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Friday Grab Bag: X Games Coming, Soccer Corruption in China, Bike Lojack

June 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

ESPN’s annual summer X Games will begin next week on June 28 and run until July 1. Fans and athletes will descend on Los Angles for the events that will start with the X Fest that runs from noon until 7 pm on the opening day.

ESPN will be spreading the 21 hours of live broadcasting, both on-air and online, between a number of its properties: ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC will have the on-air duties with HD handled by ESPN 3D. For online, the games will also be digitally streamed on XGames.com and WatchESPN.com.

Intel buys InterDigital patent portfolio
Intel has reached an agreement to purchase approximately 1,700 patents and applications from wireless technology developer InterDigital for $375 million. The patents primarily are in the areas of 3G, LTE and 802.11 technologies.

Intel said that the move will be a benefit to its development efforts in the mobile segment, and the unspoken part of the deal is that it will no doubt provide ammunition in the ongoing legal spats over patents that are common in the mobile space as well.

Vungle creates App Fund for developers
Vungle, a startup that seeks to provide a variety of advertising and promotional avenues aside from the traditional pop-up ads has moved to draw more players to its platform. In a very interesting turn the company, which just closed a $2 million venture round last month will use half of that money and create a fund for other developers.

The purpose of the move, according to TechCrunch, is to lure developers to its platform and so gain a boost for its approach to alternative advertising for mobile apps. It will be interesting to see how this works out.

Corruption in Chinese soccer — who knew?
The New Yorker, where I often go for my sporting news, had an interesting piece on corruption in the world of Chinese soccer. League executives, players and refs have all been hauled away and imprisoned due to an apparent widespread match fixing epidemic.

It seems that it has been ongoing for several years and that one top referee received $128,000 to fix seven matches. The country, which is seeking to win the rights to host the World Cup in the future, is cracking down to show that it will not tolerate this type of blatant corruption. What impact that will have on FIFA I am not sure.

Apple and Motorola get chance to push claims
The Apple vs Motorola litigants had the opportunity to speak their piece to US Circuit Court Judge Richard Posner. Apple apparently does not want Motorola to pay royalties but wants it to change its design and also claims that since Motorola’s patent is never used it has no value. Motorola obviously does not agree with either position.

Oracle taking Google lawsuit to next level
Oracle has agreed to accept zero damages for the copyright infringement claims that it ‘won’ in its case versus Google over Java technology. Oracle had been seeking big money in the case, claiming that it suffered up to $6 billion in loses.

However this is not the end of the affair. Oracle has said it will appeal its claims in the case once again, including both the patent infringement and whether its APIs can be copyrighted, to the Ninth Circuit appeals court.

Amazon App Store goes International
I have to say that I was surprised when I read that Amazon had not really extended its App Store to other countries and that it was primarily focused on the US market, a short sighted deal since one of its top developers of Android running devices Samsung is so strong internationally.

But anyway that looks to be a thing of the past as the company has now started opening it up and now developers in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain can release games and apps designed specifically for those markets and the company has promised that more nations will be opened up to the joys of apps in the near futire, according to Cnet.

Ever had your bike stolen? SpyBike GPS could track the next one
SpyBike is a product developed by Integrated Trackers that is designed to look like a normal headset cap. It is designed to be activated when the bike is locked and you use a simply arming key and if the bike is moved it starts sending out data via a GPRS message and uses GPS to locate the bike. If GPS fails it has a fall back technology to help locate it.

The device does not come cheap, at $153 as well as a per message charge. The company said that it costs a fraction of a penny per message, but that varies by country. It features a rechargeable battery that can hold a charge of months.

Microsoft is on a roll, but is it a good one?
PC Mag is reporting that the company only gave some of its top OEMs a few days notice prior to announcing its Surface tablet platform earlier this week. As a number of them have made a major investment in developing for the underlying operating system, Windows 8, this seems a bit shortsighted.

Then later in the week it talks about its Windows 8 for smartphones and reveals that customers that buy the current family of smartphones will not be supported by Windows 8. I am sure that cheers up Nokia which has made a major investment in promoting Windows Phone technology.

Filed Under: ABC, Amazon, Android, Apps, Dell, ESPN, ESPN3, FIFA, Intel, Lawsuit, Microsoft, Motorola, Oracle, Smartphone, Soccer, Surface, WatchESPN, Windows 8, X Games Tagged With: , , , ,

Bantr Seeks to bring Soccer Fans Together

June 18, 2012 by 3 Comments

With the Euro 2012 tournament up and roaring along with the first round of eliminations I got to wondering about what type of chat and viewing options that was available for fans to catch up on scores and possibly talk a bit of trash to rivals and went looking.

Not surprising there is a number of apps available for a fan, including some we have talked about here previously such as Fancru. One i found that caught my eye was Bantr, an app that is designed to bring together soccer fans.

What made it noteworthy was it was one of the first fan interaction sites I have seen that is dedicated to a single group of fans, it is only about soccer, which I suspect is just fines with fans of that sport because the cross over talk would probably get pretty heated.

The free app is currently only available for products that run Apple’s iOS operating system including the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone. It is obviously designed for European soccer and supports English, German, Northern Sami and Spanish.

