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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: , ,

ESPN3 Provides College Football Fix this Weekend

April 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Missing college football, and to make matters worse, that huge pile of receipts and miscellaneous paperwork that represents your taxes adamantly refused to do itself? Well look to ESPN, specifically ESPN3 for a touch of stress relief as its starts broadcasting spring college football games.

The channel will be hopping around the various conferences and will have games from the ACC, SEC, Big 12 and Pac-12 on its slate. To top it off it will not be teams that you have to scratch your head about and wonder which state they are in, almost all look to be ranked when the season starts later this year.

Even better news is that this weekend is just the start of a three week span in which games will be broadcast, with 10 on Saturday, then an additional 7 the following week and a lone Oregon spring football program on the 28th.

Teams that will be included in the broadcasts include — Alabama, Georgia, Oregon, West Virginia, Florida State, South Carolina, Arkansas, Virginia Tech and Clemson. Six games are exclusive to ESPN3 while the rest will have some local blackout issues. The Florida State game will also be simulcast on ESPNU.

So now freshly armed with new ammunition in your procrastination arsenal, stock up on beer and chips and get ready for some football. The real advantage is that you can be watching the streaming service anywhere, so you can appear to be at your desk wondering why you thought that you could write off a $135 Taco Bell dinner, or even how you managed to spend that much there while watching your favorite team.

All times ET
Sat, Apr 14
1 p.m. South Carolina Spring Football ESPN3*

2 p.m. Miami (Fla.) Spring Football ESPN3

2:15 p.m. Virginia Spring Football ESPN3

3 p.m. Alabama Spring Football ESPN3

Auburn Spring Football ESPN3

Georgia Spring Football ESPN3

North Carolina Spring Football ESPN3*

4 p.m. Florida State Spring Football ESPN3*

Clemson Spring Football ESPN3

7 p.m. Vanderbilt Spring Football ESPN3

Sat, Apr 21
2 p.m. Tennessee Spring Football ESPN3

Ole Miss Spring Football ESPN3

3 p.m. Arkansas Spring Football ESPN3

3:30 p.m NC State Spring Football ESPN3*

4 p.m. Virginia Tech Spring Football ESPN3*

6 p.m. West Virginia Spring Football ESPN3

6 p.m. Mississippi State Spring Football ESPN3

Sat, Apr 28
2 p.m. Oregon Spring Football ESPN3*

*Exclusive to ESPN3

Filed Under: BCS, ESPN3, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Football Tagged With: ,

Masters Viewer Numbers Up on ESPN, CBS

April 6, 2012 by 1 Comment

The early returns are in and yes, more of you are watching the Masters this year. According to both ESPN (which is carrying the CBS broadcast live Thursday and Friday) and CBSSports.com, there were more of both regular broadcast viewers and online watchers this year than last. Is it Tiger fever? Who knows, but el Tigre opened Friday with a birdie which is good news for the weekend.

According to CBSSports.com, unique viewers of Masters Live traffic on CBSSports.com was up 40 percent compared to Thursday traffic for 2011; no discrete numbers yet (those should come Monday) and no totals yet from the Masters.com site. Yours truly spent about an hour Friday on the Android version of the Masters app and Verizon 4GLTE. Kept getting messages saying “this video not optimized for mobile” which makes me think the folks at IBM need to bake that app a little more. Otherwise, though, impressive to watch live video while waiting in the doctor’s office.

For ESPN, here is the press release info:

ESPN’s live telecast of the first round of the 2012 Masters Tournament on Thursday, April 5, averaged 2,661,000 viewers with a 2.3 household coverage rating based on fast nationals, according to the Nielsen Company.

The rating was an increase of 10 percent from last year’s first round, which earned a 2.1 rating. Viewership was up four percent over last year’s 2,550,000 average.

Across ESPN digital platforms – including ESPN.com, the ESPN mobile Web and ScoreCenter – the first round of the Masters generated an average of 50,600 people using one of those properties at any given minute of the day, up 35 percent compared to the previous year (source: Adobe/Omniture). Daily unique visitors to the Golf index page on ESPN.com were up 10 percent, while total minutes to the page were up 53 percent. Additionally, daily unique visitors to Golf content on the mobile Web were up 67 percent.

