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NCAA’s March Madness Connects With Facebook

February 6, 2012 by 1 Comment

I was reading an interesting piece in Mashable about a partnership between Facebook and the NCAA in regards to the March Madness tournament that featured a fan contest and so I hustled on over to participate.

I imagined glory in my picking ability; after all I was first in my pool last year. Well at least after the first day, overall I finished dead last which one fellow member told me was almost mathematically impossible, but these things happen.

Sadly when I got to the Facebook page the contest was closed, which was a pity. However it was not a contest to pick the winners of the tournament, although one of those might be in the offing. Rather the contest, called the Super 10, is a very cleaver twist on the tournament and really meant for a much more serious college hoops fan than myself.

The contest selected 10 hardcore fans and teaches them about the intricacies of the selection process and how the choices are made. It was more than just filling out a form or sending in your name, A 30-second video was required as well in which the entrant needed to explain why their in-depth understanding of the sport made them the perfect choice for the contest. After the entries are all in a fan vote would select the 10 winners.

Well sadly that is all said and done and now 10 people will be flown to Atlanta and given a 4 day/3 night stay with tickets to the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament and a tour of Turner studios as part of the prize.

What is interesting is that this is a very clever way for the NCAA to tout its tournament in a new way to fans using social media as the primary tool to attract them and to judge the winners. All this without getting into trouble by looking like they are promoting gambling, which they would never do.

As a first attempt to partner with social media it is a very strong one, and the only failing I can see is that it was not well enough known by some groups of fans. I talked to a number of huge hoops fans while watching the Super Bowl and most said that they would have liked to participate, although several expressed some concern about making the video.

According to the stats on the Facebook site roughly 217,000 liked the contest, but that is really just a drop in the bucket. There will probably be that many office pools in California alone once the tournament starts.

This is the first partnership between Facebook and the NCAA and it will surely not be the last. The power of social media is growing daily, from a source of protest to positioning products. With almost a billion users it is an easy tool for the NCAA to reach both its base but also to reach out to new markets.

Filed Under: Facebook, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com Tagged With: , ,

Pac-12 Looks to Build ‘Digital Network’ for Social-Media Centric Sports Future

January 31, 2012 by 2 Comments

The Pac-12 conference, one year into its new broadcasting deal is now looking to expand its presence in other areas aside from broadcast television, a move that will encompass streaming media and other technologies broadcast to smartphones, tablets and other devices, mobile and immobile.

To spearhead the program the conference‘s wholly owned subsidiary Pac-12 Enterprises has hired David Aufhauser as vice president and general manager of digital media. He has been in various positions in the sports and social media market for almost two decades with his most recent position being Vice President, Media at Say Media where he managed the global ad network. Prior to that he led business development at Yahoo Sports and has a variety of positions at Citizen Sports, Evite and Netscape.

The job will entail all aspects of the digital media properties of the Pac-12 as well as the creation and management of the Pac-12 Digital Network. The Digital Network will be a unified web site that will provide world wide access to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as well as computers and even television for a wide range of sports activities that the Pac-12 is involved in.

The group will handle hundreds of sporting events and provide original programming at all 12 major campuses. This will include live streaming, mobile technology and social TV capabilities, the world. The network is expected to be launched in late summer 2012.

Last year the conference entered into a major upgrade on its broadcasting presence by working with major cable companies to create six regional cable networks as well as signing new national deals with FOX Sports and ESPN. The Digital Network is expected to work with the television networks to provide a more unified presence for the league. The new effort will also handle all sponsorship, licensing and event management for the Pac-12.

His hiring is just the latest in a string of newly enlisted personnel, all seemingly with wide experience in both sports and an array of various media. Last August the conference hired Gary Stevenson as the head of the Enterprise group. Stevenson has more than 30 years in a variety of sports and broadcasting experience including working with the NBA, the PGA Tour and owning his own sports consulting firm OnSports.

The Pac-12 Enterprise has also hired Bill Cella as its chief revenue officer. Cella has experience in sales and marketing and will design and implement long term strategies and oversee the management of all revenue generation for Pac-12 Enterprises.

Expect this to be the tip of the iceberg and a move that is carefully watched by both rival conferences and the NCAA governing body. No school is going to let additional revenue slip through its fingers and we will probably see a number quickly emulate the Pac-12.

The NCAA on the other hand may want a bigger piece of the pie. When Major League Baseball teams started to move onto the Internet MLB itself was a bit slow to follow. When it did it moved everything under its own umbrella, and no doubt gets a larger cut for its effort.

