STADIUM


The Star Of The Jets/Bills Game: FanVision

Posted by Dan in MOBILE, STADIUM, TELEVISION on 10-06-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

fanvisionI went up to Buffalo, N.Y. last weekend to watch the Jets-Bills game, and as we all saw, it really wasn’t much of a contest.  Two things impressed me, though: LaDainian Tomlinson and FanVision – a sort of sports video PDA that worked at the stadium.

This wireless video player with a 4.6-inch screen gives you your own personal TV feed of the game right at your seat. I especially liked the multiple camera angles to choose from, and even some access to out-of-town games. If you are a fantasy football player the device will also track your players’ progress around the league that day.

For now, the device is only available in a limited number of NFL stadiums, but that’s changing. They also are adding other sports like golf.  If you act now you can get the device for $199, before the price jumps back up to the regular $259.




Hey NFL: Stop The Blackout Madness!

Posted by Seth in INTERNET, STADIUM, TELEVISION on 10-04-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Growing up in Pittsburgh in the wake of the Super Steelers of the 1970s, I never had to worry about the NFL’s pesky television blackout rules. But football fans in places like Tampa Bay and San Diego haven’t been so lucky, and now they’re using technology to fight back.

There’s a patchwork of websites that illegally deliver feeds of NFL games. Some work better than others. Some are here one week and gone the next. And the NFL has its panties in a bunch about the whole thing. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, a bunch of bars and restaurants that displayed illegal feeds of a recent Tampa Bay Buccaneers game got cease and desist letters from the NFL — as if the league has nothing better to worry about, what with Braylon Edwards driving drunk in Manhattan.

For the record, the NFL requires that any game that isn’t sold out by 72 hours before kickoff is blacked out within a 75-mile radius of the stadium. Give the crotchety crew that runs this league credit for knowing their content is valuable, and for doing everything they can to milk every dime out of it. Perhaps the folks who run the media business might take note of that … but I digress.

For any number of reasons, this blackout rule is preposterous. First — and everyone is going to tell me I’m crazy about this, but I don’t care — the NFL is best experienced on TV, especially since the advent of HD. You go to the stadium and you’re sitting hundreds of feet away and probably at a bad angle. Why do you think Jerry Jones put in the mother of all scoreboard video screens at Cowboys Stadium? Think maybe it has something to do with the fact that in an 80,000-seat stadium you can’t really see the action? You watch on TV and you’ve got a seat on the line of scrimmage for every play, plus endless replays to see exactly what happened.

Beyond that, have you priced a ticket to an NFL game lately? In case you hadn’t noticed, the league has been making a big push for ticket sales through NFL.com, and they’ve set up a way for ticket holders to sell tickets they’re not going to use. Just for the hell of it, I went on there and picked a team at random — the St. Louis Rams — and went looking for seats. The best you can do for nose-bleed seats in the upper deck of the Edward Jones Dome is $33. Most of the seats ticket holders were selling were priced higher than that, and you’ll definitely pay more if you buy the seats directly from the team.

So here’s your choice: Pay too much money for nose-bleed seats and get the “thrill” of sitting too far away to see anything, or risk the NFL’s wrath and watch an illegal stream on the web. In the current economic climate, and with the money they charge for tickets, it’s a little unseemly for the NFL to continue enforcing the blackout rule.




Boxin’ In Da Bronx: A Sport’s Geek Guide

Posted by Jonathan in STADIUM on 05-17-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Leave it to the only municipality in the country with a “The” in the name to bring a bizarre twist to the world’s oldest sport: The Bronx will host the first outdoor boxing match of any scale in New York since the Bicentennial in 1976. Rabbinical scholar — I’m not kidding; that’s true — Yuri Foreman will fight three time world champion Miguel Cotto in a WBA super welterweight fight.

I spoke with the press rep over at Top Rank Boxing, who is producing this event, and by his account, Bob Arum has waited decades to bring top rank boxing to The Bronx. And clearly the man is not skimping on the technology in this event. He’s hired the same designer that created the World Wrestling Entertainment rings and venues, and the Pacquiao/Clottey fight ring at Cowboys Stadium.

