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Friday Grab Bag: NBA STATS, Pac-12 & U-verse

September 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The NBA has expanded a limited partnership with STATS to full time and will be installing motion tracking cameras in every arena this season. This will enable teams to amass a huge amount of data that can be used for in-game decisions as well as for other uses.

First used in 2009 for the NBA Finals, and now used by 15 teams, it allows for the analysis of player movement and a team can see how well or poorly its players fare in head to head matchups, among other uses.

Lenovo Enters the Phablet Phase
Lenovo has taken the wraps off of its 5-inch Vibe X Phablet. The smartphone features a 5-inch display that has 1920 x 1080 resolution and is powered by a 1,5GHz quad core processor. It has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. However it is not clear how wide of a distribution the device will have.

Panasonic teases with 20-inch tablet presentation
It looks like Panasonic is preparing a 20-inch tablet that could be for the mainstream market that is being touted as the thinnest and lightest. The company showed it a in a presentation at a pre-IFA event last week in Berlin.

The Panasonic 4K tablet is expected to have 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution and was shown as a concept offering, but the company has shown in the past that it is building a 20-inch device. Slash Gear reported that it could simply be a scaled down version of a previously shown model.

Pac-12 Networks inks deal with AT&T U-Verse
The Pac-12 now has an official wireless provider for all of its athletic venues in the form of AT&T and its U-Verse service. The deal, signed last week has already resulted in the broadcast of five football games last Saturday.

Going forward AT&T will deliver web and app access to the games but the timing for those was not announced. It will rebroadcast a number of Pac-12 Network broadcasts for the time being in both HD and SD.

NFL Teams with Sporting News for video
If you are always looking for NFL videos and highlights during the offseason then there is good news for you as the NFL has signed a deal with Sporting News Media to just that by bringing the 2013 NFL regular and postseason to the SN ePlayer platform.

Sporting News will have video on demand highlights from the NFL games as well as additional content and will make it available to fans year round so that they can relieve the highlights or lowlghts of the season over and over again.

Microsoft has big event Sept. 23
Press invites are making their way to the appropriate people inviting them to a major event that Microsoft will be hosting on Sept. 23 that will be held in New York City. The event, listed as a Surface event, is expected to bring the company’s second generation tablets to the public.

Intel to develop low cost chip for tablets
The annual Intel Developers Conference was in full swing last week with a huge outpouring of press releases and talking points, and one that is of particular interest is its pledge for a new processor targeted directly at Android tablet makers.

Intel said that it is making an as yet unnamed processor in the Atom family that will enable Android developers to offer tablets at sub-$100 rates. Of course since Apple makes its own processors don’t expect an iPad in this space anytime soon.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, AT&T, Lenovo, Live sports via mobile, Microsoft, NBA, NCAA Football, NFL, Pac-12, Surface, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , , , ,

Fanatic App Tells Out of Town Fans Where to Go

August 20, 2013 by 1 Comment

tN_133400_Fanatic social logo

Have you ever traveled to a distant city and been forced to miss watching your favorite team play because you did not want to watch the game in a sports bar filled with hostile fans? Well Fanatic has developed an app that helps like minded fans find each other and enjoy a game together.

The company is actually delivering its second iteration of the app, it first hit the market with a version that only supported iOS digital mobile devices late last January and now has expanded into the Android space as well.

The concept is very simply. A fan of a team, or league, can search for the top venues to watch that team in a specific city. So a Bears fan in Charlotte could seek out a bar that caters to fans that root for the team. Rankings will rise and fall as Fanatic users recommend sites for other fans. It recommends specific venues nearby based on a user’s location, sports interests and the team ranking of those venues.

It feature top venues for a wide range of leagues including NCAA football and basketball, the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS, along with the top European soccer leagues, including the English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Serie A and the UEFA Champions League.

The company is currently developing a system that will have specific rewards for users. You will earn points for usage for such things as checking in and at some future time they will be redeemable for specific prizes.

This seems like a very good mixture of social media and sports, and as any fan that has been in a different city and wanted to watch their home team knows, some bars are hostile to out of town fans and some cater to them, the difficulty is finding them.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Barclays English Premier League, Baseball, Basketball, BCS, Fanatic Fans, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Major League Baseball, NBA, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, NFL, NHL, Soccer, The Ligue de Football Professionnel Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Sportsmanias.com Gains Funding: Rolls Out New Team-Focused App

August 15, 2013 by 1 Comment

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Sports news aggregator startup Sportsmanias has raised $1 million in venture funding as it seeks to expand its reach by providing a new team-focused sports app that will enable users to track hard news about their favorite teams by focusing on news and reports from team beat writers.

