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Who’s Going to Get the Tablet Rights for NFL Games?

January 31, 2012 by 3 Comments

We all know by now that the Super Bowl is going to be streamed live by NBC, and also to Verizon Wireless smartphones via Verizon’s NFL Mobile app. It will be interesting to see what the viewer metrics are after the fact. But the bigger item on the horizon is who will snag the tablet, aka iPad rights for NFL broadcasts going forward?

I was thinking about this potential conflict earlier today when I read a report from my ex-GigaOM collegue Liz Gannes who was covering a talk with ESPN president John Skipper at the D: Dive Into Media conference. Skipper’s crew seems like it has clear vision on what the Worldwide Leader needs to do with mobile, which as we heard yesterday is the prime platform ESPN develops for.

Inside the industry ESPN is unique since it not only is a network, it is also a content creator as well as a clearinghouse for overall information. The latter is mainly SportsCenter, its enormously popular highlights show that dominates the sports world. But more recently ESPN has become a content creator/provider by bidding for broadcast rights to games themselves, across all major sports and a lot of minor ones too.

While finding broadcasts on TV is fairly easy — you just look up to see which network is broadcasting the game — on digital devices the access has been murky. Verizon does have an exclusive deal to show live games on phones, but that’s only covered Monday Night Football, Thursday night NFL Network games and the Sunday NBC games. ESPN, meanwhile, retains MNF rights for tablets but won’t show the games on phones because of Verizon’s deal. DirecTV Sunday Ticket customers this year could opt for a package that gave them access to the Sunday Ticket via mobile — an interesting twist but as a subset of a subset not really a mass-market solution.

The big question still out there is who will get tablet rights for NFL broadcasts going forward? Right now Verizon can’t offer NFL Mobile on an iPad, which would seem to be a bit of a no-brainer except it isn’t. The tablet market, aka iPad, is getting bigger every moment and it will be interesting to see how the tablet rights get broken out, or whether they are bundled into the overall broadcast rights for a hefty increase in fees. According to Liz’s report, ESPN won’t buy rights without all platforms included:

Since 2005, ESPN has made sure that all its content deals include rights for every device. As Skipper put it, “We don’t cannibalize ourself, we use those platforms to cross-promote.”

After several digital stops and starts ESPN seems to have crystalized its mobile thinking behind the WatchESPN idea, where you download an app and have access to all ESPN programming — so long as you also have a contract with a qualifying cable provider. This is a smart move because it keeps the people paying ESPN the big bucks happy, while giving the cable customers the kind of access that is commonplace for all other kinds of media.

Maybe sometime in the future ESPN will offer a non-cable-customer price to access all its content digitally, but for now it seems content to keep its window open only to those customers willing to pay.

Here’s the link to Liz’s story again. Good stuff, wish I was at that conference.

Filed Under: Apps, ESPN, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Monday Night Football, NFL, NFL Mobile, NFL Network, SportsCenter, Super Bowl, Tablets, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , ,

NBA Wastes No Time Slamming Griffin’s Monster Dunk Onto Social Media

January 30, 2012 by 4 Comments

That didn’t take long, did it? Minutes after LA Clipper Blake Griffin completely posterized Oklahoma City’s Kendrick Perkins, the dunk of the year in all its glory was all over the web, even in a slo-mo clip embedded above on YouTube, courtesy of the NBA.

Remember when you had to wait for the next SportsCenter to view highlights? Or could only see somebody’s hazy shot of a webcam capture of a TV screen? Those days are so 2010. Welcome to the new era, where sports is served up immediately, social-media style. Right now Kendrick Perkins, #dunkoftheyear and Blake Griffin are all trending on Twitter and if you don’t get a link there just hit Google News and the NBA is already serving up league-approved clips of the dunk.

The takeaway, other than the fact that this dude is perhaps the all-time slam champion: Nobody’s waiting for TV anymore. The big screen might still be the best place to watch, but it’s no longer the first.

