Archive for December, 2014

Apple Pay Makes NBA Debut Tonight in Orlando

Starting tonight, Orlando Magic fans have a new way to pay for those ten dollar cold ones.

The Magic is the first team in the National Basketball Association to offer Apple Pay to its customers. To start, it will only be available at 60 concession and retail locations throughout the Amway Center. However, the team will be expanding locations during the season and aim to reach 200 for the start of the 2015-16 season.

This, however, will not be Apple Pay’s debut in professional sports. MLB Advanced Media paid an undisclosed figure to install more than 300 terminals at Kauffman Stadium and AT&T Park in October for the World Series, marking the first use of the service at any sports facility. Meanwhile, down on the farm, the minor league Akron RubberDucks announced in October that it will accept Apple Pay at Canal Park for the 2015 season.

Here’s how it works. Using a near-field communication (NFC) chip, the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus will send a payment to a store or restaurant’s reader when the user holds or waves the phone while keeping a finger on the Touch ID home button, which uses fingerprint recognition security. The payment will be processed using credit card information entered in the Passbook app that will assign a device an account number, which is encrypted and securely stored. Each transaction is authorized with a one-time unique dynamic security code.  All major credit card companies are on board, as are a growing number of banking institutions and credit unions. Unfortunately, older iPhone models are not able to use the Apple Pay feature.

Ideally, a customer would wait in line to buy food. After ordering, the cashier rings up the cost, and the customer pulls out the phone, holds the Touch ID button, waves it in front of the reader and the payment is complete. This should take, what, ten seconds? Can we dream of an in-stadium experience where we won’t miss two innings waiting in line for a hot dog and a beer?

Alex Martins, chief executive of the Orlando Magic, told the New York Times earlier this week:

“One of the biggest pieces of feedback we get from our fans is that the food and beverage lines are too long,” Mr. Martins said in an interview. “It keeps them from going to the concession stand because they don’t want to miss the action. This, and technologies like Apple Pay, will speed up our service.”

To be fair, it’s not like what Apple is doing is anything new. Samsung, MasterCard and Google Wallet have been around for some time. The optimism is that because of Apple’s reputation and giant consumer draw, any problems that existed with previous tap-to-pay services will evaporate.

For now, the Apple Pay experience is raw. Anecdotal reports reflect retailers don’t know how to use the system correctly, if at all. And that Apple training retailers would go a long way to create a much smoother experience. Fast Company’s technology editor Harry McCracken went a week without his wallet, only using Apple Pay to make his Whole Foods and McDonald’s purchases. And while he faced plenty of problems, McCracken, as he wrote in October, is hopeful about the future of the product.

But even though my experience with Apple Pay wasn’t perfect, and despite obstacles such as recalcitrant retailers, I had a good time using it. I expect to reach for my phone rather than my billfold quite often from now on—partly for convenience’s sake, and partly for the privacy and security benefits of being able to pay a store without sharing any information about myself. And if mobile payments finally start to catch on—which seems likely to me—we could end up looking back on last week as the most important moment so far in the history of the technology.

Whatever it takes for me to get my beer quicker.

(Image via Tom Baker)

Game of Drones Set To Bring Drone Sports To Your TV

As this nation entered the 21st century, few could have predicted the little-known show BattleBots would plant the seeds for the next evolution of brutal robotic combat. Sure, BattleBots only aired for three years on Comedy Central and was watched by approximately three people, but it is now clear the show was ahead of its time with the emergence of the Aerial Sports League (ASL) this year.

The founder of the ASL, Marque Cornblatt, is also the founder of Game of Drones, a hardware company that manufactures some of the booming industry’s most resilient drones. Priced at $650, The Game of Drones Actions Sports Airframes are currently sold out on the company’s website. They are nothing to trifle with—built to withstand water, fire, and extreme impacts. In the below video you can even see a man shooting one with a shotgun.

