NBA – Page 9

AT&T: Data use growth continues during second rounds of NBA, NHL playoffs

May 23, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Photo: NBA.com

As the NHL and NBA playoffs march toward the championship rounds, fans at second-round playoff games continued to use more wireless data than during the regular season, according to figures from AT&T’s cellular networks inside the postseason-hosting venues.

For both leagues the average and overall usage was almost dead even — according to figures sent to us by AT&T, fans on its networks at NHL sites used a total of 5 terabytes of wireless traffic, an average of 210 GB per game. For the NBA, AT&T said it saw a total of 4.1 TB of data used during second-round games, for an average of 211 GB per game.

In the NBA, the leading data use on AT&T networks was at games hosted by the Oklahoma City Thunder, with an average of 422 GB per game at Chesapeake Energy Arena. For hockey the most data was used by fans at games hosted by the Dallas Stars at the American Airlines Center, where AT&T said it saw and average of 390 GB used per second-round game.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, Atlanta Hawks, DAS, Golden State Warriors, NBA, NHL Tagged With: 4G LTE, AT&T, DAS, Mobile Sports Report, NBA, NHL, Paul Kapustka

Cavs, Budweiser and YinzCam bring virtual reality experiment to Cleveland fans

May 4, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Fan testing the virtual-reality headset at Quicken Loans Arena. All photos: Cleveland Cavaliers

Approximately 750 fans were able to use the Cleveland Cavaliers’ stadium app and some cardboard headsets to get a virtual-reality experience while at Quicken Loans Arena for Wednesday’s playoff game between the Cavs and the Atlanta Hawks, according to the team.

Since we weren’t at the Q we couldn’t see the videos but according to the Cavs there was some VR content available Wednesday night via the YinzCam-developed team app, which if you were lucky to get one of the 750 promotional headsets that were given away, you could insert your phone and have a true, turn-the-head feel to the VR content, according to the team. Other fans could simply view the VR content on their phones, even without the headsets, the Cavs said.

Though there was no live VR content available, the canned-video experiment is just another leading-edge innovation for the Cavs at Quicken Loans Arena, one of the most technology-forward sports arenas around. According to the team it plans to repeat the VR experiment at some future playoff games, with another 1,500 Budweiser-branded headsets to give away.

Screenshot of Cavs app showing VR content tab

Cleverly, the headset “easily transforms into a handy Budweiser beer holder,” according to a press release.

“We’re always looking for new ways to connect with our fans by leveraging emerging technologies that deliver unique experiences. VR was a logical next step and an area we’re excited to explore,” said Mike Conley, Cavs VP of Digital, in a prepared statement. “The technology has endless opportunity and thanks to our partnership with Budweiser and Yinzcam, we’ve been able to get a head start in the emerging VR space with the new video content available on the Cavs App.”

No word yet on how well the headsets worked (as viewing devices or beer holders) or how many fans viewed the VR content, but it is at the very least a sign that VR may be closer to mainstream than you think, and that for savvy teams it can be an easy way to add a very visible sponsorship. Oh and by the way the Cavs also destroyed the Hawks 123-98, going up 2-0 in their series.

Here’s what the VR content looked like (kinda) in a 2D version

Filed Under: Apps, Atlanta Hawks, Basketball, NBA, YinzCam Tagged With: Apps, Budweiser, Cleveland Cavaliers, Mobile Sports Report, NBA, Paul Kapustka, Quicken Loans Arena, Virtual Reality, VR, VR headsets, YinzCam

T-Mobile Arena opens in Las Vegas, with 565 Wi-FI APs

April 13, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas, on the official April 6 opening. All photos: Cox Business (click on any photo for a larger image)

If they build it, will professional hockey or basketball teams come? The first part of that question has already been answered, with the official opening of T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on April 6, just in time for a kickoff concert from the Killers. With 565 Cisco Wi-Fi access points, the arena is well-enabled for wireless access; the big question is, will an NHL or NBA team soon call the place home?

With no deal announced for either league it’s an open-ended question. For now, the 20,000-seat venue, located just west of the strip near the New York New York hotel/casino (right next to the freeway) will have to be satisfied hosting all kinds of events from concerts to one-off sports events like the Harlem Globetrotters (April 19) and a WWE event in June. Fans at any event will be able to use free Wi-Fi provided by Cox Business, which is the “exclusive Technology Integration/Telecommunications Services Provider,” according to a press release from the official opening ceremonies.