It shares many similarities with other interactive fan sites: you can select your teams that you support, check into games; chant or banter with other fans and predict outcomes. Some interesting touches include in game voting on if a player dives, on cards and penalties and the worthiness of substitutions. You can also vote for player of the match, rate players, refs and matches, and vote on manager and player approval.

The company was founded in 2010 and has secured $328,000 is seed money, according to Crunchbase. If you want to get a taste of what is available but do not want to download the app just yet, or do not have an iPhone (Android support is supposedly coming) you can head over hear at Facebook and take a look at what is available.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, ESPN, Euro 2012, Facebook, iOS, Soccer, Startup Tagged With: , ,

ESPN’s Soccer Push Pays off with Euro 2012 Viewership

June 13, 2012 by 3 Comments

ESPN has reported preliminary numbers for its UEFA Euro 2012 broadcasts and it is showing the sports giant that there is great potential in the sport. The opening match for the Group C teams Italy and Spain, both powerful squads, garnered an average of 2.1 million viewers.

While in terms of other major American sports this might not be that impressive but it, along with results from the Premier League show that increasingly ESPN can draw in viewers for a variety of soccer matches. It should be noted that the matches do not include a US team so there is no nationalistic urge to watch the sport.

According to ESPN the Italy vs Spain match was the biggest Euro match viewership aside from the championship match four years ago that had a 3.76 million viewership. Overall through the first six matches the network is averaging a hair over 1 million households and 1.3 million viewers on its English language broadcasts.

This represents a increases of 198% and 214%, respectively, versus the first six games of the UEFA EURO 2008

Last Sunday’s UEFA EURO 2012 match between Italy and Spain at on ESPN, a 1-1 tie and tournament opening match for both Group C teams, was seen by an average of 2.113 million viewers, bigger than any UEFA European Football Championship 2008 match except the final on ABC. That game, Germany vs. Spain, was watched by an average of 3.760 million viewers.

Through six matches, ESPN’s English-language presentation of the event is averaging 1,007,000 households and 1.328,000 viewers — up 198 percent and 214 percent, respectively, versus the first six games of the UEFA EURO 2008 (338,000 households and 423,000 viewers in ’08). The second most-watched game to-date in 2012 is Saturday’s Portugal-Germany match up – a 1.1 household coverage rating, 1,244,000 households, and 1,798,000 viewers, second to only one ESPN game in all of 2008.

Then there is the viewership from the rest of the networks broadcasting arms. ESPN Deportes is showing a 147% increase in households watching over 2008, and has reached 166,000 households. It is also getting strong viewership on its digital platforms, not a surprise since many of the matches are during work day hours for most of us.

Its ESPNFC.com has globally logged 876,000 daily visitors, 8.5 million page views and 33 million minutes, up 45%, 11% and 191%, respectively from four years ago. ESPN3 and WatchESPN, which reach a broad array of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as well as PCs has generated 65.8 million minutes to both the English and Spanish language feeds.

It will be interesting to see how the numbers grow as we head to the elimination rounds and more weekend matches. It is tough to head out to the TV, or even watch at work, with matches that occur when your boss is expecting you to be productive.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN3, Euro 2012, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Soccer, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

The Euro 2012 Tournament Starts this Weekend-ESPN Will be there for all of the Matches

June 7, 2012 by 1 Comment

The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship aka the Euro 2012 starts today to see which national soccer team will emerge victorious in the 14th European Championship which sees 16 nations vying for the title. In the next championship, in 2016, the field will expand to 24 teams.

Aside from bragging rights the winner gets something much more substantial, an automatic entry into the 2013 FIFA Confederation Cup that will be held next year in Brazil. The event, which will carry on for the next month will see matches held in eight cities sprawled across two nations-Poland and the Ukraine.

While I enjoy a good match I am really in no position to predict who is a favorite or which teams are the top ones to follow. I would suggest heading over to The Big Lead and look at Ty Duffy’s body of work on the subject.

The tournament has had a touch of scandal currently, with the continued growth of the match fixing scandal in Italy, something that initially helped kill that nation’s bid for the tournament and now sounds like it might have killed the national team’s chance of participating.

A few days ago the Italian team captain, Cesare Prandelli said it would not bother him if the team was withdraws from the event due to the scandal, which has been ongoing since 2006 in one form or another. There were 14 arrests last month and a player was dropped from the squad. As of this writing it has not happened.

In addition the BBC has reported that racism and neo-Nazis could be a problem and that former England team captain Sol Campbell is advising English fans to watch the matches from the safety of their home. And last but not least there are reports from Fox Sports that the jerseys sold at the matches contain toxic chemicals.

The Finalists
Group A
Poland
Greece
Russia
Czech Republic

Group B
Netherlands
Denmark
Portugul
Germany

Group C
Spain
Italy
Ireland
Croatia

Group D
Ukraine
Sweden
France
England

The official site for the tournament is well laid out and carries a lot of current and past information, including how the teams did in the recent batch of friendlies, videos, photos, past history of the event, updates from team camps and general news.