Filed Under: ESPN, Fox Sports, Live sports via mobile, Major League Baseball, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, Pac-12, Smartphone, Social Media, Tablets Tagged With: ,

PlayUp Signs Exclusive Deal with Fordham Athletics

January 27, 2012 by 3 Comments

In what is expected to be the first of a series of school-exclusive deals, fan-based social network app provider PlayUp is partnering with Fordham Athletics to be the exclusive “fan engagement partner” for the sports teams at the New York-based Fordham University.

Fordham said the PlayUp app, which gives sports fans the ability to track teams, scores and to converse with other fans in either small or large, or private or public groups, is a good fit for schools like Fordham who have interested alumni who might not be able to view games in person. From the press release announcing the deal:

“PlayUp is a very unique service that allows fans who cannot attend Fordham games in person to actively chat on their mobile device while following the action,” said Julio Diaz, Associate Athletic Director/Marketing and Promotions, Fordham Athletics.

According to PlayUp, the company will promote its app live at four upcoming Fordham men’s basketball games, and will be featured in television ads shown during the game broadcasts. PlayUP said it will also have in-game contests and promotions, part of a strategic move to make PlayUp the app fans check in with first when they are at a live sporting event. Here’s the PlayUp quote from the presser:

“We are very pleased to be Fordham Athletics’ Official Fan Engagement Partner,” said David Brody, PlayUp U.S. Head of Marketing. “This partnership will help Fordham fans, friends, family and alumni alike, connect worldwide over Fordham Athletics. Even if they’re hundreds or thousands of miles away, they can hangout together in the PlayUp app. Our app breaks down geographical barriers and allows real interaction between fans all over the globe.”

MSR will track PlayUp (which just launched a beta version of a website component) and its competitors in the fan-conversation market closely. If you are a PlayUp user, give us a holler in the comments below and tell us what you think of the service.

Filed Under: Apps, iPhone, NCAA Hoops, PlayUp, Social Media, Sports Social Media Tagged With: , ,

CBS to stream Sun Bowl, top ranked hoops match

December 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Cannot make it to your TV today? CBSSports has you covered

CBSSports continues to be fan friendly by streaming live top sporting events and today it has a doubleheader for fans, one for the hardwood aficionados and one for the gridiron folks.

Leading off the day will be the 12 noon ET broadcast of a NCAA men’s college basketball game that pits No 3 ranked Kentucky versus No. 4 ranked Louisville live from Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky.

As New Years Eve starts to loom the 2pm ET Hyundai Sun Bowl will kick off with Georgia Tech facing Utah in the 78th annual Sun Bowl played in El Paso, Texas.

Both events will be broadcast on the CBS Television Network and streamed live on CBSSports.com and CBS Sports Mobile. The network plans of broadcasting select games from the 2011-2012 college basketball season in the upcoming year.

On Saturday, Dec. 31, CBSSports.com will wrap up 2011 by streaming both college basketball and football live on CBSSports.com and CBS Sports Mobile.

Filed Under: CBS Sports, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops

Friday Grab Bag: Sugar Bowl not so Sweet?

December 16, 2011 by 1 Comment

Virginia Tech in for a loss again on bowl game ticket sales?
Virginia Tech is on the way to selling 57% of its allotment of tickets to the Sugar Bowl, where the Hokies will face the Michigan Wolverines on Jan 3. 2012. The team reports that it expects to sell roughly 10,000 of its 17,500 tickets.

The team blames the Tuesday night game time as well as the readily availability to tickets in the secondary market. No comment on the fact that the cheapest ticket is $125. The Big Lead reported that the school is asking fans to buy proxy tickets to donate to various charities and the military.

So why is this news? Well last year the team also went to a bowl game, and also did not sell out its allocation of tickets. However the kindly NCAA does not simply allow you to send back the unneeded excess tickets. That is because many of the bowl games that we are about to be inundated with not actually sell out and how will the director justify a half million salary if the bowl does not turn a profit.

Top Linux predictions for 2012.
I love the end of the year predictions. I do not track them to see if they are accurate on an annual basis but do like to look back on occasion to see when the hover car was supposed to be here. Still when made by informed people they often do give insight into trends, be they sports, social or otherwise.

The Linux Insider has posted its Top 5 Linux predictions for the upcoming year and if they are accurate, or even near misses, it looks as if a lot of activity will be moving from the desktop and into mobile, cloud and consumer platforms.

I think this spells good news for users, Linux users and others, since competition should help continue a flow of new and innovative products and technologies. One interesting prediction is that all of the mobile and cloud growth will harm its efforts n the desktop- as well as help it. Read the reviews to see what you believe.

