STADIUM


When is a black out not so black? When the NFL does it.

Posted by Jonathan in STADIUM, TELEVISION on 10-07-09    No Comments


You really got to hand it to the NFL when it faces a tricky problem. League management is not afraid of throwing in some Reggie Bush corner cutting to move the ball a couple of yards: Faced with declining attendance, many struggling franchises — including Jacksonville, the Chargers, and the Lions — have been forced to black out games in their local broadcast markets creating a major PR issue, especially in places like Detroit that have been hammered by the economy. And last week there was much hoopla about Jacksonville lifting its blackout for a game that sold out. But if you look carefully at the event, you will see that owners covered seats, not sold them to get under the blackout limits. So the Jaguars “sell out” happened even though many seats remained empty.

And there is hanky panky going on the better markets as well. Luxury and box seats for example are simply being ignored by the NFL as far as blackouts go. So major new stadiums like the ones for the Cowboys and the Giants — where seats are reaching $700 each — there will be lots of open seating come game time.

Why we tech types care is, of course, online streaming. As of now the NFL only allows games to be streamed at midnight on Sunday. But with attendance falling, and other leagues beginning to ramp up their their online packages (MLB in fact cut MLB.com package pricing at the end of the season to lure some business.) It is fair to wonder if the NFL is backing from their no blackout, no simultaneous streaming policy, particularly in troubled markets. Think about it: Opening the games up to a pay online tier is the fastest way around the blackout/sell out issue. Free TV stays off air. But Web users can see even lightly attended games for a low price.

Streaming is going to be happening sooner rather than later.




Brazil Olympics: Just Call It The Anti-Beijing

Posted by Jonathan in GENERAL, STADIUM on 10-02-09    No Comments


Clearly the IOC’s has had enough of uptight cities strutting their stuff at the Olympics. The choice for Rio de Janeiro as site for the 2016 Summer Olympics was all about the partying and some sort of ball or another. But probably not so much about the tech.

At least at first blush Rio ain’t gonna be getting the sports geek on. As far as sports facilities goes, you can forget the Bird’s Nest or swimming cube or whatever. Rio is pretty much plain vanilla for venues. There is the old Maracana Stadium, that is the largest in South America with 89,000 capacity which is being renovated to hold 120,000. The new Estdadio Olympica Joao Havelange that seats about 44,000, which looks like something the Brewers might play in honestly. And the HSBC Arena which houses basketball games — and Rod Stewart concerts. And that is about it, apart from the tremendous sailing venue, which will be a welcome change. And oh yea the beach volleyball, which by our humble estimation will be the sport to watch.

But seriously, at least from here, 6 years out, the story is exactly one word: Soccer. With essentially five major local professional teams feeding players into the Brazilian Olympic squad. And a country of football maniacs who expect nothing less than a gold medal. Expect a riot and a contraction in GDP — nobody will go to work for a month — if they don’t take down the gold. Now that we think about it, this sound great: Loud, disorganized, and crazy unruly, and tons of fun. We are booking out tickets now.




Takin’ a Virtual Look Around the new Giants Stadium

Posted by Dan in STADIUM on 09-21-09    No Comments


giants stadium

Nothing like the Giants victory in Dallas to get the old building envy thing going. New York Giants LLC, (not to be confused with the New York Football Giants, who are not to be confused with the baseball New York Giants) have begun to amp up the hype machine on their new building. Its looming like the mother shop from Sector 9 out over the Meadowlands here in NYC. The organization has put up a fancy  Website to highlight all the new features of Giants Stadium. Definitely check out the site because with PSL getting up to $20,000 (!) and a season worth of tickets running up to $ 5,600, we wont be stopping down anytime soon. Anyway, technologically  speaking there seems to be a lot to like, including the 16,720 foot scoreboard area, up about 8 times from the current board and 2,500 HD monitors that will be run all over the joint. A massive great wall images will greet fans as they enter. Best of all there is a rail line connection to NJTransit.



The Hawk-Eye Couldn’t of Helped Serena

Posted by Dan in EQUIPMENT, STADIUM on 09-17-09    No Comments


Hawk Eye at work.By now you have probably heard all about Serena Williams meltdown at the US Open on a foot fault at the US Open.  We we wondering about why the vaunted Hawk-Eye system that watches the balls on the lines wasn’t called in to see if her foot was over the line?  I looked into it to see exactly how the Hawk-Eye system actually worked and it tuns out that Hawk-Eye is looking for foot faults but it watching everything else. 

The Hawk-Eye Officiating System made its debut fortnight at the 2007 Wimbledon Championships. It uses 6 or more high speed cameras.  First it works in 2D on the XY access, vision processing is used to identify the center of the ball within each frame of each camera. Camera movement is compensated for by also tracking the lines of the court. Second, it adds a third axis for 3D, the system triangulates the information from each calibrated camera to provide the 3D position of the ball. Third, they add trajectory as another axis. This process is repeated for each frame so that the 3D positions of the ball can be combined to produce a single trajectory of the flight of the ball.




Looks Like Cowboys Stadium is One Big PC

Posted by Dan in STADIUM on 09-09-09    No Comments


windows problems at Cowboys stadium

As if things couldn’t get worse at the new Billion dollar Cowboys stadium, it looks like they are having some computer problems as well.