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The NBA Draft is Tomorrow but ESPN Starts Tonight

June 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The NBA draft is upon us once again and in some ways it has not achieved the overall hype level that the NFL has achieved, but it also often makes for a much better viewing spectacle as there is often a host of wildcards.

The official draft begins Thursday night at 7 pm ET and will be hosted, as it has for the last decade, by ESPN. A predraft show will be aired tonight at 7 pm ET for those of you that want to get an advanced look and see if you should despair or be elated over your following day prospects.

ESPN’ has said that it will have a specific focus for part of its broadcast that will be on the themes of determination and achievement and “climbing the ladder” to success. I think that this could be very interesting. It often seems to me that players that were stars in school and then disappear in the NBA, and NFL for that matter, are often the victims of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Getting stuck with a coach that does not use a players skill in his offense or defense, and yet when traded seem to bloom as their supporting cast improves, or their skills are used in a much better manner by the team.

The NBA’s 66th annual draft, held at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., will feature a horde of ESPN personnel and is hosted by Rece Davis along with and college basketball analyst Jay Bilas, NBA analyst Jeff Van Gundy, NBA Insider Chris Broussard, college basketball reporter Andy Katz and NBA reporter Ric Bucher.

It does not appear that the network is taking its arguers in chief Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith on the road for the event, something they did do for the NBA Finals. I was hoping to once again hear the chants of ‘cheese doodles’ ringing from the rafters.

However ESPN is pulling out all of the stops with live news feeds from 15 cities to get head coaches and general managers’ feedback on selections, with live reporting from New Orleans, where the league owned team has the #1 choice and a reporter in Charlotte where the #2 pick resides.

ESPN will also be providing coverage over a wide range of its other media properties including ESPN Radio, ESPN Mobile TV and streaming live via WatchESPN on ESPN3.com. You can also look for NBA on ESPN Facebook page for updates of you are so inclined.

Filed Under: Basketball, ESPN, ESPN Radio, ESPN3, NBA, NBA Draft, NFL Draft Tagged With: , , ,

ESPN to Broadcast All Wimbledon Matches

June 25, 2012 by 3 Comments

Wimbledon is here, the one grass court championship in the Grand Slam pantheon. One of the most watched, if not the top tennis tournament of the circuit is about to begin, with qualifying for unseeded players occurring last week. The tournament will run from June 25 to July 8 this year.

There will be much to watch for during the two week tournament. Will Roger Federer win a record tying 7th Men’s Singles title? Will the Williams sisters return to form and dominate? Will the torrential rainstorms that flooded much of northern England move south rather than east?

The event is held at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club and the seedings are in, with a few surprises. On the Men’s side Novak Djokovic has the top spot followed by Rafel Nadal, Roger Federer and Andy Murray. Between the top two they have won the last none major tournaments and Federer has been strong at Wimbledon, although has slipped in the last few years. Between the three of them they have owned the top tournaments over the last seven years. I think it would be nice to see a great upset and a new rising star in the sport, but not sure of that will happen.

On the women’s side Maria Sharapova, fresh off her French Open victory, has top honors, followed by Victoria Azarenka, Agnieszka Radwanska, and Petra Kvitova is fourth. Serena Williams, a four time winner on grass, is the sixth seed while her sister Venus, still dealing with Sjogren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease that can cause fatigue and joint pain was unseeded.

Broadcast

If you are looking for the match on the television tune into ESPN, which will be broadcasting 140 hours of play across a number of its properties including nine screens on ESPN3 so that you can view any match you wish and all of the action will also be on WatchESPN and via a mobile app as well.

The two main channels, ESPN and ESPN2 will have three days where they are both showing matches simultaneously so that a viewer can hop back and forth to view the ones that they are most interested in.

The network will be showing four historic Men’s finals on ESPN Classic, each shown on the anniversary of the match. In addition users of ESPN on Demand can watch highlights as well as historic matches.

Last year ESPN signed a 12 year deal to broadcast Wimbledon and the network will be expanding its US Open announcer John McEnroe to host a preview show called Breakfast at Wimbledon. With all of the coverage the network has a large staff covering the event including Darren Cahill, Cliff Drysdale, Mary Joe Fernandez, Brad Gilbert, Patrick McEnroe and Pam Shriver. Chris Fowler will call matches and serve as studio host, sharing that role with Hannah Storm and Mike Tirico.