 

After starting in a local barn with friends, Cornblatt’s ASL is now touring around the country. “Originally, we thought the sports league was a way to promote the hardware, but in a way, the league’s become the driving force,” said Cornblatt in an interview with Betabeat. With the FAA anticipating over 7,500 civilian drones to be flying in American airspaces by 2018, it’s a league that’s almost certain to flourish in the coming years.

According to Betabeat, the rules of the game are simple. Each drone operator starts with three points and loses one every time their drone hits the ground. The first person to zero loses. In his interview with Betabeat, Cornblatt said he sees television as the next logical step for drone sports. “I see us doing a permanent show in Vegas, but we’re going to have a show on TV very soon. It’s an inevitability—the TV show frames itself around the development around that Vegas product.” With behemoths like Amazon making drones a central part of their future business, it’s clear that drones will be part of our future as well. Whether an ASL TV show will have the same short-lived fate as BattleBots remains to be seen, but the company does have a head start in capturing the lion’s share of an exploding market.

(Header image via Game of Drones)

Building a Retrosheet Database – Part 1

That magical time of year has come again. Yes, the very fine folks over at Retrosheet have updated their game files once again, and the new batch includes (among other updates) the play-by-play files for every baseball game in 2014. There are a lot of things you can do with the Retrosheet files, but one of the most powerful options is to create a Retrosheet MySQL database.

Certainly, there are a lot of things you can find out at FanGraphs and Baseball Reference without the need for your own database. But every now and then, a question pops up that Googling, FanGraphs leaderboards, or even the Almighty Play Index at Baseball Reference cannot answer. It’s a luxury to have your own database, to be sure, but any baseball nerd worth their salt should at least have one to tinker with.

This tutorial is going to be starting from scratch. This means that this first installment of the series will simply be about acquiring the right tools to build out the database. We’ll get to actually inputting the baseball data in the next chapter. This may seem like the boring part, because it is. But it’s important to have the proper foundation before we get to the fun stuff.

DISCLAIMER: For right now, I’m going to be working strictly in a Windows environment. The tools that we need — which will be revealed later — were meant to work with the Windows command line. There are options for you Mac/Linux users out there, and I will discuss them down the road. But for right now, these initial steps will be for the Windows folks.

MORE DISCLAIMER: I’m trying my hardest to keep this tutorial accessible for everyone. You’ll need a basic understanding of Windows, but you shouldn’t have to be a computer wiz to follow these steps. Conversely, those that are very familiar with Windows will see this as pretty basic stuff. I’m not trying to be insulting. I’m just trying to make sure everyone can follow along.

Step 1: Installing MySQL

The term “database” might sound like you need some sort of special hardware or server rack in your house. While this is true in the corporate world, the truth is you can have your own database right on your regular PC. No need for special hardware or hosting plans or anything of the sort. This is not to say that having a hosted database doesn’t have it’s advantages, but for the time being, we’ll be dealing with what are called local databases — those that live right on your regular machine.

However, a complete Retrosheet database will require a good deal of hard drive space. From my experience, a Retrosheet database that spans all the available data requires a little over 8 GB of hard drive space. However, as Retrosheet releases more and more updates, that need will expand. To be safe, I wouldn’t work with any less than 15 GB of available space. You’ll be surprised how fast that fills up.

Personally, I have a separate machine that hosts my personal database. It’s a headless (just  a tower stowed away in my attic, no monitor or keyboard attached) unit that performs a lot of functions like storing my ripped DVDs and music. But my Retrosheet info also lives there, and I connect to it to do my querying. If you are totally baffled by this notion, don’t worry. I’m still teaching you how to install it locally. But for those with a little knowledge of how to handle some basic home networking, know that this is an option.

OK. Let’s get to the action. The type of database that we’ll be using is called MySQL. It’s a very common database language. There are lots of resources in both book and online form to learn more about it, and pretty much any problem is easily Googlable. It’s one of the industry standards, so that’s what we’ll deal with.

