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ESPN’s New MNF Deal Shows That for Mobile Fans, the NFL Rules

September 8, 2011 by 1 Comment


Though the details of the new 8-year deal that ESPN and the NFL announced today are centered around broadcast rights for the popular Monday Night Football franchise, the incredible growth in viewership of digital ESPN NFL content is a sign that for mobile sports fans, football is king.

How big is mobile consumption getting? From the ESPN press release today, chew on these numbers for NFL content on the cable channel’s digital platforms:

— ESPN averaged 42.2 million unique visitors on the site in fall 2010; Sundays during the NFL season are the highest trafficked days of the year for ESPN.com

— During the 2010 season, NFL content represented 39% of the page views generated on ESPN.com, highest of any sport.

— The NFL fan spends over 50% more time with ESPN media than the average person;

— ESPN.com NFL coverage on Sunday and Monday (including the home page, NFL section and Fantasy Football section) averaged 47.4 million visits and 271.4 million minutes of usage during the 2010 season, a year-to-year increase of 20% on visits and 20% on minutes.

— NFL coverage (incl. NFL and Fantasy Football section) on the ESPN Mobile web site and ScoreCenter app in 2010 delivered 14.5 million visits and 101.4 million minutes each week, increases of 66% and 61%, respectively, versus the prior year.

With the season starting with tonight’s Green Bay/New Orleans matchup it will be interesting to see how many fans try to watch games on mobile platforms, either via direct connections (like Verizon’s NFL app or via the Sunday Ticket mobile platform) or through some other means like using a Slingbox. Clearly this is an area we’ll be watching closely so stay tuned for price and quality comparisons as the season rolls on.

Filed Under: Apps, ESPN, Monday Night Football, NFL, Tablets Tagged With: , , ,

‘Tour Tracker’ App Brings Race Action to Cycling Fans’ Phones and iPads

September 7, 2011 by 6 Comments

The Tour Tracker app shows not only live racing action, but also a wealth of race-related information, like elevation profiles and current standings. Credit: Tour Tracker.


The traditional time sacrifice made by cycling fans — hours spent waiting on a remote hillside for only a brief glimpse of the riders as they pass by — is now history, thanks to a revolutionary app that brings full live race action to phones and handheld devices.

At the recent USA Pro Cycling Challenge in Colorado, many fans were seen alongside race courses with mobile devices in hand, watching both the live race in front of them as well as the television-quality coverage provided by the Tour Tracker application, a free app for iPhones, iPads and Android devices.

Like the live TV coverage from the Versus cable channel, the Tour Tracker app brought live in-race coverage to fans’ mobile platforms, allowing people to both see the race in person — if for only a few seconds — while still following every second of action via their portable devices.

“It’s the perfect example of technology really solving a problem, instead of just being a cool device to play with,” said Rob O’Dea, one of the two brains behind Tour Tracker. As a professionally published cycling photographer (as well as a longtime successful marketing executive), O’Dea knows well the problem cycling fans have traditionally endured when it comes to watching races live: You might spend hours by the side of some remote mountain pass with no idea what was going on until you saw the racers quickly pass you by.

With the Tour Tracker app, all that is changed since fans can basically watch an entire stage unfold from start to finish, combining the best of the couch-potato TV-watcher and on-the-scene worlds. Sponsored by electronics retailer and pro cycling team sponsor Radio Shack for the USA Pro Challenge, the “Shack Tracker” was the buzz of the crowd lining the streets in Aspen and Vail during the two USA Pro stops there in late August, with people watching the race on their phones and iPads while waiting for the cyclists to arrive at their viewing spot.

Cycling fans in Aspen watch the USA Pro Challenge on an iPad while waiting for the racers to reach town. Credit: MSR.


Though Tour Tracker isn’t a brand new phenomenon — “it’s an overnight success that has been years in the making,” joked O’Dea — it’s safe to say that the combination of application maturity and great mobile-viewing platforms like the iPad are the perfect storm for an app that’s perfect for its intended audience — zealous cycling fans who want to watch both the entire race and the few seconds of live action, who can now do both things at once.

Close-up of the Tour Tracker app in action on an iPad. Credit: MSR.


Though O’Dea won’t give out audience download-number specifics (he says those stats are the ownership of the individual races like the USA Pro Challenge or the Tour de France, which Tour Tracker licenses its app to on a race-by-race basis) it’s a safe guess that it has probably already attracted hundreeds of thousands if not millions of viewers who learned of the app’s existence while watching the Tour de France or the USA Pro Challenge on TV this year.

Though this year’s app was already chock-full of important race information beyond the live action — such as elevation profiles, maps and even an fan-interaction forum via Twitter — O’Dea said that he and Tour Tracker co-founder Allan Padgett (one of the original architects of Acrobat, now part of software giant Adobe) have even bigger plans for 2012. For cycling fans, that’s like Christmas in July — knowing that they may never again miss a moment of the Tour de France, no matter where they may be.

A race fan follows the live coverage while watching course-side in downtown Vail during the USA Pro Cycling Challenge. Credit: MSR.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Tour de France, Twitter Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

On Wi-Fi Day, a Warning: Find Wi-Fi if You Want Sports on Your Phone

August 2, 2011 by 1 Comment

Attention, mobile sports fans: If you are thinking of watching a game anytime soon on your portable device, be prepared to find yourself some Wi-Fi — or get ready to pay Peyton Manning-like dough to stay connected.