But as fab as it sounds — and I personally can’t wait to see what this is really like, I’m arranging a tour as I write this — many questions remain. Quotes in the major media say 40,000 are expected to attend. Which will leave about 25,000 seats empty, 10K will sit near the ring. And the stadium holds 54K. That’s a lot empty seats.  With the ring set up on right center field near the first base line, clearly the crap seats will be the bleachers down the third base line. And who knows who effective the four screens shown will be at bringing the fight to them.

Which mean,  if it rains, the Yankee Stadium could feel decidedly CitiField like. That is, empty.




Passing on iTailgating: The iPad Ain’t Goin’ To The Game

Posted by Jonathan in STADIUM on 04-25-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Looks like “iTailgating” won’t be a word we start using anytime soon.

Now that we’ve spent some time with the iPad, it’s clear that you’d be nuts to bring one anywhere near a live sporting event.

Besides that fact that the iPad are expensive, and oddly clunky at pretty close to 2 pounds, the tablet computer is simply is not bright enough to work outside nor nimble enough to survive in a crowded stadium or arena.

Beside being sort of fragile — I would not want to drop a unit — the major issue with the iPad and live sports is the screen. It does not produce enough light to work in even average sunlight. And when there is a legible image, all that glam silveriness and awesome e-reader clarity makes the unit sort of a mirror. Like what Silver Surfer would read with. So text on the screen is difficult to interact with.

Surprisingly, portability is an issue. Sure, the iPad makes a fab eReader and chilling on the couch is fun, but you can’t jump put of your seat with this sucker since you need a hand to hold onto it with. Some sort of velcro backing that you could stick on your pants, like an iPad holder, is needed.

Now, for sure, the iPad remains the way to browse in your lap. And then watch the game on TV. Parked on the couch, stuff like the iPad MLB app is way slick. But move around in 3-D sports terrain, and suddenly the iPad is brittle, hard to use and kind of clunky, frankly.

Bring it to the game at your own risk.




Beer Pipeline Protests Ahead Of World Cup.

Posted by Jonathan in STADIUM on 04-06-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

With all due respect to Tiger and the iPad, here’s a real sports tech story: Hot and cold running beer. Pipelines — like legitimate oil and natural industry quality pipes, pumps, ducting and support technology — are beginning to spring up in soccer stadiums around the world.

And fans are calling for more hot running beer rather than less.

The Veltins-Arena, located in the German town of Gelsenkirchen, started the trend with a 5 kilometer beer line that runs from downtown breweries directly to stadium concessions. The “web-stimate” (that’s the sum of the nonsense that passes for facts here on the Web) is that 60,000 some-odd spectators consume something on the order of 2,500 kg of sausages, 7,000 pretzels, 1,000 m2 of pizza and 55,000 litres of beer per matchday. Assuming that is even half correct, that’s a lot to eat for a 90 minute game. And the world seems ready for more foamic infrastructure: L Magazine reported that students in Gothenberg, Sweden stagged a protest in January for a similar beer line run directly to their student union. And there are reports of Russians wanting to install a similar system in a Moscow stadium.

No word yet on how World Cup officials will be modifying their stadiums to meet this growing need for free flowing foam..




World Cup Stadium rip off? Not so simple an equation

Posted by Jonathan in STADIUM on 03-17-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

In case you hadn’t heard, there’s a bunch of big ole soccer games expected to go on in South Africa later this year; FIFA will hold its World Cup in the land of the Cape of Good Hope. Here is the full list of stadiums. Already ,the event is getting some bad press. CNN is talking up how some of the fields are not done yet. And the New York Times is pointing out how stadiums are doing nothing to help the poor.

So I figured, it’s time for an honest look under the fiscal hood.

Right away, there is much that makes the World Cup unique. First, this is an event where participants are paid to win. Take a look through this Wikipedia post, and you’ll see that the winning team takes home a cool $30 million, and most every organization that advances gets a solid 8-figure deal.

Simply sum all that money up and you get nearly $480 million. That compares rather decently to the $1 billion spent for the event so far. In soccer, money really does flow out to the teams, and eventually the fans that support them. Imagine what college basketball would be like if the NCAA paid its teams to win its big time tournaments.