Mon, June 25 6:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. Early Round Action ESPN2 / ESPN3
Tue, June 26 – Thur, June 28 7 a.m. – 5 p.m. Early Round Action ESPN2 /ESPN3
Fri, June 29 7 a.m. – 5 p.m. Early Round Action ESPN / ESPN3
Sat, June 30 8 a.m. – 3 p.m. Early Round Action ESPN / ESPN3
Mon, July 2 7 a.m. – 5 p.m. Round of 16 ESPN2 / ESPN3 8 a.m. – 3 p.m. Round of 16, Centre Court ESPN / ESPN3
Tue, July 3 7 a.m. – 4 p.m. Ladies’ Quarterfinals ESPN2 / ESPN3 Live 8 a.m. – 1 p.m. Ladies’ Quarterfinals, Centre Court ESPN / ESPN3
Wed, July 4 7 a.m. – 4 p.m. Gentlemen’s Quarterfinals ESPN2 / ESPN3 8 a.m. – 3 p.m. Gentlemen’s Quarterfinals, Centre Court ESPN / ESPN3D / ESPN3
Thur, July 5 8 a.m. – 1 p.m. Ladies’ Semifinals ESPN / ESPN3D / ESPN3
Fri, July 6 8 a.m. – 2 p.m. Gentlemen’s Semifinals ESPN / ESPN3D / ESPN3
Sat, July 7 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. Ladies’ Final ESPN / ESPN3D / ESPN3
Sun, July 8 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Gentlemen’s Final ESPN / ESPN3D / ESPN3

If you want to follow the matches via Twitter, or an individual player or announcer a good place to check out would be TennisTweets which has an exhaustive list of players that you can follow as well as a running board with the latest from a variety of sources.

The official Wimbledon web site is a very clean and easy to use web site. Want to watch video or listen to the games live on the radio-it is there. Get an app for your smartphone or view the history of the event. All there. Interviews, weather forecasts, as well as what you would expect with all of the draws, schedules and results.

If you happen to be wondering about grass courts, according to Wikipedia they tend to be slippery, with the ball, while remaining fast, staying low. The majority of the grass courts worldwide are located in England and they need to be reseeded annually, and so have a higher cost of maintenance.

This year you may very well see a great deal more play on grass than in previous years because the Summer Olympics, held in under two months in London, will see its tennis matches played at the All-England Club as well.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN Radio, ESPN3, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Maria Sharapova, Novak Djokovic, Rafel Nadal, Tennis, Wimbledon Tagged With: ,

Friday Grab Bag: X Games Coming, Soccer Corruption in China, Bike Lojack

June 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

ESPN’s annual summer X Games will begin next week on June 28 and run until July 1. Fans and athletes will descend on Los Angles for the events that will start with the X Fest that runs from noon until 7 pm on the opening day.

ESPN will be spreading the 21 hours of live broadcasting, both on-air and online, between a number of its properties: ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC will have the on-air duties with HD handled by ESPN 3D. For online, the games will also be digitally streamed on XGames.com and WatchESPN.com.

Intel buys InterDigital patent portfolio
Intel has reached an agreement to purchase approximately 1,700 patents and applications from wireless technology developer InterDigital for $375 million. The patents primarily are in the areas of 3G, LTE and 802.11 technologies.

Intel said that the move will be a benefit to its development efforts in the mobile segment, and the unspoken part of the deal is that it will no doubt provide ammunition in the ongoing legal spats over patents that are common in the mobile space as well.

Vungle creates App Fund for developers
Vungle, a startup that seeks to provide a variety of advertising and promotional avenues aside from the traditional pop-up ads has moved to draw more players to its platform. In a very interesting turn the company, which just closed a $2 million venture round last month will use half of that money and create a fund for other developers.

The purpose of the move, according to TechCrunch, is to lure developers to its platform and so gain a boost for its approach to alternative advertising for mobile apps. It will be interesting to see how this works out.

Corruption in Chinese soccer — who knew?
The New Yorker, where I often go for my sporting news, had an interesting piece on corruption in the world of Chinese soccer. League executives, players and refs have all been hauled away and imprisoned due to an apparent widespread match fixing epidemic.

It seems that it has been ongoing for several years and that one top referee received $128,000 to fix seven matches. The country, which is seeking to win the rights to host the World Cup in the future, is cracking down to show that it will not tolerate this type of blatant corruption. What impact that will have on FIFA I am not sure.

