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iPad now on Duke’s hard court

September 25, 2012 by 1 Comment

Duke University’s men’s basketball team is the latest college sports team to adopt a tablet as a major training tool as the school revealed this week that it was going to eliminate notebooks and move over to Apple’s iPad.

The school will be providing the latest version of the iPad with a 64GB storage capacity and players will have a range of information ranging from the static such as schedules and scouting reports, to live video of the teams’ plays as well as those of rivals and scouting reports. Also included will be tracking software and the ability to wipe the memory if they are stolen or lost.

Tablets are gaining ever increasing acceptance across a wide spectrum of usage models and sports, often viewed as so old school that it is still considering the typewriter, has actually been at the forefront of adoption.

There are at least eight NFL teams that have moved away from paper notebooks and onto iPads including the Dallas Cowboys, Washington Redskins and the Baltimore Ravens. MLB and the NBA have also been quick to follow suit.

Colleges have seen what their professional brethren are doing and have also started to adopt the technology. At the start of this season Stanford University adopted the iPad for its football players. Ohio State announced earlier this year that it was going to outfit all of its student athletes with iPads over the next two years. Other schools moving in this direction include Syracuse and the University of Colorado.

The one constant I am seeing is that almost all of the schools and pro teams are using Apple’s iPad as the tablet of choice and that is a great PR boost for the company (not that they really need it), but if rivals want to get high profile positioning of their tablets they might be well rewarded by going after some teams. I guess we might see this change a bit when the Windows 8 tablets come out next month, but then again maybe not.

Filed Under: Apple, Basketball, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Duke University, iOS, iPad, Major League Baseball, Microsoft, NBA Game Time, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NFL, PlayerLync, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , ,

New College Sports Program Launches on Hulu

September 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Total College Sports

If you get most of your sports information from the Internet and not from broadcast television then this is good news for you, digital sports media developer Perform and the Chicago White Sox’s Silver Chalice have launched another Total College Sports program.

The latest effort is called TCS 5th Quarter and it will consist of an initial run of 18 episodes, with a new one premiering every Saturday night from now until Jan. 12. Each episode will be 22 minutes long and will be distributed via Hulu and Hulu Plus service, ad-free.

The program is part of a growing number of offerings from Total College Sports, which includes both original programming and game highlights from a variety of college sports conferences including The ACC, Pac-12, SEC and the Big Ten.

This is really good news for fans of using second screens, either using their tablets or their smartphones they can watch the programming there as well as online and via a channel on ePlayer, Perform’s sports VOD broadcast platform that is distributed to over 350 media properties in the U.S.

Total College Sports was founded last year and is still finding its way in some respects. It currently carries NCAA football and basketball, so it falls a bit short of total sports. However it does carry a good set of highlights and has a team in place to provide analysis and news as well as the highlights.

Filed Under: Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, Total College Sports Tagged With: , ,

Zynga makes a bet with RocketPlay’s virtual Sports Casino

September 11, 2012 by 2 Comments

Zynga

Once the darling of the online set with its Farmville and other mobile and online applications, Zynga has hit hard times of late as its stock has dropped 72 % since its IPO in December and recently its executives have been fleeing the building, with seven gone since August.

The company is the largest maker of games for Facebook, and it is known for programs such as Mafia Wars, CastleVille, CityVille, Words with Friends and of course FarmVille is now looking to partnerships to help bolster its brand and hopefully bring in additional customers and revenue.

The latest move is to promote developer RocketPlay and its Sports Casino and will be bringing the app to Facebook and Zynga.com. This is the first time that Zynga has promoted a third party app, in the past all of the content in is lineup has been homegrown. It will be interesting to see if in the future Zynga takes on a much larger role as a publisher, and if that will cause complications due to conflicts of interest.

Sports Casino imitates real life in many ways; you check the odds and place bets, and then root for the results that will bring you in the cash. It is not just a sports book but also will have video poker, slots and blackjack and other casino games. You can even enjoy a nice cocktail while doing so. The difference is that you do so by simply logging into Facebook while sitting at home, and of course no real money changes hands.

Out just a week it already has 10,000 followers, which is a nice start but far from the heady numbers that some of the more established games have such as Words with Friends that has 13 million players, but it is still new.

One feature that it has that I greatly dislike is that it may post on my behalf mentioning achievements high scores etc… Thanks but that is not really something I want, and that feature has prevented me from using other apps that do this. However others seem quite happy in broadcasting to the world their ups and downs playing online games.

The game will initially only present odds for NCAA football, the NFL, MLB and a variety of soccer matches but expects to expand to cover a number of additional sports including the NBA and NCAA basketball and others.

Zynga already has a virtual gambling game, Zynga Poker, which was its first game. However Business Insider has suggested that the reason for the partnership is that RocketPlay’s platform could be the basis for a real-money gambling at some point in the future. RocketPlay’s management team has experience in that area.

Filed Under: Apps, Betting, Facebook, FIFA, MLS, NBA, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NFL, NHL, RocketPlay, Zynga Tagged With: ,

SportsPicker Challenge Provides Cyber Bragging Rights with Real World Prizes

September 5, 2012 by

SportsPicker

Want to show that you know your stuff about the upcoming NFL season, or possibly on one of the other major sports ranging from NBA, MLB to MLS and EUFA Championship soccer to your Facebook friends?

Well the SportsPicker Challenge, developed by OHK Labs might just be the app that you have been looking for as it not only covers those sports but also others such as NCAA basketball and football among others.

Everybody has friends that like to brag about how well they pick winners in sporting contests but a little digging often shows that they tend to do so without taking the odds into consideration, something that would have made the task considerably harder. And that is one feature that sets the app apart from others.