What South Africa spent on the games is actually dirt cheap when compared with other world sporting events. The $15 billion Beijing dropped on the Olympics is the current leader. And the London games will probably come in at about half that — still six times better than what South Africa is spending.

Now all this is so much bean counting, but you see the point: In any practical, dollar-for-dollar measure, the World Cup, while not cheap, is a bargain compared with other international sports mega events. And while the world has to figure out how to better share its wealth, the fact is, the World Cup actually makes some economic sense.

It’s not perfect. But World Cup soccer is no worse than any other sporting event.

And in many ways, it is better.




Hendrix At Superbowl Halftime?

Posted by Jonathan in STADIUM, TELEVISION on 02-08-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Jimi at the first "Superbowl" via The New York Times

I mean no diss to Roger and Pete. And sure, the NFL knows us.  The Who really were a good call. But how ’bout this for a weird Web/sports tech moment? The New York Times — by chance probably — threw up a photo montage of Woodstock 40 years back. Never mind that milestone was in August of last year. But over the weekend, the NYT tossed up links to an important Who performance from back in they day: The Three Days of Peace and Love and Muck that was Woodstock.

Now, for real,  The Who rocked back then. And they rocked over the weekend. But much important to that show was who closed that show: Jimi Hendrix.  And to me, thats for a big fat Superbowl “what if.” What if this one true 20th century genius,  James Marshall Hendrix, had decided he wasn’t a drunk. Or a junkie. What if he made past 27 and into the 21 century? The NFL would have had to hire him to do halftime. And THAT would have been a heck of a show.

Go ahead. Take a listen on me: The SNW Hendrix at halftime mix. It’s goooooood.

(NOTE: Ya might have to log into playlist.com. But it should work with any browser. Send a link along and I tee you up to massive Jimi Mix. I got a ton of these tracks.)




Google Stadium? Only A Matter Of Time

Posted by Jonathan in STADIUM on 02-01-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Google Nexus Picture Add

Has Google decided that all this link advertising thing is oh so 1999 when it comes to sports marketing? It looks like it.

Here’s a screen grab from the decent sports blog Courtside Post. And look carefully over on the right: In the usual Google Adword location is a good old-fashioned banner ad. Click on it, and off you go to the Google  Nexus phone webpage. Of course if this weren’t Google, who would care? But because it is Google, and it’s a sport blog, is Google signaling here that suddenly good old fashioned traditional ads are what is needed to sell its cell phones to sports fans?

And why that’s important is forget beer and cars, technology companies are now one of sports biggest sponsors. And if Google is in the mix, with the economy recovering, could there be a premium paid for sports advertising? And more money could be pumped into struggling franchises. It is not a bad thought.

The question. With Barkley, Wade, Payton and Brett already spoken for, who becomes Google’s first spokesperson? Our bet… Ryan Fitzpatrick. QB for the Buffalo Bills. He’s a Harvard grad who wears a cutting edge helmet design. That’s a smart athlete that a smart company could get behind.




Living The Large NFL Life … Online

Posted by Jonathan in STADIUM on 12-27-09    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

If you ever want to get into direct touch with what an utter football outsider we all are, check NFLonLocation.net. This is the online destination where the league teases top dollar advertisers and sponsors on with 4 figure access passes and special VIP events to games. Starting at a measly $3,800 a ticket, you can get box seats, hotels, and VIP access to not only this Superbowl in Florida, but next year’s in Texas. All the other events are there too: The Pro-Bowl, the international series and many others games.We went ahead and placed a request for seats. We’ll let you know what the damage turns out to be. The big question? Do these tickets include cheerleaders.




We Dare The Yankees To Win On This: Ice Rink To Come To Fenway

Posted by Jonathan in STADIUM on 12-07-09    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

What tricks will Boston play to get home field advantage? How about a giant sheet of ice. Fenway Park will be turned into a pro ice rink for one day in January. Of course we can’t skate on it. That would be too much fun. The ice arena is being installed as part of the annual NHL Winter Classic, which will pit the Flyers against the Bruins on Jan 1, 2010. Actually making ice in and around the Pesky Pole and the Green Monster is no tech joke. The NHL is sending in an ice “truck”, a bunch of specialists and a whole flock of kick ass Zambonies for the job. See the whole story.