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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: , , , , , , , ,

NASCAR Names Hewlett-Packard a Technology Partner

July 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment

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Hewlett-Packard has expanded its relationship with NASCAR, originally formed last year, which will partner the two in devising ways that HP technology can enhance and advance the sport of auto racing with a focus on both engaging fans more closely and bring advertisers to specific segments of the fan base.

The move is part of a growing movement among sports teams and leagues to partner up with leading technology companies to take advantage of their expertise in a range of areas from fan engagement to operational efficiencies.

NASCAR has named HP an Official Technology Partner in a 3-year deal that will have the two engage in developing and using technologies that NASCAR says will catapult the sport to a new level via the adoption of cutting edge technologies.

Under the terms of the new agreement, NASCAR has named HP as an Official Technology Partner, underscoring a joint commitment to accelerate innovation and the adoption of cutting-edge technology across the sport of NASCAR.

While the details of the agreement are vague, expect to see enhanced digital presence at NASCAR tracks with high speed wireless capabilities. NASCAR has a huge following but has seen a steady erosion of attendance at its events. Long traffic lines, limited views and none of the advanced ambiance that fans are now expecting at football and baseball stadiums can take its toll in term of attendance.

That will probably change, and for that matter has already started to change with the original agreement between the two last year that lead to the formation of the Fan and Media Engagement Center (FMEC). The FMEC is a tool that measures and analyzes information from a wide variety of media including video, social media, digital, television, print and radio. It takes the information derived from all of these sources and uses it to help further engage fans with NASCAR.

NASCAR has said that it is already seeing results from the FMEC with information tailored for specific segments of the NASCAR audience that can be used by NASCAR and its partners. The new deal will in part be an expansion of the FMEC effort as well as looking at new areas that the two can develop solutions.

In the past sports entities went about moving into the digital age quietly, adding a bit of Wi-Fi, a Facebook page or a mobile web site. They had partners for these efforts but they remained in the back ground for the most part. Now the partnerships are at the forefront as the advantages that the tech partner brings, as well as the prestige of the name, help increase fan awareness of the moves that the team or league is undergoing. Expect to see more along these lines such as the recent SAP/San Jose Sharks deal.

Filed Under: Apps, Athlete to Follow, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, NASCAR, NHL Tagged With: , ,

San Jose Sharks’ Partnership with SAP brings Hi-Tech to Arena

July 10, 2013 by 1 Comment

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The San Jose Sharks parent company Sharks Sports & Entertainment Inc., the City of San Jose and SAP International have joined together to use existing and emerging technologies to both enhance the experience for fans but to also for internal use and working on player performance.

The five year relationship also calls for a new official name for the Shark Tank, which will now go by the moniker of the SAP Center at San Jose. The parties involved said that the deal will make the Center a showplace for Silicon Valley high technology as well as help the team.

For those unfamiliar with SAP, at least in relationship to sports teams, this is part of a concentrated effort by SAP to mine the growing needs of both teams and leagues for both high tech internal technology to handle everything from analysis of player performance, scouting to ticket sales as well as providing fans with the growing list of features and services that they are growing accustomed to from Wi-Fi to apps that improve the experience at the stadium.

SAP has been working with the team for some time and has surveyed fans about their experience and from that data the company has initial plans to engage in some specific areas to improve their experience at the center. They include many things that a fan might expect such as providing real time alerts, up to date team and player information, hooks into social media and game video.

Good news to fans that hate the long lines that can slow entrance to a stadium or to concessions will be the adoption of technology that enables fans to use mobile devices to gain access to the arena but also buy food and merchandise from a phone or tablet. Fan loyalty programs are also under consideration.

That is all for the fans. The team will also be leveraging SAP’s traditional analytic and cloud capabilities. The team plans to use SAP’s technology in its daily operating, leveraging its expertise in areas that include cloud computing, big data analysis and mobile technology as tools for daily operating as a business as well as to handle the unique challenges that face sports and entertainment facilities and teams.

Currently the Sharks are also looking at the SAP Scouting Solution as a tool to assist its scouting department evaluate players and delve down to what the performance statistics mean in the real world.

SAP is throwing an increasingly large net in the sports world and has relationships with a variety of leagues including the NBA, and NFL as well as prominent teams including the Sharks, NY Yankees and San Francisco 49ers.

Filed Under: Apps, Live Sports Video Consumption, NBA, NFL, NHL, SAP, Social Media, Social Media Data, Tablets Tagged With: , , , ,

Streaming Stanley Cup Playoff App a Big Hit for NBC Sports

June 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

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For the first time the ability to watch all of the Stanley Cup playoff games live from a variety of mobile devices as well as computers has been warmly greeted by fans according to the early numbers released by NBC. Over 40 million minutes have been streamed through the first three rounds.

While in the past there has been some streaming, with 12 games shown last year, viewership is up 289% compared to last year and 1,198% from 2011, when the league showed only 8 games while this year so far there has been 76 streamed games, not counting the finals.

The games are available on NBC Sports Live Extra, a live streaming product from the NBC Sports Group that supports not only desktop and notebook computers but also mobile devices and tablets for the first time.

The first two years that the network streamed games it was only available on computers and still the numbers showed strong growth, going from 3,126,562 in 2011 to 10,427,216 in 2012 and leaping to 26,296,641 so far this year.

However this year is the first where users can also load the games on mobile devices, and they have accounted for more minutes than the first two PC years combined at 14,293,950. The games air on NBC, NBC Sports Network, and CNBC

So far the two most popular games have been the Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Final double overtime win by the Boston Bruins over the Pittsburgh Penguins with 2.59 million minutes and the Game 5 of the Western Conference Final where the Chicago Blackhawks defeated the Los Angeles Kings, 4-3, in double overtime to clinch their spot in the finals. 2.58 million minutes were streamed for that event.

For desktops, NBC Sports Live Extra can be accessed at NBCSports.com/liveextra. The NBC Sports Live Extra app for mobile devices and tablets is available at the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and on select Android handset and tablet devices within Google Play.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, iPad, iTunes, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NBC Sports, NHL, Smartphone, Stanley Cup, Tablets Tagged With: , , ,
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