Users select the sport that you want to follow and make predictions about how a week’s slate of games is going to turn out, using the odds that have been established for that event. The apps scoring system takes the odds into account so that a victory by the favored team earns 100 points, and underdog team wins earn between 125 and 200 points, depending on the odds of winning.

The importance of the points is due to the apps challenge periods that feature prizes. The nice thing about the prizes is that they are real ones and not a cyber award that only is usable on the app. The company is offering gift cards from a variety of companies including Amazon, Sports Authority, Best Buy and others.

In addition, for the opening week of the NFL (which starts tonight) three fans will win an EA Sports Madden 13 for picking the most winners in the opening week of the season. The OHK has said that it plans to have approximately $10,000 in prizes. Users do not have to participate in sponsored events. They can get friends to join and compete with them via your own challenges.

There s no cost to play and fans have two options; they can play on Facebook or via their iPhone using a free app available at Apple’s iTunes store. It has just emerged from beta testing in time for the start of Football.

There are a growing number of apps that do some of what SportsPicker Challenge does, but as far as I know none use the odds as part of the equation. There are plenty of apps that allow for bragging rights and even some that have prizes, but as far as I have seen the prizes are mostly cyber ones- points for contests and to get extra privileges. This is the one of first that has real world prizes, something I think that fans can appreciate as much as bragging rights.

There are single sports ones that provide prizes including the cool $1 million that the NFL is now offering but that is a fantasy league and so really a horse of a different color. PickMoto is also a one sports play, at least currently.

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Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Baseball, Facebook, iOS, iPhone, Major League Baseball, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, NFL, NHL, SportsPicker Challenge Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Pac-12-Networks, Ooyala release Pac-12 Now for iPad

August 29, 2012 by

Pac-12 Now for iPad opens up multi-screen viewing

The Pac-12 via its Pac-12 Networks continues to move to enhance its presence in the digital world and with partner Ooyala has now delivered an iPad app that will enable fans to watch both live and video on demand games (VOD).

The app, Pac-12 Now for iPad, is one of the first efforts from the recently formed Pac-12 Networks, an organization that is designed to bring both broadcast and streaming sports and entertainment to fans, in conjunction with its partner Ooyala. Pac-12 Now for iPad is available in the iTunes Store and on Pac-12.com.

Ooyala developed what it calls a graphic interactive program guide (IPG) that enables users to customize the app to meet their individual preferences. It allows a user to prioritize both sports and teams during setup and has a chat feature so that fans can share comments and thoughts when viewing live action via Facebook and Twitter feeds that are enabled next to the video feed so that you do not have to switch to a different app while viewing.

Going forward the IPG will also feature the ability to alert users to events that are currently live and inform them on issues such as games that are tied, close or near the final moments as well as provide social feedback via a social graph that you can ac

cess.

The two plan on continuing to expand the technology so that users with PCs, tablets and smartphones will be able to watch games when not in front of a television or to use it as a second screen, watching two events at the same time. Android is the next platformed targeted and it should be out soon.

The goal is to broadcast 850 live and VOD sporting events over the year as well analysis and commentary, statistics, press conferences, documentaries and other content. By connecting it directly to social media such as Facebook and Twitter it enables a degree of participation for fans that a simple broadcast would not allow.

Aside from the IPG Ooyala also provided what it calls a Stat Server. The Stat Server automatically imports sports stats and timecode data from third parties and tags that with live and VOD content. This enables users to search by stats or event tags and allows the information to be displayed at the proper time when an event is being viewed, regardless if it is live or VOD. The authentication is designed to make it easy to view content across multiple connected devices.

It is very interesting to look at all of the ways in which colleges are reaching out to fans and getting both sports and academic advancements out to alumni and fans. Recently the ACC added YouTube to its digital network. The Big Ten Network has already expanded out to digital devices and recently added Android support.

This is just great for fans, not just mobile ones but also fans of multiple teams or sports-they can now watch a game on a mobile device while also catching a different one on the TV or a computer, enabling them to easily stay abreast with events in areas that interest them.

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Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Big Ten Network, Comcast, iOS, iPad, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, Ooyala, Pac-12, Smartphone, Social Media, Tablets Tagged With: ,

YouTube Deal Will Enhance ACC’s Digital Network

July 24, 2012 by 1 Comment

The Atlantic Coast Conference’s digital network has introduced a channel on YouTube that will deliver live content from the ACC as YouTube continues to grow as a force in live sports broadcasting with deals such as this.

We have long talked about the emergence of YouTube as a de facto channel for sports, and YouTube has been working hard to cement that position with the ACC deal as one of its more notable deals. However in case you missed it will also be serving up some nice Olympic moments via a deal with NBC that will enable it to show highlights and live events from the London Olympics.

The ACC and YouTube have been partners to a degree for several years and provided exclusive, but not live content at its site since at least 2009, however this takes it a significant step further.

Between that time and now the ACC started a deal with Silver Chalice that enabled it to launch the ACC Digital Network that provided broad coverage of the ACC schools including news conferences, highlights and analysis that could be delivered to both Apple and Android mobile devices.

Now it will also present live events as well as on demand videos that are created by the ACC as well as a live weekly studio program during football and basketball season. There will also be condensed replays of ACC Network productions of football and basketball games.

The current deal will call for the ACC to provide fan access and interaction to its analysts via Google’s Google Hangout. Fans can view, comment upon and share the programming by visiting youtube.com/accdigitalnetwork, or by searching for ACC Digital Network on YouTube.

Of course others are also working on attracting digital partners. The Big Ten Networks recently expanded to support Android in its broadcast and the Pac-12 is increasingly involved in digital media. Still it is nice that the ACC will be presenting live sports to its fan base and other interested parties.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Atlantic Coast Conference, BCS, Big Ten Network, Google, iOS, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, Pac-12, YouTube Tagged With: , ,
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