Of course, SportsCenter wasn’t far behind. This tweet hit a minute after our post. Glad to know they’re burning the midnight oil in Bristol. Or maybe down in LA where ESPN left coast hangs out.

#SCtop10 What name should we give Blake Griffin’s dunk over Kendrick Perkins: http://t.co/P75l8m71

January 30, 2012 10:55 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@SportsCenter

SportsCenter

Filed Under: ESPN, NBA, Twitter, YouTube Tagged With: , ,

ESPN: We Design First for the Mobile Experience

January 30, 2012 by 2 Comments

There’s a lot of talk on the interwebs today about ESPN saying that it designs its content sites and programs first for the mobile experience, a statement that is not so surprising on its face but still probably somewhat of a shock to the general public who still thinks of ESPN as something you watch on a TV, either in a bar or in your living room.

But as our old pal Om Malik notes, with 400 million smartphones out there it’s pretty clear what’s going to happen. Om says:

With more than 400 million smartphones expected to be sold, it makes perfect sense for sports to get the mobile bump. I mean, don’t we want the baseball gossip, score updates or results of the F1 race when on the go?

The obvious takeaway from ESPN is: The future of fat profits in content is mobile, and we’re all over it. What that means for startups and established players looking to get into the mobile-sports arena is that your business plan better have a provision for what you will do when the WorldWide Leader becomes your competitor.

The design-for-mobile-first mantra is widespread in the sports content world — it is even part of our internal thinking here at humble MSR — but when big players like ESPN and Bleacher Report start talking about how mobile isn’t something in the future but something that is here now it makes sense.

For most desktop Internet connections, bandwidth, screen size and network latency generally aren’t problems when it comes to site experience. On a small handset with extreme variables in network connection, screen size and local processing power, how a site is designed has a huge impact on how it is seen. And you don’t need any exhaustive usability studies to tell you that people don’t come back to a site that doesn’t load or isn’t usable on a small screen. With development resources in demand everywhere, it makes sense to put an emphasis on mobile, which is growing fast and has the more-stringent demands.

At least it does to ESPN. If you’re a business looking at the mobile-sports space, the question is now: if the leader is already there, what are you doing to design for mobile?

The MediaPost recap by Mark Walsh of the keynote speech from Michael Bayle, vice president and general manager of ESPN Mobile, is worth a long read because it touches on a lot of places where ESPN sees mobile going. But a quick grab of a stat from the post should make it easily understandable why ESPN cares so much:

Bayle pointed out that its mobile audience across its mobile properties has surpassed 20 million, with users spending 45% more time with ESPN mobile content in 2011 than the prior year. ESPN Mobile now ranks as the company’s fourth-largest network and it has 150,000 people plugged into its mobile offerings at any given time.

Sounds like it’s more than just cowboys at horse troughs watching ESPN in a mobile fashion. And it will be more so going forward.

Filed Under: bleacherreport, ESPN, Live sports via mobile Tagged With: , ,

Who Will Build a Kindle for Sports? Millions of Fans Await the Answer

January 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

One great comment I heard at CES in Las Vegas this week was that tablet computers are “the killer app for watching video.” To that I would add a caveat: Tablets could also become the complete killer app for watching sports in a mobile fashion, if and only if the leagues, cellular providers and broadcasters could come to some workable agreement on viewing rights. What could make all that happen quickly? Why not something like Amazon’s Kindle, but instead of books, have it devoted to sports?

The real revolution started by the Kindle isn’t the cool technology behind the device itself. Instead it’s the simple pricing and content procurement method which eliminates the need for consumers to care about the cellular connection and simply allows them to pay for the books they want to read. If only sports could be so simple.

In the real world, we know it’s far from easy to get sports content on your mobile device. Just trying to definitively describe how you could get Monday’s BCS Championship game to show live on a mobile device took a weekend’s worth of reporting and numerous email exchanges with the supremely helpful ESPN folks. It’s not all ESPN’s fault that its mobile offerings are so constricted, but the fees ESPN charges cable providers play a part in the snarl of rights and access barriers that make mobile sports viewing such a pain in the rear.