Apple and Motorola get chance to push claims
The Apple vs Motorola litigants had the opportunity to speak their piece to US Circuit Court Judge Richard Posner. Apple apparently does not want Motorola to pay royalties but wants it to change its design and also claims that since Motorola’s patent is never used it has no value. Motorola obviously does not agree with either position.

Oracle taking Google lawsuit to next level
Oracle has agreed to accept zero damages for the copyright infringement claims that it ‘won’ in its case versus Google over Java technology. Oracle had been seeking big money in the case, claiming that it suffered up to $6 billion in loses.

However this is not the end of the affair. Oracle has said it will appeal its claims in the case once again, including both the patent infringement and whether its APIs can be copyrighted, to the Ninth Circuit appeals court.

Amazon App Store goes International
I have to say that I was surprised when I read that Amazon had not really extended its App Store to other countries and that it was primarily focused on the US market, a short sighted deal since one of its top developers of Android running devices Samsung is so strong internationally.

But anyway that looks to be a thing of the past as the company has now started opening it up and now developers in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain can release games and apps designed specifically for those markets and the company has promised that more nations will be opened up to the joys of apps in the near futire, according to Cnet.

Ever had your bike stolen? SpyBike GPS could track the next one
SpyBike is a product developed by Integrated Trackers that is designed to look like a normal headset cap. It is designed to be activated when the bike is locked and you use a simply arming key and if the bike is moved it starts sending out data via a GPRS message and uses GPS to locate the bike. If GPS fails it has a fall back technology to help locate it.

The device does not come cheap, at $153 as well as a per message charge. The company said that it costs a fraction of a penny per message, but that varies by country. It features a rechargeable battery that can hold a charge of months.

Microsoft is on a roll, but is it a good one?
PC Mag is reporting that the company only gave some of its top OEMs a few days notice prior to announcing its Surface tablet platform earlier this week. As a number of them have made a major investment in developing for the underlying operating system, Windows 8, this seems a bit shortsighted.

Then later in the week it talks about its Windows 8 for smartphones and reveals that customers that buy the current family of smartphones will not be supported by Windows 8. I am sure that cheers up Nokia which has made a major investment in promoting Windows Phone technology.

Filed Under: ABC, Amazon, Android, Apps, Dell, ESPN, ESPN3, FIFA, Intel, Lawsuit, Microsoft, Motorola, Oracle, Smartphone, Soccer, Surface, WatchESPN, Windows 8, X Games Tagged With: , , , ,

ESPN Supports Title IX with espnW Women’s Sports Channel

June 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

On the 40th Anniversary of Title IX ESPN3 has launched espnW, a sports channel that will be dedicated to women’s sporting events. The anniversary of the passing of the Education Amendment of 1972, of which Title IX was apart, will be this Saturday.

What the act did, for those who do not know, is that it required equal opportunities for all at any educational institution that received federal funding. While most associate it with women’s sports, where it no doubt had its most public impact, it covered everything from school bands to access to math classes as well. It required equal spending for sports and has withstood a number of assaults to weaken it over the years.

The channel plans a major blitz in coverage, with it expected to carry 170 hours of live women’s sports through July 31 via an ESPN3 player that will give access to espnW. The network said that half of its programming will be exclusive to that channel.

ESPN said that the channel is in its long range plans as a permanent offering and that it has plans to expand what it will offer in the future. It currently has a lineup that will include basketball including WNBA, AAU Volleyball, softball, and tennis among others.

The web site for the channel includes the upcoming summer Olympics, athletes blogs including Olympic hopefuls, commentary, tweets from select athletes’ and a list of events that fans can go view live. This is a nice start for pushing women’s sports and hopefully as more fans view the events they will start making it to the mainstream broadcasts from ESPN.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN3, Olympics, WNBA Tagged With: ,

ESPN’s Soccer Push Pays off with Euro 2012 Viewership

June 13, 2012 by 3 Comments

ESPN has reported preliminary numbers for its UEFA Euro 2012 broadcasts and it is showing the sports giant that there is great potential in the sport. The opening match for the Group C teams Italy and Spain, both powerful squads, garnered an average of 2.1 million viewers.

While in terms of other major American sports this might not be that impressive but it, along with results from the Premier League show that increasingly ESPN can draw in viewers for a variety of soccer matches. It should be noted that the matches do not include a US team so there is no nationalistic urge to watch the sport.

According to ESPN the Italy vs Spain match was the biggest Euro match viewership aside from the championship match four years ago that had a 3.76 million viewership. Overall through the first six matches the network is averaging a hair over 1 million households and 1.3 million viewers on its English language broadcasts.

