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NFL Offers a Great Range of Apps for Mobile Users

August 14, 2012 by

NFL '12

The first week of the National Football League’s preseason ended last night with a thump as the Dallas Cowboys beat the Oakland Raiders 3-0 in a game that started out like a ball of fire but quickly cooled as time passed.

I was not able to watch the game and since I do not currently use Verizon I could not stream the game over my phone, and I decided not to use the NFL’s site to get the basic about what was going on. Later a friend called and asked if I had seen the run that McFadden had early in the game. I did not and was not willing to watch SportsCenter that late in the evening to catch it.

I did wander over to the NFL’s web site and was amazed at the number of options available for mobile customers, something that seems to have expanded greatly from last year when it seemed that it was Verizon or nothing.

The main point of interest was the breadth of offerings, eight in all, not counting several additional ones that were games. I will not recount all of them here, but several are very worth of downloading on your phone or tablet.

The lead one is the NFL’s official app, NFL’12 that follows all of the games with play by play as they occur. It can be set to provide alerts for scoring and games and has the ability to chat with others while the game is being p

layed. It has full integration with another app from the NFL- NFL.Com’s Fantasy Football so that you can access your team from within this app. Pretty standard stuff but certainly a must for NFL fans.

There are two that stood out for me however. The first was Game Pass, a subscription based app. This has two features, the first being audio pass that enables you to listen to live game broadcasts. Good until Jan.4, 2013 the program also lets you listen to any game from the 2009-2011 season as well. It is currently available for $24.99 A paired down version to follow only your favorite team is also available for $22.99.

The second part is Game Rewind, which lets you watch replays of all the games. In some cases it provides coaches film views of plays as well as the broadcast version. The program is currently $39.99 or for the single team view $34.99. There is also a subscription based app called NFL Preseason Live, designed just for tablets.

Then there is the NFL Mobile from Verizon that permits live streaming video from the NFL Network. There is the already mentioned Fantasy Football Mobile that allows players of the NFL’s Fantasy Football to control their teams from mobile devices. A related app is the Fantasy Cheat Sheet, targeted at the Fantasy Football players.

Baseball has been at the forefront of pushing mobile apps, in my opinion, and I believe that the NFL has significantly closed the gap with the huge array of offerings that it now has available. I will be downloading several to see how well I like them, as well as some of the games to see how much productivity I can kill.

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Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Fantasy Sports, iOS, NFL Tagged With: ,

NBC’s Digital Olympics: Mobile Growth Huge, TV Ratings Not Affected

August 14, 2012 by

NBC released its full numbers from the Olympics Monday, and to no surprise the peacock network set viewership records in just about every category. I’m sure most of you have your own opinion already (#NBCfail) about how NBC actually performed, but on one level it’s simply true that for sheer totality of coverage, this Olympics offered the most live and archived video ever, and will likely set a standard for other big events to follow.

What we hope, of course, is that they learn the lesson NBC learned the hard way — that people want the ability to see events LIVE, whenever they are happening — AND, most importantly, that even if you show something live you will still have humongous audiences for your weirdo 1950s prime-time shows with announcers who seem to only emerge every four years, like cicadas. I mean, really — Al Trautwig? But I digress. On to the numbers:

First, the broadcast numbers — NBC “killed it,” as the kids would say, but just barely — up to 219 million viewers, just surpassing Beijing totals of 215 million. What matters to us here at MSR, of course, are the digital numbers, and there was a mild surprise in that unique visitors to the NBCOlympics.com website increased only slightly from the Beijing Games, with 57.1 million uniques this year compared to 51.8 in 2008 (see chart we screen-grabbed below). Mobile unique users, however, rocketed off the charts — 10.1 million uniques for the NBCOlympics mobile web site (compared to 6.5 million in 2008) and another 11.2 million downloads of the Olympics Live Extra app.

What do those numbers tell us? That the audience for mobile device viewing is still growing rapidly while the online audience is plateuing. All these numbers could also conceivably be much much bigger when you understand that because of the necessity of having a cable contract to view online, NBC limited itself to a potential audience pool of 100 million, which is the number of cable customers NBC said was eligible to watch the games online via its sites.