To keep things nice and free, and since we’ll be only using this for personal reasons, we’ll deal with the Community Edition of MySQL. You can find the download link here. You’ll want to choose the second (larger) download link toward the middle of the page. The next page will give you some buttons to login or signup, but you can bypass that with the “No thanks…” link a little further down the page. Once the .msi file has downloaded, go ahead and run it.

pt1screengrab1If you want to go the quick and dirty way, go ahead and choose the Developer Default option. It will install everything you need, and probably some stuff you don’t. You might want that stuff later on, but for the sake of this article, I’m going to choose the Custom option and pick what I want installed. You should install the Server and Workbench at minimum, though it’s a good idea to include the notifier and the documentation as well. You’ll have to click through some category trees to get what you want. Use the green arrow to add your options to the list of things to be installed.

pt1screengrab3The installer will check to make sure you have all the required utilities to do what you want. In my case, I didn’t have the C++ 2013 distribution on my machine — you may have more things that need installing. Just click Execute and the necessary files will be downloaded and the respective installers will run. Once everything is installed, click Next and your MySQL install will begin.

pt1screengrab5For configuration purposes, go ahead and keep the defaults, unless you have specific reasons not to (and you know what you’re doing).

pt1screengrab6You can add users to the database if you want, but for simplicity, we’re just going to define a password for the “root” user. REMEMBER THIS PASSWORD. It’s your key to doing anything with the database — adding data, querying, etc. If you lose it, you’re pretty much horked. Use a familiar password or write it down. If you’re just having this on your own machine, there’s really no need for a super-complicated password. It’s holding freely-available data, after all.

pt1screengrab7For the Windows Service configuration, you can keep the defaults as well. You can choose to not have the MySQL service to run when you start the machine, but if you do you’ll have to manually start the service each time you want to use the database. If you don’t know what that means, have it run on default.

pt1screengrab8Go ahead and click Execute, and the options will be configured. After that, a few clicks of Next should do it. You’ve just installed MySQL on your machine. Congratulations!

Step 2: Install Wget

Wget is a great utility for downloading mass amounts of data from a server without having to click a thousand links. It’s a script-based tool, and it’s what you’ll need to download all the Retrosheet data with in one big swoop. Don’t worry, we’ll provide the scripts you’ll need.

Download the installer here. Run the installer, keeping all the defaults.

Step 3: Install 7-Zip

7-Zip is a .zip file utility. It’s one of the best free tools for handling .zip files, and it’s what we’ll be using. You can download the installers here. Choose one of the first two options, taking care to choose the right version in regards to 32- or 64-bit. If you don’t know what version you have, go to the Control Panel of your machine, click System and Security, then System. You’ll get a similar screen, which should show you your version. Remember which one you have, as this will be important later on.

pt1screengrab9
Yes, I name all of my devices after baseball players. Don’t judge.

After you’ve downloaded the right version, go ahead and install, using all the defaults.

You’ve done it! You’ve done all the pre-steps for installing your Retrosheet database. If you have any questions, sound off in the comments. Stay tuned, as next week, we’ll get our hands dirty with installing the actual Retrosheet data. I’ve made it as painless as possible, I promise. Don’t get worried. If you can handle what we did today, you can handle the rest. Good luck, and don’t feel bad about asking for help.


There are Great Sports Games Available at Steam’s Holiday Sale

Fellow video game enthusiasts, today is a magical day! The annual Steam Holiday Sale went live today, putting hundreds of games on sale. Steam, the game distribution system designed by the Valve Corporation, is free to download, and many games themselves are also free. While these games are limited to PC/Mac/Linux (sorry console gamers), the Holiday Sale is a great time to make bulk purchases to last you all of next year. Most titles are on sale, however two of the three most played games are free to download and play, in Defense of the Ancients 2 — more commonly referred to as DotA 2 — and Team Fortress 2. For sports related titles, Football Manager 2015 is the fourth highest played title thus far today.

steamsale

In Football Manager 2015 you are tasked with building a competitive soccer club and juggling things from scouting and trades to developing a strong youth program. While the 2015 version is not on sale, the full price is $49.99, the 2014 version is discounted to down to $14.99. Rugby Manager 2015 is marked down to just $9.99.