While we haven’t visited the arena yet — we are looking forward to a hosted tour during this summer’s SEAT Conference in July — the $375 million multi-purpose venue, owned by a joint venture between AEG and MGM Resorts International, looks pretty cool with its overhanging lounges and outdoor plaza with real, live trees, a rarity on the strip. Inside, the tech underpinnings sound state of the art, beginning with a 10-Gigabit fiber optic network that serves as the arena’s backbone.

Special shrouds for the Wi-Fi APs

Custom shroud for Wi-Fi APs at T-Mobile Arena

According to figures provided to us by Cox Business folks, the 565 Wi-FI APs include a mix of indoor and outdoor models from Cisco, some designed for office-type settings and some designed to withstand outdoor temperatures and weather. According to Cox its on-site engineers also designed a “vanity cover” type of shroud, which is more aesthetically pleasing to the eye while also helping keep the AP safe from “disruptions,” like possibly being bumped or some other physical intrusion.

The arena will also use Cisco’s StadiumVision system to provide synchronized content feeds to the 767 4K-capable digital displays throughout the venue. Thanks to the Cox sponsorship, that content could include “all 60 channels of high-definition news, sports and entertainment content from the Cox cable channel lineup as well as live in-house feeds from the arena,” according to Cox.

We have also heard reports, but have not confirmed with the company, that Mobilitie will be providing the in-venue DAS. Mobilitie’s involvement is not a big surprise, given that the company partnered with MGM in the past to bring Wi-Fi to the resort company’s casinos. Back when the T-Mobile naming sponsorship was announced, there were reports of special discounts and VIP access for T-Mobile customers, but so far none of that information was easily discovered on the arena’s website. Stay tuned for more updates as we get them on the DAS/cellular side of things; anyone who visits the arena soon should take a speedtest and post the results here in the comments.

Jeff Breaux, vice president of western operations, Cox Business, (left) and Derrick R. Hill, vice president, Cox Business/Hospitality Network, gesture toward the exterior digital signage at T-Mobile Arena.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Basketball, Cisco, DAS, NBA, NHL, SEAT Conference, T-Mobile, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, AEG, DAS, Las Vegas, MGM, Mobile Sports Report, NBA, Paul Kapustka, Stadium Wi-Fi, T-Mobile, T-Mobile Arena, Wi-Fi

VenueNext app already paying off for Orlando Magic

March 9, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Screenshot of new Orlando Magic stadium app built by VenueNext

The NBA’s Orlando Magic, the first customer for VenueNext outside of Levi’s Stadium, is already seeing a revenue-generating return on its choice, according to figures released by the team and VenueNext.

New this year for fans at the Magic’s stadium, the 20,000-seat, Wi-Fi equipped Amway Center, the VenueNext-designed app is already generating new direct revenue of $500,000 through in-app advertisement sales, while also being used by fans to order food and drinks that can either be picked up at an express window, or for certain sections of the stadium, delivered to the seat.

With the NBA season just past the halfway point, VenueNext and the Magic said that the number of fans attending games in Orlando using the app on a monthly average is showing an almost 96 percent increase from last year and the team’s previous app. So far this year 30 percent of attendees have used the app, a figure at the high end of team-app usage.

Perhaps most interesting from a marketing standpoint is the stat claiming that 80 percent of season-ticket holders have used the app to gain entry to the arena and to manage their tickets, activity that can be mined by the team for marketing info. According to the team and VenueNext, mobile entry to the stadium has reached 26 percent of all fans, an increase of 200 percent over figures from last season.

Fast deliveries, increased ticket sales

Though neither the team nor VenueNext would provide any stats for average food orders placed per game or how many have been placed so far this year, they did say that deliveries — available to just a part of the stadium right now — are taking an average of 5 minutes and 26 seconds to complete. The ability to use the app to order in-seat delivery of food, drink and merchandise is one of the hallmarks of the VenueNext app used at Levi’s Stadium for San Francisco 49ers home games. At the recent Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium, the app allowed fans to order only drinks for delivery and food for express pickup; fans at the Super Bowl placed 3,284 food and beverage orders through the app, a stadium record.

Another screen view of the new Orlando Magic stadium app

The team also said that fans have been using the app to purchase more of the “Fast Break Pass” products that provide discounts for multiple-game purchases that aren’t full season tickets. According to a blog post by Orlando Magic CEO on the VenueNext website, the app has allowed the team to greatly expand its flexible-pass offerings:

Fast Break Pass sales are up 233% from last season, in part, because the app has given the Magic the ability to expand to six different Fast Break Pass products that span the entire course of a season, providing a unique product for an untapped market. The app also includes added location identifiers so Fast Break Pass holders can receive their seat assignments now once they are within a mile of the arena (previously it wasn’t assigned until they entered the building).

