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Super Bowl Online: 2.1 Million Uniques, Lots of Room for Improvement

February 7, 2012 by 5 Comments

The stats are in and as expected, the live Internet streaming of Sunday’s Super Bowl game was by far the biggest online audience ever for a sporting event with 2.1 million unique viewers, according to a press release from the NFL.

Broadcast both on the NBC Sports website as well as to smartphones via Verizon Wireless’s NFL Mobile app, the online showing of Super Bowl XLVI racked up some impressive numbers, according to the NFL:

Online Traffic Data
Unique Users – 2,105,441 (live stream online)
Live Video Streams – 4,589,593 (live stream online)
Total Minutes Streamed – 78,624,422
On-Demand Clips – 1,838,812 VOD clips viewed
User-Generated Camera Switches – 1,835,676
Engagement – More than 39 minutes per visit.

Verizon Wireless also confirmed that the Super Bowl was the “most viewed” game on the NFL Mobile platform all season (what a surprise!) but the company’s weak press release didn’t reveal any actual numbers. We’ve asked Verizon PR for more info but have not gotten a reply as of yet.

We also find it hard to agree with the canned quotes in the NFL’s release from Kevin Monaghan, senior vice president, business development & managing director digital media, NBC Sports Group, who claimed the online show lived up to fans’ expectations. This fan for one didn’t like the fact that the online show was 3 to 4 plays behind the TV show, making it nearly impossible to use as a “second screen” device since it was so far behind what was happening in front of you. Monaghan had a different view, according to his quotes in the press release:

“Increasingly, sports fans are looking to digital coverage as a complementary ‘second screen’ experience, and we delivered on that promise with unprecedented robust coverage. The record traffic that grew throughout the event, as well as the record high engagement numbers, underscores the complementary aspect of digital as an enhancement to our exceptional television coverage.”

With no way to question Monaghan (we tried tweeting @NBCSportsPR asking why the broadcasts were so far apart but got no reply) we’ll just have to stomp our digital feet a little bit louder to hope for a closer sync in the future. And others around the web didn’t think too much of the limited screen choices and sometimes skippy transition process — and the fact that getting Silverlight installed on a Chrome browser for a Mac was a chore (we got it done on the laptop Sunday but it took two tries because the download screen hung the first time).

But all in all those are some small problems to what will likely be viewed as a watershed moment in sports broadcast history, when we all switched from thinking, “Wow, cool, it’s online — I never expected that!” to something more like “how many different online options to watch do I have?” Especially since Sunday’s TV broadcast was the latest Super Bowl to win the “most watched program ever” award with 111.3 million viewers, it’s obvious that having an online choice — even one that attracts 2.1 million viewers — doesn’t detract from the live TV audience.

For all other promoters the question now becomes: What are you going to do to get your event online, and to make it more competent than the Super Bowl? Getting the broadcast at least close to the same time as live TV would be a start.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NBC Sports, NFL, NFL Mobile, Super Bowl, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , ,

Super Bowl’s Social/Mobile Angles Don’t Move the Needle

February 5, 2012 by 5 Comments

My quick post-game take on the whole “social Super Bowl” angle is that I don’t think any of the ad campaigns really moved the social-networking needle. Though I missed part of the first quarter I didn’t see any ads that asked for an online audience interaction, which might have been fun. And the mobile game platforms, both NBC’s website broadcast and Verizon’s NFL Mobile app, were so far behind the live action they were useless as a “second screen” for viewers also watching the television.

A quick kudo to Twitter for not crashing in what was probably the most-active day ever on Twitter (which is kind of a meaningless stat since every big event for the foreseeable future will become “the biggest” as Twitter becomes more mainstream and adds more users). But I have to give a conditional “fail” to NBC’s online broadcast of the game, which was anywhere from three to four plays behind the live action, even showing commercials while the “real” game was live.

Though I understand why technically the online show might be slower, the wide gap made it impossible to keep the laptop (or tablet) open while watching the game on TV, eliminating the whole “second screen” thing that the online broadcast was supposed to enable. Plus I was underwhelmed by NBC’s multiple-choice camera views — they were uninteresting and pretty much blah compared to the rapid-fire screen switching you get from watching professional broadcasters produce a game live. So maybe that whole viewer-choosing-the-camera thing is overrated.

And Verizon’s NFL Mobile app, while glitch-free over in-house Wi-Fi and a 4G cellular signal, was still anywhere from 23 to 28 seconds behind the live action, also rendering it useless except maybe for trips to the bathroom. But with all the commercial breaks that’s hardly a concern during the Super Bowl. Maybe these alternative platforms will be more important for events with multiple things happening at once, like the Olympics or a golf tournament like the Masters. And maybe advertisers will become more bold and try more live interactive ads in the future. But for right now the “Social Super Bowl” didn’t live up to its advance billing.

