Hero, T-Mobile/HTC Dream and Verizon/Droid — against 12 popular sports media websites. While the website of the WWE averaged an acceptable 4.5 seconds per page, such media outlets as ESPN.com, NFL.com and CBS Sports.com were way too slow to satisfy sports fans.

See how your favorite fan sites did:

NHL.com — 8.3 seconds average response time

NBA.com — 10.68 second average response time   

NASCAR.com — 13.16 second average response time

 NBC Sports — 14.04 second average response time

ESPN.com — 14.06 second average response time

MLB.com – 14.33 second average response time

NFL.com — 14.93 second average response time

CBS Sports — 15.41 second average response time

About.com Sports — 20.11 second average response time

 

 

Filed Under: Android, AT&T, BlackBerry, ESPN, iPhone, Major League Baseball, NBA, NFL, T-Mobile, Tablets, Verizon Wireless Tagged With:

Can We Just Kill the Tim Tebow News for a bit?

August 26, 2011 by 2 Comments

Is a third string QB really worth a daily update?

There seems to be one story that is dominating the preseason NFL news this year. It is not the question of if Green Bay can repeat, if the Eagles will play in the Superbowl, or will an NFC West team make the playoffs again with a losing record. No it revolves around a backup quarterback and where he will end up in the depth charts.

Poor Tim Tebow, everybody seems to be kicking him, and he does not even appear to be down. Highly successful and highly praised in college, things are different now that he is in the NFL and the drumbeat of negativity seems to be picking up as he prepares to start his second season in Denver.

His problems started before he was drafted, as most fans know, with industry experts claiming that he had a poor throwing motion, took too long to throw, could not really walk on water, the whole nine yards. They boldly predicted that he would be a mid second to third round draft choice and quickly moved to a running back position.

Josh McDaniels, then head coach for the Denver Broncos boldly proved everyone wrong, at least in regards to draft position, by taking Tebow in the first round. The draft position, his obvious display of his beliefs, his autobiography, his ESPN documentary, the rumor that the Broncos were going to move Orton so he could start etc… all seems to have created a backlash against him.

Maybe I should have waited a few years.

It seems that on a daily basis someone is saying that he cannot make it, that he is failing, and taking great joy in it. The latest is Boomer Esiason, former NFL quarterback who bluntly said that Tebow is not an NFL quarterback, “he can’t play, he can’t throw.” Even the comedy site The Onion has gotten in on the fun, saying that Jesus Christ claims that Tebow is not ready to start in the NFL.

I say, so what? There is no doubt in my mind that he brought some of this on himself, but you look at press stories on him in school were almost all positive, and now the opposite. I neither like nor dislike Tebow. Until he starts for the Broncos and beats a team I am rooting for, or possibly the point spread, I really do not care. Is it really that important to breathlessly talk about every preseason pass? I can barely stand to watch preseason games, and now I am inundated with this crap? Get a life for goodness sake.

I know that this is the NFL silly season, when real storylines are few and far between but I have heard more about him that the Colt’s quarterback situation, the 49ers quarterback situation, the Seahawks quarterback situation etc.. all of which seems to be a a bit more important in the overall scheme of things. There have been plenty of NFL QBs that failed with all of the tools-JaMarcus Russell anyone?-and ones that threw funny, were too short etc.. that succeeded. So lets just wait and see.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, ESPN, NFL, NFL Draft Tagged With:
« Previous Page
Next Page »