On the sponsorship side, the Magic said it sold the approximately $500,000 of in-app advertising to fantasy gambling outlet FanDuel and to Sun Pass, which we think is a Florida electronic tollroad payment operation. At Levi’s Stadium, the 49ers sold a similar in-app advertising package to eSurance for the 2014 season, producing $750,000 in revenue. The Magic app has a direct link to a FanDuel game.

The Orlando figures are a good selling point for VenueNext, which is still somewhat of a newcomer in the team and stadium app business, trailing leaders like YinzCam, which recently struck a deal to re-do 22 of the NBA team apps. While its performance at Levi’s Stadium and now at Orlando are significant, VenueNext recently fell short of its own publicly announced goal to sign up 30 new customers before the end of 2015, something the company announced when it revealed its $9 million funding round last year.

While some of those new clients may be signed but not yet ready to announce, VenueNext has only announced two other new clients besides Orlando, the New York Yankees and the Dallas Cowboys. Given that one of the investors in VenueNext was concert promoter Live Nation, it’s a good bet that some of the new clients may be concert arenas, and not just more sports stadiums.

Filed Under: Apps, Basketball, Levi's Stadium, NBA, Super Bowl, Venture Capital, VenueNext, Wi-Fi, YinzCam Tagged With: Amway Center, Apps, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, NBA, Orlando Magic, Paul Kapustka, San Francisco 49ers, VenueNext, Wi-Fi

Cuban: Fans shouldn’t look at phones ‘while the ball is in the air’

January 7, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Mark Cuban during CES panel. All photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR

LAS VEGAS, CES 2016 — On the subject of wireless technology inside stadiums, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is historically painted as an anti-tech crusader, based on an old story that has become more myth than truth, especially in the stadium-tech marketplace. Thursday at CES, Cuban clarified his thinking on wireless technology use during sports events, with a very clear nuance that shows the deep thinking that makes him a popular analyzer on numerous topics.

Cuban, maybe known better now outside the sports world for his reality/investment TV show Shark Tank, clarified his thinking on in-stadium wireless use during a panel discussion that was part of a special sports/tech series here hosted by Turner Sports. Since his team’s stadium has a robust Wi-Fi network, Cuban clearly isn’t against good connectivity anymore, and said Thursday that during breaks in game action, wireless technology should help fans do as much as possible to ease the game-day experience.

But when the “ball is in the air,” Cuban said, he still thinks fans should put phones back in their pockets or purses.

“Anytime I see someone looking at a phone [during play] I feel like we lose a little bit of them,” Cuban said. “Technology can work against you in an arena. You have to be very careful that you don’t do anything that will take the game away.”

Shaq greets fans after panel

Using tech to take away pain points

To be sure, wireless technology is only going to increase in NBA arenas, especially when the Sacramento Kings’ new Golden 1 Center opens this fall with one of the most-dense Wi-Fi deployments in any arena. Fellow panelist Shaquille O’Neal waxed eloquently about the Kings’ planned use of wireless technology to support wireless ticketing and marketing integration, all for the benefit of the fan experience.

In an earlier panel, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said league teams “have done a great job” making sure the connectivity inside arenas is a similar experience to “what people get at home.” But even with enough bandwidth to watch the game live at courtside on a phone, almost all of the panelists Thursday were in agreement that the live game experience would still remain wildly popular, even as technologies like virtual reality and on-player cameras make the TV experience that much better.

“People still crave the ability to be around other people,” said Silver, who called sports stadiums “the modern town hall” while noting that NBA season ticket sales were currently at all-time highs. Vivek Ranadive, owner of the Sacramento Kings, said during another panel that live streaming video and other over-the-top Internet experiences only serve to make the live game attendance that much more attractive.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver

“Only 18,000 people can come to the stadium,” said Ranadive, noting the capacity of the Golden 1 Center, slated to open for the 2016-17 season. The streaming video and social media outreach by the team, he said, “drives demand for the in-stadium experience.”

And that’s an experience, Cuban said, that simply can’t be duplicated at home, no matter how big a screen or how comfortable a couch.

“When the outcome of a game is hanging on a shot, if you’re there you’re holding your breath while the ball is in the air,” Cuban said. One fan told Cuban that he “did a big tree hug” on a total stranger after a recent last-second win by the Mavericks. “You’re not going to do that with some stranger in your living room,” Cuban said. “The energy you feel [in the stadium] is the most valuable part of the product we own.”