If you prefer to take the pitch yourself rather than run the operations behind the scenes, Pro Evolution Soccer 2015 — winner of the gamescom Best Sports Game 2014 — is 15% off, costing $33.99 right now. For those who would rather take to the court rather than a soccer field, NBA 2K15 is also 17% off sticker price, going for $49.79

Released not even four months ago, The Golf Club is a solid golf experience in lieu of actually stepping onto the fairway. For me, golf is only available about half the year, thanks to the lovely Michigan snowfall. The Golf Club offers tournament and league play, as well as an option to challenge your friends on existing courses or even build your own. Thanks to the Holiday Sale, one can pick up this title for $24.99, 30% off the regular price.

Possibly the best sports simulations games is Out of the Park Baseball 2015, and of course it is being discounted. On sale for $14.99, OOTP was already given a detailed review by the handsome and brilliant Bradley Woodrum. If you’re looking for a game for a baseball enthusiast, do them a favor and grab OOTP while it is on sale.

In addition to the titles highlighted here, Steam also has dozens of racing games from F1 2014 (half off at 24.99) to Nascar 14 (going for $7.99). Given the fact that Steam is free to download, as are 170 different games, if you’re scrambling for a holiday gift, Steam’s free-to-play games, as well as their sale, make for a great option.

(Header image via Steam)

 


Fancred: A Social Network For Fans

Fan networking just got easier with Fancred’s latest update. Fancred, a free app specifically designed for fan interactions, now allows users to create albums of photos, videos, posts and updates seamlessly. Community pages for various teams will even display content automatically to present the users with fan-created content.

Picking which team to follow is easy with a simple search function. Yes, I know the teams I root for are…interesting. Once you join a team community to follow their updates, your timeline will be shown other user’s content if tagged with your team.

fanfix

Uploading pictures of ticket stubs, selfies at the game or stadium shots can now be placed in separate folders or together, depending on if you’d prefer to group things chronologically or categorically.

fancred1

In a similar vein to Reddit, on any given post you can upvote or downvote, repost within Fancred or share directly to Twitter and Facebook.

fancred2

Fancred is a growing social network geared specifically for sports fans and has already secured $3 million in startup money to continue their growth. The app is currently available for both iOS and Android devices and simply requires an email login. While already impressive, the app does lack things such as a hashtag search or a way to tweak feeds. For example, rather than get flooded in the wee hours on Premier League or Bundesliga moves, it would be great to stop push notifications on things like comments for my Queens Park Rangers and Leverkusen, while still getting them for the Oakland A’s. Still a work in progress, Fancred has nonetheless shown enough to have earned a place on my phone.


It’s Time for VR in Sports Broadcasts

Word is the Google Cardboard toy — which started as a gimmick, is now a toy, and will soon be a tool, I suspect — now has over 500,000 users.

This got me thinking: We already have mini-cameras we can embed in the ground; we have 360° camera technology; and now we have cheap, accessible virtual reality (VR).

Isn’t it time for 360° MLB.tv? Perhaps a camera embedded neatly in front of home plate or the pitcher’s mound. Maybe on the back of the mound to watch closeup up as the shortstop flips a double-play ball to the second baseman.

Google Cardboard could rapidly democratize the world of VR customers.
Google Cardboard could rapidly democratize the world of VR customers.

Or what about mounting a 3D camera on the cable-tugged NFL sky view cameras? Allow fans to watch the play unfold while focusing on just their fantasy wide receiver, finally giving them the vindication to scream at the quarterback, “He’s wide open! Throw it to James Jones already!”

And doesn’t NASCAR already have cameras mounted on every vehicle? Would it be any more difficult to swap in a 360 model?

The technology is probably not a point just yet where a 360 camera can be safely embedded into a soccer pitch or — certainly not — a basketball court or hockey rink. But goal post cross bars, tops of basketball backboards and jumbotrons dangling from stadium roofs could all be reasonable and fun locations for VR watchers.