Whoops! Hope we didn’t jinx the coverage. Here’s what I’m seeing now:

Anyone else having troubles watching?

Filed Under: CBS Sports, ESPN, ESPN3, PGA, The Masters Tagged With: , , , ,

ESPN: March Online Highs, Par 3 Contest Lows

April 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Is this any surprise? ESPN announced Wednesday that it had a “record-setting month in March, with new highs for mobile web and app usage, as well as video content and alerts.” We will get into the numbers below but — after all ESPN is the World Wide Leader and in an era of digital, mobile explosion its online numbers should be like Apple’s quarters: Every time, more.

Here is the snippet from ESPN PR on the online explosion:

ESPN mobile web and apps served an average minute audience of 103,000 in March, with an average of 5.1 million daily unique visitors (an increase of 22 percent over March 2011) and 3.1 billion total minutes for the month. ESPN apps in March had 3.6 million average daily uniques (up 125 percent over March 2011) and 1.5 billion minutes (up from 595 million in March 2011).

ESPN Mobile delivered 45 million video starts in March, including 24.6 million from mobile web and 19 million from the ESPN ScoreCenter handset and table apps, both record highs for a single month. In addition, ESPN delivered 1.5 billion alerts in March, also a record high for any month.

Yet for all its online savvy, ESPN found itself the victim of Mother Nature Wednesday at the Masters, when rainstorms turned its highly hyped live coverage of the Par 3 Contest into a rainout discussion with Mike Tirico at the helm. Now I like Mike Tirico. But I’m not wasting bandwidth watching Mike talk to Andy North about who might win the Masters. Jack and Arnie and Gary trading barbs and small iron play? I was just getting hooked when the toondershowers took over. I was surprised that ESPN had no backup other than having the studio guys start talking. And when they did, I clicked off the online stream and… went back to work.

No golfers ready for live interviews? No Dan Jenkins with some lore? In my mind ESPN whiffed a bit on a prime opportunity to show its Masters chops. (I also have had trouble all day with ESPN’s video feeds not loading properly — anyone else notice this?) But we have seen this before — ESPN doesn’t always do so well when there isn’t a script to follow. Let’s hope the WWL is back on its industry leading form on Thursday. Because we all will be watching.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN3, PGA, The Masters, WatchESPN Tagged With:

Watching Golf This Week: The Masters

April 4, 2012 by 3 Comments

OK golf fans, time to get interactive and help us out. We know there is no way in hell that we are going to find every outlet covering the Masters this week, but we’ll try. And with your help we can do that sharing thing that everyone loves about the Internet. So here is our “first draft” attempt, going out on Wednesday since there is going to be coverage of the par 3 event Wednesday and who doesn’t want to watch that? But instead of typing it in this post we are going to simply say:

HERE IS THE MAIN MASTERS COVERAGE LINK.

HERE IS THE MAIN CBS MASTERS PAGE.

HERE IS THE CBSSPORTS LIVE ONLINE COVERAGE PAGE.

OK, that takes care of 99 percent of your questions. Now. Unless you’ve been under a rock you know all the story angles — Tiger vs. Rory, Tiger vs. Phil, Rory vs. Keegan, who the heck is Charl Schwartzel — so we don’t need to repeat those here. The only big question left is how to watch — on broadcast or cable, where there are so few commercials you might want to keep an empty jug handy next to the couch if you know what I mean; online, where Masters.com and CBSSports.com will have seven different live streams of video; or at any one of the many live-blogging outlets. If you know of one that we don’t have listed, add it to the comments; we’ll update this post throughout the week.

Here’s where to follow the action:

THE MASTERS

(all times Eastern)
TV COVERAGE
Wednesday, April 4 (par 3 Contest, live) — ESPN, 3 p.m. — 5 p.m.
Thursday, April 5 — ESPN, 3 p.m. — 7:30 p.m.
Friday, April 6 — ESPN, 3 p.m. — 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 7 — CBS, 3:30 p.m. — 7 p.m.
Sunday, April 8 — CBS, 2 p.m. — 7 p.m.

RADIO
SIRIUS XM (Satellite)
2 p.m. — 6 p.m., Thursday-Sunday
Sirius will also have several feature shows. Check this schedule for more.