The recent $1 million investment has come from Mas Equity Partners, which is led by founder Jorge Mas, who also serves as Chairman of the Board of MasTec, a $4 billion infrastructure engineering and construction company based in Coral Gables, Fla.

Sportsmanias.com, founded just last fall, has an existing web site and app that serves as a news aggregator for all major US sports including NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and the NCAA. In addition it covers a wide variety of domestic and international soccer news, teams and leagues. The news feed that a user gets can be customized to meet their sporting preferences. The company was founded by the mother/son team of Aymara Del Aguila, an advertising executive and son Vicente J. Fernandez, a student-athlete and sports writer at the University of Chicago.

Now the company has enhanced its presence in the mobile digital world with an updated free app for both iOS and Android powered devices. The Team News app will focus on providing news that has been originated by beat writers that regularly cover the team, rather than just culling all news stories that are generated about a team across the nation, often from sources that do not have direct contact and coverage of the team.

The app does not just exclusively provide beat reporter news on a specific team. It also provides team and player tweets. Two interesting features are the Rumor Filter, which collects league and team-specific rumors from top rumor sites, and a Video Filter, which aggregates footage from YouTube and Twitter.

These features have the ability to data mine rumors and videos in real time so that a fan can be up-to-date on what is going on as well as what is suspected to be about to happen. Other new features for the app include a scoreboard to follow ongoing games, and keyword search capabilities.

The company said that it currently is getting 500,000 unique visitors to its web site monthly and that with the new features and capabilities of its app it expects that it will see a strong jump to 1.5 million monthly visitors by year end.

The upgrades look to be a very good move by the company because increasingly flexibility and customization are now becoming standard in sports apps. The rumor and video filters are solid features that will help them create separation from many of the current apps that are now available, as many as just text based, and any rumors tend to be generated in house. However the need for these features, particularly video is obvious and others are headed in this direction.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Basketball, English Premier Soccer League, FIFA, Golf, iOS, Live sports via mobile, Major League Baseball, MLS, NBA, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, NFL, NHL, Soccer, Sports Social Media Data, Startup, Tablets, YouTube Tagged With: , , , , , ,

CBS Sports App Finally Supports Video, Tablets

August 14, 2013 by 1 Comment

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CBS Sports has updated its app (v.6.0) and brings much needed new features including tablet support as well as live video which will be added to its existing sports scores, stats and other information that it had previously supplied.

The old version of CBS Sports’ app could be viewed as a sort of dinosaur, apparently designed at a time when its developers believed that all a user needed on a mobile device was access to a web site for the information that they were seeking.

The addition of live sports video really was a necessity since there are other options, usually specific to one sport such as MLB At Bat that already offer sports highlights. Also by adding tablet support it reaches a huge new audience that surveys show often use a tablet when watching sports for additional information.

The live video will cover the PGA tour, NCAA basketball, and SEC football with additional on-demand options. You can also get personalized push notifications and it includes both CBS branded commentary and news content but also has the ability to add a Twitter feed focused on a favorite team that will include outside reporters, news services and fan commentary.

Aside from these additions the app still includes a huge range of other information that sports fans seek such as scores and stats from Pro and college football, MLB, NBA and NCAA hoops, NHL, PGA, NASCAR, F1 and a wide range of soccer including (Premier League, MLS, Champions League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, Europa League, Ligue 1, Scottish Premier, Dutch Eredivisie, Mexican Primera, Brazilian Serie A, and Argentina Primera.

There will also be special features regarding major sporting events such as the NFL draft and a number of CBS Sports programming will be available such as Jim Rome’s show.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Barclays English Premier League, Baseball, Basketball, CBS Sports, FIFA, Golf, Live sports via mobile, Major League Baseball, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NFL, NHL, Soccer, The Ligue de Football Professionnel Tagged With: , , , , , ,

MSR Report: State of the Stadium Technology Survey

August 8, 2013 by 2 Comments

state_of_stadium_128What is the “state of the stadium” when it comes to technology deployment? That is what we here at Mobile Sports Report set out to discover when we launched our inaugural “State of the Stadium” Technology Survey, in conjunction with our partner the SEAT Consortium, hosts of the recent SEAT 2013 conference in Kansas City.