ESPN to broadcast many NCAA championships in $500m deal
The NCAA has expanded its multi-decade deal with ESPN that calls for the sports network to broadcast a huge range of the NCAA’s championships through the 2023-24 school year. The deal will pay ESPN $500m per year and will see 600 hours of broadcasting.

The deal expands on the current relationship between the two as ESPN already broadcasts 17 championships. Added to the deal will be broadcasts of women’s gymnastics, men’s and women’s fencing, Division I women’s lacrosse, Division I men’s and women’s outdoor track, and women’s bowling.

ESPN will also expand its broadcast coverage of the early rounds of the Division I FCS football, women’s volleyball, softball and baseball tournaments and will get international rights to the men’s basketball tournament.

Did its history with Windows hurt Microsoft’s mobile phone effort?
Windows baggage was a deterent that harmed the market’s perception of Microsoft’s Windows Phone, or at least that is the point of view of a piece by Jason Hiner in Tech Republic. He believes that it has harmed users perception of what is a quality device and so prevented Microsoft from being a dominate player in the space.

This comes at a time of mea culpa at Microsoft, admitting very poor sales, disappointment and the traditional rotating of top management. All that was missing was the “Airing of Grievances” to make the event complete.

He claims that people believe that the difficulty and frustration of using the Windows operating system such as malware, viruses and other issues will be present in the phones. Decide for yourself but if you started out using MS-DOS on old, very, very, slow PCs you know what a breath of fresh air Windows was. After they got the bugs out of course.

This and that
Was anybody amazed at how much grief was directed at Albert Pujols for leaving St. Louis for a much better contract elsewhere? Since when did sports writers spur higher offers?

Is it just my conspiracy theory of the week or did the NBA intentionally foul up the Chris Paul trades simply to intensify interest in the NBA, something that appeared to me to still be lagging due to the strike?

I wonder if there will be any fallout from the drug bust of (ex) Chicago Bear Sam Hurd? That is a lot of pot and coke to be selling on a weekly basis while still playing football. He must have had an impressive network in Chicago.

Startup investment analysis firm SigFig claims that investors with iPhones are 20% more likely than average to own Apple stock while owners of Android phones are 25% less likely than average to own Google stock.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, BCS, ESPN, iPhone, NBA, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com Tagged With: , , , , ,

Xfinity Develops TV Sports Remote for iPhone

December 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Have you ever been channel surfing and wished that you could simplify the process and just have a set of buttons that take you to live sports or scoreboard updates? Well if you are a subscriber to Xfinity, and use Apple’s iOS mobile devices there is an application that will meet your needs.

Called the Xfinity TV Sports Remote, it is a free, downloadable app available from Apple’s iTunes store that can turn your iPhone or iPad into a remote control for your TV that enables you to just move between sporting events.

It currently is designed to work with a large number of major sports and includes NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA, NCAA Football, and NCAA men’s basketball and the company said that it is working on expanding the app to support additional broadcast sports.

It serves as a remote control and not as a technology that converts the iOS device into a viewing platform but rather makes it a focused remote control that you can program to meet your sports viewing needs.

It is easy to use but does require that you know your Comcast ID or e-mail address, which I did not initially and had to look it up which was not as easy as I would have thought. Once logged-in it checks what cable box you have, what channels you have access to and then takes you to the initial set-up page.

Enables Fans to select Favorites

This page has lists of sports events being broadcast today in your area. You need to temper your enjoyment by realizing that you may not subscribe to all of those that are displayed. It shows the channels that they will be broadcast on, and that should be the clue.

You can select a league by simply tapping on its icon and that will give you a list of games, so for the NFL it will list the Thursday, Sunday and Monday games, and then on the right had side show the channel for the ones that will be broadcast in your area. Unless the NFL uses it’s flex programming of course. In each of the leagues sections, just visiting will give you current scores for teams that are playing.

It is also very simple to add favorites although one step stumped me initially. You just click the small + by a team and it’s a favorite the first time you go to the favorites section. The second time you need to go to edit to add or subtract a team, otherwise it just tells you the status of any games your favorites are playing on that day.

The favorites section will show you the time and channel that your favorite teams are playing on the current day, if they are playing that is and if it is broadcast The only limit to favorites is the number of teams available, you can favor them all if you wanted to.

Other features include the ability to select which TV you are watching and the ability to record sports on DVRs. A caution on this feature, it will preempt any other recording setting so you might delete someone else in the houses setting to record a non sports event, hard as that might be to believe.

The program will show the sports packages available in your area but you need to directly call to sign up for one- no on-line option available.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Baseball, Comcast, iPad, iPhone, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, NBA, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NFL, NHL, Tablets, Xfinity Tagged With: , ,
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