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NBC’s Premier League Coverage Includes Free Mobile App

April 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

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NBC has given soccer fans a look at what its coverage of the U.K.’s Barclay’s Premier League will look like next season and fans have to be excited with all 380 matches presented both live and streaming so fans can always catch their favorite teams’ action, or root against foes as the case may be.

There were some questions about how the network would handle the broadcasts after outbidding Fox Sports with a $250 million offer for the rights to broadcast the extremely popular league starting next year.

The live broadcast will be shown live on NBC, NBC Sports Network, Telemundo, Mun2, Premier League Extra Time, NBC Sports Live Extra and Other NBCUniversal Channels. The Premier League Extra Time package of overflow television channels is a set of free channels that come with subscribers of NBC Sports Network. On top of the coverage of the matches will be approximately 600 hours of weekly studio and other programming.

However the network is reaching out to fans that may not have access to broadcast television some or all of the time and have the NBC Sports Live Extra website for online users and then there is an app for mobile device users that provides free live streaming of all of the matches. Now you can watch soccer while watching your kids’ soccer.

I was surprised to find out that Fox had also an app available for watching soccer, and that according to The Big Lead it cost extra and its customer service left something to be desired.

NBC Sports Group has announced on-air talent for its coverage of Barclays Premier League soccer, starting in August. Arlo White is the lead play-by-play and will be calling them live from the U.K., joined by former Premier League stars Lee Dixon and Graeme Le Saux as analysts.

From the looks of it NBC has fans covered from top to bottom on the upcoming Premier League, and while I have yet to watch any of the US Major League Soccer matches that they now broadcast, I have heard from friends that the network has brought it’s a game to that as well.

Filed Under: Apps, Barclays English Premier League, English Premier Soccer League, Fox Sports, FoxSoccer, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, MLS, NBC Sports, Soccer Tagged With: , , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: Microsoft Goes Small and MLB hits it Big

April 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment

People seem drawn to March Madness pools like moths to a flame, and this year ESPN’s mammoth pool, 8.15 million strong had a surprise winner, Lanny Kekua. If that name does not ring a bell it is the fake dead girlfriend of Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o.

The name was used as an alias by a fan named Craig Gilmore, who won the tournament and successfully selected Louisville to defeat Michigan in the final. He is now entered into a drawing for a $10,000 Best Buy gift card.

Reebok Spartan Race hits the baseball circuit
Last year the Sparta Race held an event at a baseball park, and it proved to be very popular. So this year it is upping the ante and will be holding a series of events at ballyards, and it has announced the first four venues.

Athletes living near The New York Mets’ Citi Field, The Philadelphia Phillies’ Citizen Bank Park, The Milwaukee Brewers’ Miller Park or The Boston Red Sox Fenway Park can start practicing for the event near you.

Did Windows 8 Launch hurt PC sales?
Market research firm IDC has reported that sales of personal computers continued a downward fall, and is ascribing part of the blame to the latest operating system release from Microsoft, Windows 8. The most recent IDC Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker report shows that in the first quarter of 2013 there was a total average drop in PC shipments of 13.9% compared to the previous quarter.

Bob O’Donnell, IDC Program Vice President, Clients and Displays said that the company’s research showed that not only did Windows 8 not provide the hoped for boost in sales that many had been planning on, it actually served as a major detriment to sales.

At Bat Starts off with hot streak
Major League Baseball’s popular At Bat program for mobile device users has been a hot download at the start of this year’s season. The program surpassed the 4 million download mark last week, five days into the season.

Last year, when the app was also on a record setting pace, it took it 45 days to reach the 4 million milestone. For the year the app was downloaded 6.7 million times in 2012. MLB’s other two major apps At the Ballpark and Beat the Streak had roughly a million additional downloads.

The Rumor Mill

Tom’s Hardware is showing what is reportedly the next generation tablet from Acer, the Iconia tab A1-810 that had been accidentally briefly advertised by a French retailer. The 7.9-inch tablet is said to be powered by a 1.2GHz Cortex A9 processor featuring 1GB of RAM.

Newly leaked images of the forthcoming iPad from Apple appear to show a device that is thinner than previous releases and has reinforced the rumor that Apple is completely redesigning the popular tablet, currently reported to have the name iPad 5.

To the surprise of no one it has been reported that Microsoft has a 7-inch tablet in the works. With the rapidly growing popularity of this form factor a better issue might be what took them so long? The Wall Street Journal, via The Hispanic Business.com said that the tablets are expected to go into production later this year.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, ESPN, iPad, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Microsoft, NCAA Hoops, Smartphone, Spartan Race, Surface, Tablets, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

March Madness Ended Like it Started for Mobile Users: Strongly

April 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment

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The mobile and online viewing market for the most recent MCAA Division 1 basketball tournament ended just like it started, setting records for viewership and total amount of live game video streamed to fans.

The tournament was a huge televised hit, with the final between Louisville and Michigan garnering a an average 23.4 million viewers, up 12% from last year and a 19 year high, the online virewership was also record setting.

The overall mobile and online viewership hit 49 million live video streams, an increase of 168% from last year with more than 14 million hours of live video consumed by the fans. Both of these numbers set new records.

Not surprisingly the mobile space, with the strong growth of tablets in the last year and the powerful presence of smartphones, saw very strong growth for the tournament. Minutes were up 309% for mobile phones and 194% for tablet users.

PC users still represent a strong viewing group with broadband users represented 5.8 million unique visitors who watched games from their systems and they averaged 105 minutes of live video watched per user while mobile users averaged 70 minutes.

Social media users were also out in force, with the National Championship game netting a total of 3.5 million comments across all social media monitored, up 144% from last year. For the tournament as a whole there were 16.3 million comments, up 112% from last year.