The hope here at MSR is that all parties concerned learn some lessons from the digital music business, where a simple store and powerful simple device — iTunes and iPod — led to an explosion in sales of music, videos, podcasts and now books too. The Kindle is an extension of the iPod/iTunes simplicity to the mobile ecosystem, eliminating the concerns about how much data you’re downloading and whether or not you are exceeding your monthly mobile limits. Why not build one tailored for sports, with the connectivity costs and rights fees built in? If half a million people went through the maze of tasks necessary to watch the BCS game online, what could the size of that audience be if folks could walk down to Best Buy, pick up a “KindleSports” and start watching immediately?

At another CES panel I heard representatives from the major motion picture houses talk about how mobile video is no longer a future thing, but a booming business already grabbing millions of viewers and the associated advertiser interest. It’s time for sports entities to get into the game in a similar big way, and a KindleSports would be a great way to start. I would be just one of the millions waiting in line to buy one.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, AT&T, BCS, ESPN, ESPN3, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Football, Tablets, WatchESPN Tagged With: , , , , ,

ESPN Scores with 523,000 Online Viewers for BCS

January 10, 2012 by 1 Comment

The game may have been a dud for all but Alabama fans but the BCS Championship was an online success for cable giant ESPN, with 523,000 online viewers tuning in via the various mobile and online platforms and devices.

With the regular television audience for the game racking up the second-highest viewer total for a cable program (with 24.2 million viewers, trailing only last year’s BCS game which attracted a regular TV audience of 27.3 million viewers) once again the online audience showed that it isn’t much of a distraction or detriment to the regular broadcast numbers.

Going forward there should be even bigger numbers for ESPN online viewership, now that cable giant Comcast’s customers will be able to utilize the WatchESPN service thanks to a recent agreement between the companies. It will be interesting to see how the college/cable online audiences stack up to the upcoming Super Bowl, which will also be streamed online for the first time.

Filed Under: BCS, ESPN, ESPN3, NCAA Football, WatchESPN Tagged With: ,

Looking For the BCS in 3D? ESPN Has Your Back!

January 9, 2012 by 4 Comments

The Sports network, long a backer of 3D, pulls out the stops for the broadcast

Did you splurge on a 60-inch HDTV and a set of 3D glasses but have already seen Avatar 4 times with your kids? Then tonight’s huge BCS Championship game between LSU and Alabama is your chance to see your system strut its stuff.

While the broadcast, with ESPN lead broadcasters Brent Musberger and Kirk Herbstreit handling the main announcing duties will be available in both a regular broadcast mode as well as in 3D, marking ESPN’s 39th 3D football broadcast in the last 2 years.

Aside from the commentary from the 2D broadcast the rest of the 3D show will be just that, 3D. There will be a total of 11 3D cameras at the event including one in the SkyCam to go with the 2D cameras that are present there.

However that is just the tip of the iceberg. There will be a 3D Ultra Slo Motion camera on a cart that moves along the sideline, that was developed for use by Fletcher Chicago with technology and cameras from I-Movix using Vision Research cameras for ESPN 3D.

One 3D camera on each goalpost, 3 lightweight miniaturized handheld, also developed for ESPN 3D, one of which transmits wirelessly enabling greater access for the technology. A 3D game camera on a 28 foot high mast on a cart that moves along the sideline provide shots close to the action and last but not least a 3D First Down Line that was developed by ESPN Technology.

This is a time to see what 3D can really do if you do ot have a 3D enabled television it could be worth your while to call a friend and volunteer to bring the wings and beer to get the experience watching an event that is capable of showing it off in all its glory. All that is missing is a holographic image of yourself on the sidelines.

Filed Under: BCS, ESPN, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Football Tagged With: ,
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