Think about it, sports execs. Because it would be awesome.


IOC Set To Launch 24/7 Olympics Channel

For an organization known more recently for its spotty human rights record than forward thinking, the IOC surprised many last week, including its own president, Thomas Bach, when they adopted the 40-point “Olympic Agenda 2020” program proposed by the IOC president.

Included in the series of reforms is a plan to develop an over-the-top digital TV channel to begin broadcasting as early as 2015. The AP reported that the channel will cost around $600 million to create, with the hope that the IOC would recoup their investment after 10 years. The channel’s programming won’t interfere with the Universal Sports Network in the US, which already provides round-the-clock coverage of the Olympic games, including live events, to more than 60 million cable subscribers. Said to be based on the National Geographic Channel model, the channel will broadcast from the archives of past Olympic games, as well as provide Olympic news and other non-Olympic sporting events.

It remains to be seen how much interest there will be for the channel, given that the network will be unable to broadcast live events due to previous agreements with networks like NBC. Recent sports networks like NBA TV, the NFL Network, and the Pac-12 Network have all started with the archives and news format, but included live broadcasts to draw in initial viewers. There is also a concern that a 24-7 Olympics network will lessen the novelty for games that are held once every four years. But for an organization that has been much maligned recently, the new channel is a worthwhile bet to recapture some of its lost relevance, especially with a younger audience that is accustomed to this type of programming.

(Header image via adrian8_8)

Esports and Caffeine Continue to Grow Together

Soda — or as some call it, “pop” — and video games have a long history of working well together, be it in your friend’s basement, at an arcade or corporate sponsorship. Today at 4pm eastern Coca-Cola will take the next step in their esports interest with a debut Game-A-Thon event in Atlanta. The games will also be streamed via Coke’s Twitch.TV channel, however exactly which games are being played remain a mystery.

Scheduled to last four hours, the Game-A-Thon will pit five esports figures and players against each other in the mystery games in order for the prizes to be donated to various charities. Keeping the players in the dark about what exactly they’ll be playing is all part of the fun. In an interview with GamesBeat, Matt Wolf, head of global gaming for Coca-Cola was quoted saying:

We are interested in gaming. It’s big. We know it. We’re being smart and focused about how we approach it. As we head into the end of the year, this opportunity with our friends at Twitch is a great way for us to cap off the year with a great on-site production. We can give back to the players and to a charity for the holidays.

While Coca-Cola has helped in the League of Legends realm, specifically with their Coke Zero LoL Challenger League, this marks their first major foray into other games. Caffeinated beverages — not to mention energy drinks — have been a part of video games for years. From the Halo “Gamer Fuel” to Mountain Dew and their double experience points for Call of Duty games, to personal sponsorships by Red Bull for StarCraft II players such as Bomber, major beverage labels continue to appeal to gamers and esports fans with both their carbonated drinks as well as their efforts within the gaming communities. Cracking open a can to drink while watching your favorite game or team suddenly doesn’t necessarily equate to beer and baseball anymore.


Amazon’s ‘Make an Offer’ Loaded with Sports Memorabilia

Before logging on to Amazon to wrap up your Christmas shopping, you’ll want to flip through The Art of Negotiation. It could save you a few bucks.

Last week Amazon unveiled “Make an Offer,” a new feature which allows customers to negotiate lower prices with more than 150,000 items. For the initial rollout, Amazon has limited the experience mainly to collectibles – sports, entertainment, coins, history and political memorabilia – and fine art.

The sports category easily lists the most items featuring the Make an Offer opportunity. Photographs, uniforms, balls and trading cards are some of the most abundant memorabilia available, with Major League Baseball and the National Football League represented the most.  There’s even a pair of wrestling trunks signed by Hulk Hogan.