Some more tidbits: When it came to live streams, 63% of live streams were viewed on the web, 37% in the Live Extra App; and our favorite stat: “Users are averaging 111.4 live streaming minutes per viewer on the web and 94.3 live streaming minutes per viewer on the app.” So, that means that having a mobile app isn’t keeping people from watching for long long periods of time. You’re welcome, Verizon and AT&T.

Another screen grab of stats below. (Click on it, because it’s too big to fit on our page.) Go to the NBC page for more stats orgy.

Filed Under: Apps, NBC Sports, Olympics Tagged With: , , , ,

Ooyala, R&A Team up for British Open App — But You Still Need a Cable Contract to Watch Live Golf

July 17, 2012 by

Though we originally got excited here at MSR when we heard that the British Open’s app might feature another way to get live video of the event, as we expected, there is no getting around the need for a qualifying ESPN cable contract to watch the British Open via a mobile platform. As we said earlier today, this is ESPN’s baby and they are not going to let someone else end-run their mobile video strategy.

The British Open app, built by the video-services folks at Ooyala and the R&A, does have some neat stuff in it, highlights on demand and a live fly by of the course. What threw us off was the app store screen shot (see left) that shows a button for live video. But upon further review the live video link from the app merely redirects you to the WatchESPN app — for which you need a contract with Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS, Bright House Networks or Comcast to access the online content.

So — the app may be less useful than it originally appeared, especially if you don’t have a cable contract. According to Ooyala the app is available for Android phones, iPhones and iPads.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, British Open, Golf, iOS Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Facebook Gains Mobile Development Team with Spool Deal

July 16, 2012 by

Facebook has gained the development team, but not the technology or assets of startup Spool, a mobile app developer that has in the past created programs for both the Android and Apple iOS operating systems.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed but on its blog Spool announced that it was now becoming part of Facebook and that it was shutting down its site and provided instructions on how to move off of Spool.

The company had only come out of beta late last year and started 2012 off by raising $1 million from a number of angle investors that included SVAngle, Felicis Ventures, Start Fund, Stephen Chen, Bill Lohse and Charles River Ventures. Its apps enable users to bookmark Internet content, including video, for later reading both on and off line.

The move is part of a growing trend from Facebook, and others, to purchase companies more for their design teams and capabilities than their actual products. Some of the recent deals from Facebook include Face.com and Glancee. Google has recently purchased Quickoffice and Meebo.

For Facebook the recent deals all appear to be centered on enhancing its mobile technologies, an area that it has admitted it is having issues in monetizing. Facebook has said that Spool’s team will help develop building tools to facilitate consumption of mobile content.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Facebook, Google, iOS, Meebo, QuickOffice, Spool, Startup, Venture Capital Tagged With: , , ,

Fancru Takes up the Sports Fan Chat Challenge

June 12, 2012 by

Fans like to talk with fans, at least ones that share similar allegiances, and Fancru is seeking to exploit that with its sports app that will enable groups of like minded fans to chat as well as allowing you to reach out to your friends.

If this sounds a bit familiar it is. There are several other apps that are seeking to establish themselves as platform for fan interaction and FanCru realizes that it has to step up to the plate big time to enable it to be recognized above the noise in this space.

The app, currently only available for the iPhone (it will work on an iPad but is not optimized) is the brainchild of John Wagner, Fancru’s co-founder and president and Bill Diamond, co-founder and CEO. Wagner is a self proclaimed sports nut who constantly watches games and saw this as an opportunity for fans to share experiences with others both attending the sporting events and those following elsewhere.

The app has several different distinct functions, and in some ways it reminds you of a host of other apps such as Foursquare, since you can log in your location, ESPN, since it gives you scores, and rival apps such as Recapp which provide news articles about selected teams.

Similarities aside it has a game feed that connects you to other fans following an event. Then on top of that there is the Cheer & Vent function that allows you to vent etc as well as post images from where ever you are.