Since today is officially “Wi-Fi Day” since the numerical date, 8-02-11 neatly corresponds with the IEEE designation for the Wi-Fi protocol (802.11) it’s a good time as any to start thinking about where you might be able to find a Wi-Fi connection for when you want to watch sports, especially live video, on your phone, pad or laptop. Why? Because the nation’s two biggest cellular carriers, AT&T and Verizon, have recently made it loud and clear that heavy users of wireless data will be forced to pay more for the service the more they use, and may even face data-download slowdowns if they use their phones too much.

AT&T this week let it be known that even those users who still have so-called “unlimited” data plans may see their cellular connections slowed down if Ma Bell decides you are using too much data. And Verizon’s new CEO spent part of the company’s most recent earnings call talking about how “tiered” data plans are inevitable and that cell phone users need to get used to a future where every bit is counted and charged for.

The good news is that both AT&T and Verizon are busy trying to set up free public Wi-Fi networks, especially at major sporting arenas, to help ease the cellular crush being caused by stadiums full of fans snapping pictures and sharing videos from their phones. The alternative is to find a Starbuck’s or other friendly eating establishment where you might be able to use a local Wi-Fi connection to get the bandwidth you’ll need to watch sports live on your phone for longer than a few minutes.

And if you are dead set on using your phone or tablet to watch sporting events via a cellular connection, now might be a good time to take a look at what Sprint has to offer, since as of this writing the No. 3 cellular carrier in the country is the only one still offering truly unlimited data plans for its new, faster 4G network.

We’ll have more on this topic soon but in the meantime it might not be a bad idea to take a look at Wi-Fi aggregators like iPass or Boingo to see if your corporate communications needs can sync up with your desire to stay connected with your favorite team.

Filed Under: AT&T, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, Wi-Fi Video Streaming Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Consumers slamming NBA mobile sports app downloads during playoffs

June 12, 2011 by 2 Comments

NBA Game Time app downloads up 250%

 There have been more than 680,000 downloads of the 2010-2011 National Basketball Association’s NBA Game Time free mobile application since the beginning of the playoffs, according to a report by Mashable.

The NBA Game Time surge marks another example of exponential growth in watching sports on iPads and smartphones when games really start to count. As reported, the NCAA’s March Madness on Demand (MMOD) application generated not only record downloads, but heavier than expected video downloads and longer user sessions then anticipated.

 

Turner Sports continues to lead in mobile sports production

In total, the NBA Game Time has exceeded 2.5 million downloads during its 82 regular-game season and playoffs, a 250 percent increase from the 2009-2010 campaign. NBA’s numbers were confirmed to Mashable by Turner Sports, which is in its third year managing digital properties for The Association.

The NBA's digital leader, Bryan Perez

Bryan Perez confirms NBA apps surging

NBA Digital senior vice president and general manager Bryan Perez told Mashable that NBA Basketball’s lightning-fast pace creates difficult production problems for a broadcaster, but the point has come where the games can be rendered quickly enough to provide consumers with a fulfilling experience.

 NBA Game Time is available for iPhone, BlackBerry and Android, as well as such connected device platforms as Apple TV, Google TV and Vizio Internet apps.

Filed Under: Android, Apps, BlackBerry, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Mashable, Mobile sports pioneers, NBA, NBA Game Time, Turner Sports, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

‘Way harder, intense look’ at Mobile Sports Production Underway at Turner Sports, exec says

June 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Picture of mobile sports broadcast visionary Michael AdamsonThere’s a large enough audience for mobile sports to spark Turner Sports to take a “way harder, more intense” look at mobile sports production, according to a recently posted Beet.TV video.

According to Michael Adamson, VP of Sports New Products, Turner Sports, the proof is the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament, which saw a 17 percent increase in online sports video consumption and a 63 percent increase in total viewership for March Madness on Demand (MMOD).

More mobile sports viewers “than we thought”

“For the first time, we saw a significant enough portion of our audience consume live games on mobile (to cause Turner) to take a way harder, more intense look at mobile video production,” said Adamson in the Beet.TV video. “It really pushed our numbers higher on mobile than we thought was going to happen this year.”

The “take” numbers across all of Turner Sports, CBS Sports and NCAA online, online streaming and mobile application rates are now large enough to warrant exploration into broadcasts tailored to mobile sports consumers, said Adamson.

“Most of our video streaming experiences that we’ve done for sports have been simulcasts or experiments with alternate-angle live streams,” said Adamson. “Now, we’re starting to think more about how to make sure we sync mobile video with broadcast, or how we sync syncing mobile video with mobile data. How do we make mobile video available as both companion (viewing) and primary (viewing) experience, and tie advertising in?”

Adamson’s comments are good news for the mobile sports consumer. In addition to March Madness, Turner Sports broadcasts NBA on TNT, Major League Baseball on TBS, NASCAR on TNT and PGA Championship and PGA Grand Slam golf.

iPad for sports extraordinary

Adamson said Turner Sports was wowed by the iPad viewership of March Madness, as well as the behavior patterns of mobile sports consumers watching hoops on the device.

“People were using the iPad more like a TV than a mobile device,” he said. “I don’t know that we would have expected that but we definitely saw it.”

Before March Madness, Turner Sports saw the iPad much more as a companion device for people watching sports on television, Adamson said. iPad viewers told Turner Sports through their behavior that iPad is ready for more intense mobile sports programming that embeds video inside a data-rich environment, he added. Watch for broadcasters to begin using iPad applications as a way to show people the games they want to see alongside a rich set of social media and location-based applications in the future, said Adamson.

Adamson made his comments to Beet.TV at paidContent Mobile 2011, held May 18, 2011 in New York.

Filed Under: BeetTV, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Mobile sports pioneers, NCAA Hoops, Turner Sports Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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