There is the usual data on teams and when the event starts statistics will start to fill in on each game. What I like is that there is a number of games in the fan section where you can make prediction on who wins their group, who will win the Golden Boot, and other events

ESPN has taken the soccer broadcasting bull by the horns and will be broadcasting all of the matches, spread out across the ever growing network of channels and outlets that it owns. It has been working to make itself a much stronger player in the soccer broadcast world and so far it seems to be paying off.

This will be a real test to its commitment and I am looking forward to watching as many of the matches as possible. I will also be interested if I hear anything about this event from a number of friends who suddenly became soccer fans when the US Women advanced in the World Cup but had never mentioned the sport prior or after to me.

Filed Under: BBC, Contests, ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN3, Euro 2012, FIFA, Fox Sports, Soccer Tagged With: , ,

ESPN Sees Strong Online Soccer Viewership Ahead of Euro 2012

May 21, 2012 by 1 Comment

We have been tracking ESPN’s growing focus on soccer with interest and now the company has put forth some numbers showing that it is getting solid feedback from its efforts, and that could pay off even greater in the next few weeks.

The network said that this season’s Barclays Premier League 2011-2012 season had the highest numbers in the three years that it has carried the league. Of course if you were lucky you could have seen the 3-2 Manchester City victory over Queens Park, a game result that forced Manchester United to abort its victory party. The match was viewed by 600,000 ESPN viewers and an additional 189,000 on ESPN Deportes.

The smartphone, computers, tablet and Xbox crowd was out in support as well with 108,000 unique views for that match using either ESPN3 or WatchESPN, and for the season these platforms accounted for an average of 174,000 unique views and 8.9 million live minutes for the matches on computers. The monthly numbers are up 36% and 73% respectively over last year.

Across the spectrum of digital devices including smartphones and tablets the league had a monthly average of 9.2 million monthly minutes, up 78% compared to ESPN3 numbers last season.

While the numbers are of course dwarfed by viewership for more mainstream US sports such as the NFL, it bodes well going forward as fans increasingly know that they can go to ESPN to see top flight matches.

Still in around two weeks the EURO 2012 tournament will start and ESPN has made a major commitment to showing all of the matches, many of which will be available online. I suspect that as it continues to upgrade and expand its coverage it will continue to see its numbers explode as mobile fans will take advantage of watching games that may occur while they are running errands or at work.

Filed Under: Contests, English Premier Soccer League, ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN3, Euro 2012, Live sports via mobile, Smartphone, Soccer, Tablets Tagged With: , ,

ESPN turns the heat up on Soccer Coverage

May 1, 2012 by 3 Comments

ESPN has taken another solid step in its effort to provide full soccer coverage to fans worldwide with the introduction of ESPN FC, an effort that will provide umbrella branding for all of its diverse soccer media coverage.

This appears to be the network’s biggest step yet and will include a multilingual, multi-nation push to expand and brand its coverage and will include television, print, Internet, radio and online aspects to the branding effort.

ESPN’s soccer coverage has been a work in progress, and we mean that in a positive way. In the last few months it has been taking incremental steps to improve its coverage even after it lost broadcasting rights to future World Cup tournaments.

There are a number of ingredients to the ESPN FC effort, and not all of them are in place yet. Looking forward it plans to add local and regional contributors so that it has full 24/7 global news coverage of the sport. Hand in hand with that will be the ability to deliver content based on where a fan is accessing the network weather from a mobile device, the Internet or television.

The channel kicks off the new branding effort with its coverage of the Euro 2012 tournament in the Ukraine and Poland. It already had plans to broadcast the matches; they will now be the first to have the new branding as well. For the upcoming tournament ESPN FC will also have a feature called Euro 2012 Top 40 Player Rankings which will include contributions from the network’s soccer experts.

With the European season winding down the new brand will really see an uptick later this year with the start of the new seasons for leagues worldwide will see coverage of more than just the European leagues. As part of this effort ESPN will bring increased soccer coverage to its Spanish language channel into ESPNdeportes.com as well as produce Spanish-language online, mobile and print content for fans.

It looks as if the Soccernet label will also be a thing of the past as it has renamed its global multi-platform soccer debate and discussion show ESPN FC PressPass and done away with ESPNsoccernet PressPass

Other features will include a new version of GameCast called Live MatchHQ that will provide game data and imagery while also providing news and score3s from elsewhere around the league. The May 18th issue of ESPN: The Magazine will include a Euro 2012 preview section with a feature on Wayne Rooney as the cover story.

Last but not least ESPN FC will launch a pair of fantasy games for the Euro 2012 tournament. One is called Euro 2012 Bracket Predictor and the other is Euro 2012 Manager where fans can select fantasy rosters and win points.

ESPN FC appears to be a great idea from ESPN, unifying coverage that at one time was in multiple places and enabling fans to go to a single source for all of their soccer information. While Fox Sports also increasing its coverage especially Premier League coverage, hopefully the competition will make both provide more that fans want, rather than air time fillers that it occasionally seems.

Filed Under: ESPN, ESPN FC, ESPN Radio, Fantasy Sports, FoxSoccer, Live sports via mobile, Soccer, SportsCenter Tagged With: , ,
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