You establish an account and then select the sports teams and leagues that you want to follow-NFL, NCAA Football, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS and Brazilian Soccer. Add the teams you want and then you can connect to them via Facebook, Twitter, searching your address book, SMS and the old fashion way by including their names manually. You can check to see which teams have the most fans and earn points for prizes by doing various actions.

The company’s first version of the app, for all practical purposes a beta release, provided it with plenty of user feedback that it used to incorporate in its current offering. But it is not just listening to what fans think of the product that is important to the company. Available now for the iPhone the company is working on an Android release and then will optimize its iPhone app to efficiently run on iPads.

Fancru is taking an interesting approach in that it is seeking to engage teams and leagues into using its technology as possibly a front end to an app that the teams might be developing by opening up its SDK and APIs up to the market freely available.

It is hard to predict how that will work out for the larger, more established leagues such as the NFL and MLB. Right now MLB has AtBat as its official app, which it own. However MLB has been very proactive in trying to engage fans via a series of apps and contests and having like minded fans chat during games would seem to fall into the direction it is taking. There is also an effort to allow teams to add a local flavor to AtBat so that while the league might not adopt the technology local teams might have that option.

In addition Fancru has been accruing analytics about what its users are doing and so it would enable teams to better meet fans wants and needs, Wager points out. He sees the app as a valuable tool to teams that want to bring fans out to the events in a day when many have huge high definition televisions and are content with watching at home.

By enabling a team to have contests that could be centered on a game, a player or a section of seats it can bring fans into more active participation and with that more active attendance.

A challenge to an app of this sort will be breaking through the noise. The Apple App store has almost a million apps currently. There are slightly older rival apps that either point to a single sport such as GolfGamebook or are also more broadly based such as GrabFan, PlayUp and Kwarter.

Being a relatively new category helps since there really is not established leader and they are all facing the same uphill battle. In addition stadiums and leagues are only ow upgrading their wireless capabilities to enable in-game fan interaction. I suspect that within a year or two a huge number of fans will be using a chat technology that connects them to others in and out of the stadium.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Facebook, Fancru, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Major League Baseball, MLS, NBA, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NFL, PlayUp, Startup Tagged With: ,

Apple Details New iOS 6: Releases Mountain Lion and New Notebooks

June 11, 2012 by

Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference began this week in San Francisco, and a good example of the excitement it generates among the faithful is the fact that the 5,000 tickets that went on sale for $1,599 sold out in less than two hours, according to the Wall Street Journal. Reports are that some are now being scalped in front of the Moscone Center.

The joy of this event to me is that we get to see how the rumors about the event match up with the actual announcements. New operating systems, iPads, iPhones, new TV and more have all been promised by a variety of outlets, now we get to see what is true.

The company introduced two different OS at the show starting with the next generation iOS, iOS 6.0 with 200 new features including new map app, shared photo streams and very tight Facebook integration. Expect this in the late fall.

Also the latest Mac operating system, code-named Mountain Lion, which will be available next month for $19.99. Interesting notes from the keynote include Apple working with some big name auto manufacturers to incorporate Siri into their entertainment systems. Expect to see results from this in a year or so and brands include BMW, GM and Jaguar. Siri will also now be able to launch apps.

Lots of upgraded or new hardware on the PC side including an 11-inch MacBook Air with a 1.7 GHz processor starting at $1,099; a 13-inch MacBook Air with a 1.8 GHz processor starting at $1199, and 256GB of flash storage starting at $1,499.

Also some new MacBook Pro models including a 13-inch with a 2.5 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor starting at $1,499, a 15-inch MacBook Pro with either a 2.3 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor starting at $1,799; or with a 2.6 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor starting at $2,199. The 15-inch displays will feature high resolution Retina technology.

Some stats from the show
iMessage has 140 million users
Apple users send 1 billion messages daily
650,000 Apps of which 225,000 for iPad
Asia Pacific soon to be largest revenue geography for company

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Facebook, Google, Intel, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: , , ,
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