Masters.com
There will be a live streaming radio report on the Masters.com site.

ONLINE
Full live video coverage at Masters.com and CBSSports.com. Different cameras start at different times each day, so… check the schedule to see when they go live. Right now tentative start times for Thursday are: Amen Corner camera, 10:45 a.m.; Holes 15 & 16, 11:45 a.m.; Featured Groups 1 & 2, 12:00 p.m.

ESPN’s live ESPN3 coverage of the Par 3 contest

ESPN: The Worldwide Leader will be at the Masters in force, with its live coverage Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and more online coverage goodies. Here is ESPN’s Tournament Central link. This is also a good place to check for live ESPN online coverage, via ESPN3 or the WatchESPN app for mobile devices. Remember, the WatchESPN app only available for cable subscribers of Bright House Networks, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon FiOS TV. Comcast customers are still out of luck.

ESPN also has the Putting at Amen Corner game online, as well as the popular Best Ball Majors fantasy game, which plays just like the NCAA hoops brackets. We’ll have an MSR group to join, stay tuned or follow me on Twitter @PaulKaps for more info.

Golf.com is going Masters overboard, with more content than you could possibly read. But the Sports Illustrated group of writers hanging out there may be the best covering the game right now.

PGA SHOT TRACKER
There will be NO Shot Tracker at the Masters. Too bad.

TOP TWITTER FEEDS TO FOLLOW
Dan Jenkins — golf’s Shakespeare. From Texas. Hope he is on form for the Masters. If you don’t know who he is, hit Google. And buy a few books.
Geoff Shackelford — well known golf writer is slinging Masters lore and great links.
Golf Channel — official Golf Channel feed
@PGATOUR — official PGA Twitter feed
@StephanieWei — great golf writer who is a Twitter fiend

LOCAL FLAVOR
The Augusta Chronicle knows how to play the biggest event of the year. A good bookmark.

WHAT’S THE COURSE LIKE?
Here’s an incredible service: The Masters course page has video flyovers of each hole. I think I will only spend about 80 hours on this page alone.

Want to check out the historic clubhouse? Sports Illustrated’s Golf.com has a video that takes you inside.

WHO WON THIS THING LAST YEAR?
Do you need a refresher? It was Mr. Four Birdies in a row to close, Charl Schwartzel.

FEDEX CUP LEADERS
1. Hunter Mahan, 1,314 points
2. Johnson Wagner, 1,056
3. Rory McIlroy, 1,015
4. Phil Mickelson, 988
5. Kyle Stanley, 954

See the full standings for the FedEx Cup points list.

WORLD GOLF RANKINGS
1. Luke Donald; 2. Rory McIlroy; 3. Lee Westwood; 4. Hunter Mahan; 5. Steve Stricker.
See the official World Golf Ranking list.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, CBS Sports, ESPN, ESPN3, Golf, Golf Channel, iPad, PGA, The Masters, Tiger Woods, Twitter, WatchESPN Tagged With: , ,

Follow Luck, RG III Pro Days This Week Online at ESPN3

March 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Now that the Peyton’s Place drama has all but concluded, the next big issue in the upcoming NFL draft revolves around which of the two top QBs is going to be picked No. 1 — and you can decide for yourself this week by watching the “pro day” workouts for Stanford’s Andrew Luck and Baylor’s Robert Griffin III live online, at ESPN3.

Baylor’s Heisman Trophy winner Griffin is up first, with his workout starting live Wednesday at noon Eastern time. The worldwide leader will have talent Sal Paolantonio and analysts Ron Jaworski and Todd McShay on hand to provide the breathless commentary (“look, a 20-yard out pattern! Superb!”)

Stanford’s Luck will have his workout covered in similar fashion Thursday, beginning at 2 p.m. Eastern. On hand to watch this scholar athlete will be ESPN’s Rachel Nichols and analysts Trent Dilfer, McShay and Steve Young. Of course if you have something else to do during the workouts the results will be overanalyzed on SportsCenter, NFL Live and NFL32 shows afterwards. The pro days will also be aired on ESPNU.

Remember, if you need help figuring out if you can get ESPN3 online, start here.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN3, NCAA Football, NFL Draft Tagged With: , ,
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