Filed Under: Basketball, DAS, NBA, Wi-Fi Tagged With: 4G LTE, Adam Silver, DAS, Golden 1 Center, Mark Cuban, Mobile Sports Report, NBA, Paul Kapustka, Sacramento Kings, Shaq, Shaquille O'Neal, Shark Tank, Stadium Wi-Fi, Vivek Ranadive, Wi-Fi

Ruckus, DAS Group Professionals, CommScope and Brocade all part of Sacramento Kings’ new tech-forward stadium

January 6, 2016 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Golden 1 Center in Sacramento taking shape earlier this summer. All photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any photo for a larger image)

Thursday morning at CES here in Las Vegas Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive is scheduled to speak and will no doubt tell the CES attendees about the Kings’ new stadium, the Golden 1 Center, and about how tech-loaded it is by design. But Wednesday night details emerged about the vendors helping the Kings with their extensive wireless deployment, and the list includes Ruckus Wireless, DAS Group Professionals, Brocade and CommScope, among others.

As previously reported by Mobile Sports Report, Ruckus gear will be used in the Wi-Fi deployment not just at the 17,500-seat Golden 1 Center, but also in the surrounding area, which is supposed to include a new public plaza and other developments, including hotel, office, housing and retail space. In the press announcement of all the tech underpinnings the Kings do not state exactly how many Wi-Fi APs will be in the stadium proper but instead say that there will be “more than 1,000” APs in both the stadium and surrounding plaza and developments. UPDATE, 1/10/16: The Kings have responded to clarify, saying there isn’t yet an exact AP count but density is expected to be in the area of one AP per 15 seats, which would put the final total well over 1,000 APs and easily be the most APs for a Wi-Fi deployment in any basketball/hockey arena we know of, and perhaps the most dense of any sporting venue (for now).

Since we’re nit-picking we’ll also question the Kings’ claim that Golden 1 Center will be “the first arena in the world to implement wide-band, multimode fiber technology” on the backbone, a curious claim since the fiber-based network at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field is already operational (and working quite well). UPDATE, 1/10/16: The Kings have responded and say that their implementation differs from Texas A&M’s passive optical network; we will provide further details and comparisons in the near future.

The DGP team at Levi’s Stadium for a summer interview included, L to R, Derek Cotton, director of engineering; Steve Dutto, president; and Vince Gamick, VP and COO. These guys are probably smiling again now that DGP will be part of the Golden 1 Center deployment.

Frothy claims aside, we are very interested in hearing more about the venue’s tech underpinnings, especially the combined DAS/small cell deployment being installed by DAS Group Professionals, the builders of the DAS network at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. According to the Kings’ release wireless powerhouse CommScope will be part of the infrastructure as well (along with bandwidth provider Comcast, a deal that was announced last month), and network backbone gear provider Brocade will also be involved, making Golden 1 Center a mini-me kind of version of Levi’s Stadium, where Comcast, Brocade and DGP are all also involved. (This is also not so surprising since we have heard rumors that the Kings hired some IT folks who previously worked on the Levi’s Stadium deployment.)

If there is an outlier to the deal it’s the Wi-Fi presence of Ruckus, which has had a tough year when it comes to potential stadium deployments. First Ruckus had a deal for Wi-Fi at the new San Jose Earthquakes soccer stadium but lost that when Avaya booted Ruckus off the pitch by purchasing naming rights to now-Avaya Stadium for $20 million. More recently, Ruckus was part of an initial winning bid with integrator 5 Bars for the Wi-Fi deployment at Houston’s NRG Stadium, but was replaced at the last minute by Extreme Networks to unspecified and unconfirmed pressure, most likely by the NFL. On the plus side, Ruckus gear was used for the Wi-Fi deployment at Angels Stadium in Anaheim, as well as at Indian Wells Tennis Garden, site of the big spring pro tennis tourney.

We will try to fill in more blanks and details during Ranadive’s appearance Thursday (like who will be designing the team app, which we are guessing might be VenueNext), but the real proof of the Golden 1 pudding won’t come until October, since you never can tell how a stadium network will work until it’s turned on for a full house of device-holding fans. That’s why we don’t put much stock in theoretical claims, like the Kings’ ridiculous promise that the network can handle “over 500,000 Snapchat posts per second” — that’s some fast fingers for a full house of 17,500, no? When it comes to feeds and speeds we are firmly in the show-me house, so we hope the Kings and Golden 1 Center will be as open with their real-world statistics come next fall as they are with press-release superlatives now.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Basketball, Comcast, DAS, Levi's Stadium, NBA, VenueNext, Wi-Fi, Xfinity Tagged With: 4G LTE, Brocade, CommScope, DAS, DAS Group Professionals, Golden 1 Center, Levi's Stadium, Mobile Sports Report, NBA, Paul Kapustka, Ruckus Wireless, Sacramento Kings, Stadium Wi-Fi, Vivek Ranadive, Wi-Fi