The top ranked games across digital platforms during the 2013 NCAA Tournament, based on live video streams. Interesting to note that the final was not the top game

Valparaiso vs. Michigan State – 1,844,000
Bucknell vs. Butler – 1,784,000
Mississippi vs. Wisconsin – 1,778,000
Michigan vs. Louisville – 1,620,000
Albany vs. Duke – 1,488,000

Filed Under: Apps, Basketball, Duke University, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, Smartphone, Sports Social Media, Tablets, Turner Sports Tagged With: , , , ,

Major League Baseball teams with Qualcomm to Boost Ballpark Wireless Service

April 10, 2013 by 1 Comment

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MLB, like all major sports, and for that matter any large venue for sports or entertainment, seems to always have a connectivity problem but unlike many others which seem to have patchwork solutions MLB is actively addressing the issue.

The league’s Advanced Media arm (MLBAM) has teamed with wireless equipment developer Qualcomm in a multiyear effort that will first seek to survey the needs of mobile fans and then look at developing a plan to implement the mobile network technology needed to meet those needs.

They are entering a very fast moving space, where it is still hard to predict what the growth and demand will look like. You need only look at some of the numbers that Baseball has provided to see this. Two years ago fans were primarily looking for downstream data flow, that is downloading e-mails checking voicemail.

That has change so that now the primary need is for upstream connectivity, so that twitter, Facebook updates, Instagram photos and a host of other social media needs can be served. Also these types of files are often much larger than the simple text messages downloaded two years earlier. However the growth has been strong for data flowing in both directions, a 50% increase in downstream and a 300% increase in upstream per year over the last two years.

MLB in fact helps create demand for wireless in its parks. It has a range of apps that allow fans to do everything from find images of themselves in the stands as well as post that type of photo to upgrading your seats while at a game.

The range of services now at ballparks range considerably, and even after this effort is over will still have a good deal of variance since it appears that not all teams will be participating.

The deal is a first for Qualcomm in that in the past it has never had a direct relationship with a sports league. Its Engineering Group will provide in-ballpark assessments of select parks and develop a comprehensive plan for wireless access that will include Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G services. The effort is expected to take two years.

It will be interesting to see if the experts can accurately foretell the future and if the installations will meet with future needs. The San Francisco Giants’ AT&T Park is continually undergoing enhancements and growing pains as fans mobile usage continues to grow. But at least during the recent World Series it held up, while Comercia Park’s network collapsed under the strain of social commenting at games.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apps, AT&T, Baseball, Cisco, Facebook, Instagram, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, Social Media, Sports Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

March Madness Maintains Torrid Mobile Viewing Pace

April 3, 2013 by 4 Comments

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This year’s March Madness has been one of the best in over two decades in terms of television viewers but it is the best all time in terms of mobile access as increasingly fans use mobile devices to track games and video of their favorite teams or hot match ups.

The first week’s results were strong, as we recounted here, and things have not only not slowed, but as the tournament heads towards its final week viewership is increasing, even with fewer matchups to view.

The mobile and online viewership, which encompasses PCs as well as tablets and smartphones, has seen a total of 12.6 million hours of video consumed, an increase of 201% from last year with a total of 45 million live video streams for the first two weeks of the tournament, this represents a 158% increase over last year’s tournament viewership. Last year the event registered 18.3 million live video streams for the entire tournament last year.

Breaking it down to exactly what platforms are drawing the most users shows that broadband had 5 million unique visitors, up 139% while mobile apps had 3.2 million unique visitors, up 93% compared to the entire tournament last year.

If you have not viewed the games from the tournament on a mobile device but are interested there are several options. The March Madness Live app was developed in a partnership that included the NCAA, Turner Sports and CBS Sports and can be launched from CBSsports.com, NCAA.com/marchmadness or bleacherreport.com for computers and the mobile app is available from both the App Store and Google Play.

NCAA March Madness Live app has ranked No. 1 as the top sports app in the App Store and Google Play over the first two weeks of the tournament. It was also the No. 1 free app across all categories in the App Store during that same time period.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Basketball, bleacherreport, CBS Sports, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, Smartphone, Tablets, Turner Sports Tagged With: , , , , ,

MLB Updates a Trio of Mobile Apps Ahead for Opening Day

April 1, 2013 by 1 Comment

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Major League Baseball’s 2013 season has started and the league has updated a number of its successful programs from last year as it seeks to increase its appeal to fans that use mobile connected smart devices.

The heart of the effort is its MLB.com at Bat 13, which for most mobile users has been available since Spring Training started. At Bat has a host of features that we have recounted earlier so we will just list the basics here. It gives users the ability to listen to live games on a breadth of platforms including PCs and Macs, as well as most smartphones and tablets.

The platform has a wide range of features that will appeal to both serious and casual fans including individual team pages, player statistics, video highlights of current games as well as a classic games video library.

One new feature that is just ready for the regular season is support for the BlackBerry Z10, the latest platform to be supported along with Android and Apple’s iOS. If you already subscribe to MLB.TV Premium then At Bat 13 is free, otherwise it has a $19.99 one time annual fee.

A second app is At the Ballpark, which MLB is expanding to include more parks. The app is part journal, where you can record current trips as well as past ones as far back as 2005. The journal section includes the ability to share photos from the visits. It has a tickets purchase and upgrade sections for select clubs, a range of social media hooks and even allows users to hear ballpark and player entrance music.

The final app is one that can have a great payback for fans; MLB.com Beat The Streak presented by Dunkin Donuts. It is a game where fans pick players to get a hit and if they manage to beat DiMaggio’s consecutive game hitting streak of 56 games you can win a $5.6 million grand prize. No one won last year and a new rule has been added this year that if you forget to post for a day your streak will not end.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Athlete to Follow, Baseball, BlackBerry, iOS, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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