With more than 50 respondents representing arenas that host the top professional league teams, including the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL, as well as top U.S. university facilities for basketball and football, European and U.S. professional soccer teams, professional golf and car-racing venues the State of the Stadium Technology Survey provides, we think, the first real statistical snapshot of how teams are deploying technology to both improve the fan experience while helping increase business opportunities. The survey covers deployment and planning decisions for several stadium technology categories, including Wi-Fi, DAS, Digital Signage, Sports Digital Marketing, Sports CRM, and Sports Social Media. You can download a copy of the survey for free, at this link.

What did we discover? Simply, all survey respondents and interviewees were in violent agreement that advanced technologies, especially those involving wireless communications, would be the key to an enhanced fan experience and a bigger roster of business opportunities for stadium owners and operators. Yet for most of the industry, it is still early in the game when it comes to actual stadium technology deployments, as rollout schedules are still paced by the reality of budgetary and situational constraints, a list that often spans from geographic and facility-construction concerns to complexities of partnerships and rights agreements. So the era of the connected stadium is well on its way, but not quite here just yet.

There is a general feeling of a need to move quickly to solve the most pressing problems, while taking time on longer-term and bigger-ticket deployments to ensure the correct choice of technology at the right price with the right return on investment. These findings were confirmed at this week’s SEAT Conference, which we were invited to attend, and we’ll be sharing more stories from SEAT speakers and thought leaders in the following weeks. The best place to start, though, is by downloading the report to get a level-set on what is happening at the biggest facilities out there today.

Free download of the report is made possible by our report sponsors, SOLiD Technologies and Xirrus. We would also like to thank Christine Stoffel and Chris Dill from SEAT, as well as the SEAT attendee organizations who participated in the survey.

Filed Under: About MSR, DAS, Major League Baseball, NBA, NCAA Football, NFL, NHL, SEAT Conference, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: MSG to Close? NASCAR on the Move

July 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Hewlett-Packard may be looking to double down in the tablet space as rumors are emerging that the company, already having re-entered the space, is now looking to head to the low end by offering an affordable $99 tablet.

According to DigiTimes, HP will team with Walmart to sell the 7-inch tablet that HP will have built in China. It will be targeted at the back to school market and will be the second offering in the 7-inch space from the company.

NASCAR on the move-to NBC
NASCAR and broadcaster NBC have signed a multiyear, multi-billion dollar deal that will see the racing league move from its longtime homes of ESPN and Turner Sports, while Fox Sports will maintain its portion of the coverage.

The details of the deal have not been released but Sports Business Daily has said that it is estimated that the deal is 50% greater than the existing deal that was valued at $2.74 billion for 8 years. The new deal will start with the 2015 season.

Will 2022 World Cup move to November?
If you wondered why FIFA awarded the 2020 World Cup to Qatar, a nation that being in the desert tends to be very hot during the summer when the tournament is played you were not alone. Now FIFA appears to be rethinking its clever plan.

Increasingly reports are emerging that the governing body is looking to move the tournament to the fall or winter so that it does not have dozens of players falling from heat stroke. However this will have a huge impact on most of the major European leagues’ seasons so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Nate Silver to ESPN
Stats guru Nate Silver has just moved to ESPN, leaving the New York Times. Silver cut his teeth in sports prior to moving to the Times and developed PECOTA, something that most baseball fantasy players will be aware of.

Hopefully in his new role he can help bring realistic use of statistics to the World Wide Leader. Does anybody really follow its quarterback rating system and does anybody remember its ill-fated productive out stat? Here is an interesting look at some areas he has impacted in the past and could in the future.

Madison Square Garden to close in 10 years?
Madison Square Garden, the New York Knicks’ home, is slated to close in 10 years as New York is looking to renovate Penn Station, the mass transit terminal upon which sits the sports arena. Currently Penn Station is the busiest transportation hub in the United States.

The news cannot come as good news to the team which has been in the midst of a 3-year renovation that, according to Yahoo, will cost an estimated $968 million. The team had been applying for a permanent permit for the arena.

Filed Under: Android, Basketball, ESPN, ESPN FC, FIFA, Fox Sports, Hewlett-Packard, NASCAR, NBA, Soccer, Tablets, The New York Times, Yahoo Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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