UPDATE: As we thought, the Twitterers were out in force:

In the final three minutes of the Super Bowl tonight, there were an average of 10,000 Tweets per second.

February 5, 2012 8:43 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite
@twitter

Twitter

Filed Under: Facebook, iPad, Live sports via mobile, NBC Sports, NFL, Super Bowl, Twitter, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , ,

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: , , ,

Super Cellular Battle II: AT&T, T-Mobile Beef Up Indy Coverage; But What About Twitter?

January 24, 2012 by 6 Comments

If your call, text or tweet doesn’t get through from the Super Bowl in Indianapolis, you probably won’t be able to blame the phone companies. Today AT&T and T-Mobile joined Verizon Wireless and Sprint in announcing special plans to increase wireless capacity for the Feb. 5 showdown between New England and New York, which is expected to attract enough folks to completely fill the 70,000-seat Lucas Oil Stadium.

From the info provided so far it looks like AT&T has done the most in terms of bringing wireless resources to the Indy table: According to the press release AT&T is not only expanding the DAS antenna coverage inside the arena, it is also firing up a public Wi-Fi hot zone in the adjacent neighborhood, while also adding some outside DAS deployments as well as driving nine COWs (cell towers on wheels) in for the party. Indy is also one of the select cities where AT&T has launched its new 4G LTE network, so it’s a good guess that the infrastructure there is new and ready to rock. Safe to say, AT&T probably isn’t going to experience a SXSW style cellular fail at the Super Bowl this year.

T-Mobile, the nation’s fourth largest wireless provider, had sort of a me-too feel to its announcement but things like free charging stations (at the T-Mobile store that is near the stadium) and a T-Mobile sponsored relaxation zone with couches and hot beverages might come in handy if you are in the area. T-Mobile says it has also beefed up backhaul inside the stadium and throughout Indianapolis in general, so if you are a T-Mobile customer you should be OK come game day.

Still unanswered is the question of whether or not popular Internet sites like Twitter are making similar infrastructure preparations for the expected surge in traffic. We still haven’t seen any explanation or mea culpas from Twitter in regards to Sunday’s multiple fail whale appearances, other than a small status report that says everything got fixed. As Jim Rome says, better head to Fry’s, guys, and beef up that server farm.

Awesome day for the NFL, terrible day for Twitter. Better hit up Fry’s for a server or two before the Super Bowl.

January 22, 2012 9:24 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@jimrome

Jim Rome

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, NFL, Sprint, Super Bowl, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Super Cellular Battle: Verizon Adds DAS, Sprint Calls on the COWs

January 18, 2012 by 4 Comments

Portable cellular tower on light truck -- aka a "COLT." Credit: Verizon Wireless

In addition to the football game, there’s a cellular supremacy battle going on in advance of the NFL’s Super Bowl on Feb. 5, as wireless providers are bringing in extra technology to make sure all their customers’ calls go through on the big day in Indianapolis.

The cellular conundrum facing sporting events is old hat to readers of Mobile Sports Report, who know about the bandwidth challenges when 70,000 of your closest friends show up on Sunday and all try to post to Facebook at the same time. For the Super Bowl in Indy’s Lucas Oil Stadium Verizon Wireless has the inside lead, by installing a Distributed Antenna System (DAS), basically a bunch of small cellular antennas hung inside the building to provide better reception. AT&T put a DAS in the Superdome ahead of the BCS championship, and has put DAS installs in other stadiums like Cowboys Stadium in Dallas.

There’s an excellent walk-through with geek-heavy pictures about the Verizon updates in this post by theGadgets blog, which apparently is local to the Hoosier locale. Verizon is also installing public Wi-Fi networks inside both the stadium and the nearby convention center, and will improve outside coverage by bringing in COWs, aka Cell towers On Wheels — mobile antennas that beef up coverage. Verizon notes that Indianapolis is one of its 4G LTE coverage areas, so customers with access to Verizon’s newer faster network will have 4G access at the game, all the better to watch the mobile stream of the Super Bowl via the NFL Mobile app, only available from Verizon.

Also calling in the COWs is competitor Sprint Nextel, which according to a press release out today will drive in two COWs for the stadium, two at the Super Bowl village and one more at the University of Indianapolis (the NFC practice facility). Sprint also says it has “added capacity to 21 CDMA [3G wireless] sites and seven iDEN [push to talk] sites around downtown and surrounding area hotels, including a major capacity upgrade inside the stadium.”

We are still waiting for an official AT&T response but you can bet Ma Bell will also be beefing up its cellular arsenal in advance of the Feb. 5 game day. All good news for connected fans who want to stay linked while they’re at the big game.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, AT&T, BCS, NFL, NFL Mobile, Sprint, Super Bowl, Verizon Wireless 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: , , , , ,
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