This represents a increases of 198% and 214%, respectively, versus the first six games of the UEFA EURO 2008

Last Sunday’s UEFA EURO 2012 match between Italy and Spain at on ESPN, a 1-1 tie and tournament opening match for both Group C teams, was seen by an average of 2.113 million viewers, bigger than any UEFA European Football Championship 2008 match except the final on ABC. That game, Germany vs. Spain, was watched by an average of 3.760 million viewers.

Through six matches, ESPN’s English-language presentation of the event is averaging 1,007,000 households and 1.328,000 viewers — up 198 percent and 214 percent, respectively, versus the first six games of the UEFA EURO 2008 (338,000 households and 423,000 viewers in ’08). The second most-watched game to-date in 2012 is Saturday’s Portugal-Germany match up – a 1.1 household coverage rating, 1,244,000 households, and 1,798,000 viewers, second to only one ESPN game in all of 2008.

Then there is the viewership from the rest of the networks broadcasting arms. ESPN Deportes is showing a 147% increase in households watching over 2008, and has reached 166,000 households. It is also getting strong viewership on its digital platforms, not a surprise since many of the matches are during work day hours for most of us.

Its ESPNFC.com has globally logged 876,000 daily visitors, 8.5 million page views and 33 million minutes, up 45%, 11% and 191%, respectively from four years ago. ESPN3 and WatchESPN, which reach a broad array of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as well as PCs has generated 65.8 million minutes to both the English and Spanish language feeds.

It will be interesting to see how the numbers grow as we head to the elimination rounds and more weekend matches. It is tough to head out to the TV, or even watch at work, with matches that occur when your boss is expecting you to be productive.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN3, Euro 2012, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Soccer, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

The Euro 2012 Tournament Starts this Weekend-ESPN Will be there for all of the Matches

June 7, 2012 by 1 Comment

The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship aka the Euro 2012 starts today to see which national soccer team will emerge victorious in the 14th European Championship which sees 16 nations vying for the title. In the next championship, in 2016, the field will expand to 24 teams.

Aside from bragging rights the winner gets something much more substantial, an automatic entry into the 2013 FIFA Confederation Cup that will be held next year in Brazil. The event, which will carry on for the next month will see matches held in eight cities sprawled across two nations-Poland and the Ukraine.

While I enjoy a good match I am really in no position to predict who is a favorite or which teams are the top ones to follow. I would suggest heading over to The Big Lead and look at Ty Duffy’s body of work on the subject.

The tournament has had a touch of scandal currently, with the continued growth of the match fixing scandal in Italy, something that initially helped kill that nation’s bid for the tournament and now sounds like it might have killed the national team’s chance of participating.

A few days ago the Italian team captain, Cesare Prandelli said it would not bother him if the team was withdraws from the event due to the scandal, which has been ongoing since 2006 in one form or another. There were 14 arrests last month and a player was dropped from the squad. As of this writing it has not happened.

In addition the BBC has reported that racism and neo-Nazis could be a problem and that former England team captain Sol Campbell is advising English fans to watch the matches from the safety of their home. And last but not least there are reports from Fox Sports that the jerseys sold at the matches contain toxic chemicals.

The Finalists
Group A
Poland
Greece
Russia
Czech Republic

Group B
Netherlands
Denmark
Portugul
Germany

Group C
Spain
Italy
Ireland
Croatia

Group D
Ukraine
Sweden
France
England

The official site for the tournament is well laid out and carries a lot of current and past information, including how the teams did in the recent batch of friendlies, videos, photos, past history of the event, updates from team camps and general news.

There is the usual data on teams and when the event starts statistics will start to fill in on each game. What I like is that there is a number of games in the fan section where you can make prediction on who wins their group, who will win the Golden Boot, and other events

ESPN has taken the soccer broadcasting bull by the horns and will be broadcasting all of the matches, spread out across the ever growing network of channels and outlets that it owns. It has been working to make itself a much stronger player in the soccer broadcast world and so far it seems to be paying off.

This will be a real test to its commitment and I am looking forward to watching as many of the matches as possible. I will also be interested if I hear anything about this event from a number of friends who suddenly became soccer fans when the US Women advanced in the World Cup but had never mentioned the sport prior or after to me.

Filed Under: BBC, Contests, ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN3, Euro 2012, FIFA, Fox Sports, Soccer Tagged With: , ,
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