First, the seller must enable the option on an item’s listing. The customer can then either purchase the listed item at the available price or click the Make an Offer button and enter an offer. Amazon sends an email to the seller, who then responds within 72 hours. The seller can accept the offer, reject it or submit a counter offer. Now, this is when that copy of The Art of Negotiation comes in handy. Because now it’s on. Negotiations continue via email. Should the customer pull off their best Donald Trump impersonation and the seller accepts an offer, the item is placed in to the customer’s shopping cart at the negotiated price for checkout and purchase.

jeterclubhousechair

For example, check out this Derek Jeter clubhouse chair listed by Steiner Sports, used August 24 when the New York Yankees hosted the Chicago White Sox. The Yankees won 7-4 and Jeter went 0-for-5. It’s listed at $2,500. Now, I’m not a Yankees fan, and while I respect The Captain, I’m not obsessed with him, and I certainly don’t have a disposable income that would allow for such a purchase, though I do need a new office chair. So I made an Arte Moreno-esque take-it-or-leave-it offer of $500 with the ultimatum that my offer will stand for 72 hours. I can’t imagine Steiner Sports accepts my low-ball offer, which is 80 percent off the asking price. But if they do, I think I can sell it to the wife, seeing as I was ready to drop $175 on an office chair from Ikea. Knowing her, she’ll use Lysol wipes to clean off any Hall of Fame lingering germs and drop the value of the chair by 40 percent.

Steiner Sports is looking forward to a better shopping experience between customers and sellers utilizing the Make an Offer service.

“The ‘Make an Offer’ experience gives customers more control and better deals than they may have received prior to this program,” said Steven Costello, Executive Vice President of Steiner Sports Memorabilia, Inc. “The negotiation experience will hopefully get more communication between us and our customers to help us better gauge the price for certain items. We love the ‘Make and Offer’ program, and it is only going to get bigger. Once customers know this is an available feature more offers will come, leading to more sales.”

jeterchairconfirmationemail

Amazon emailed me confirmation of my offer within a few minutes. Other customers can still purchase the item at the current list price. So there is risk involved. However, if a customer is looking for value only in the Amazon market place, this shouldn’t be much of a concern.

Amazon said it plans to expand the number of Make an Offer eligible items in 2015. So there’s time to hone those negotiating skills.


The State of Soccer Ball Sponsors

Though the Major League Soccer season ended not even a week ago, the league has wasted no time looking ahead to next year. Partnering up with long-time sponsor Adidas, MLS has announced their new official match ball for the 2015 season. Called the NATIVO, it will feature the six identically shaped panels, continuing the move away from traditional pentagonal or hexagonal designs.

Sponsoring leagues and competitions with match balls is a well-trodden road for Adidas, as they also use a new ball for the Women’s World Cup 2015 as well as Euro 2016 qualifiers. Competition is rife among Adidas and Nike for official match balls, or OMBs, and both companies are eager to put their respective designs on the field. Nike holds an edge in number of leagues — though many countries and leagues aren’t listed of course — in Europe, including inarguably the two best, Premier and La Liga.

Premier League La Liga Serie A Ligue 1 Bundesliga MLS
Nike Ordem Ordem Ordem
Adidas Pro Ligue 1 TORFABRIK NATIVO

For international leagues both at the county and club level, Adidas has locked up OMB status in a clean sweep, though Nike does sponsor the 2015 Asian Football Cup 15 with their new Ordem 2.

Men’s World Cup Women’s World Cup Euro 2016 Qual UEFA Champions UEFA Europa Africa Cup of Nations
Nike
Adidas Brazuca conext 15 Euro 2016 Finale 14 Brazuca Marhaba

Between 12-panel vs six-panel designs to the thermal-bonding or fuse-welded discussion, there is no shortage of differences of balls in league matches. Factor in the chance for a player to potentially use three different balls in a 12-day period — league fixture, UEFA and national team call up — the lack of standardization is odd. It isn’t a question of quality, merely continuity. The old saying “different strokes for different folks” rings true in many aspects, but when millions of people (not to mention millions of dollars) are involved in these matches, perhaps the saying “can’t we all just get along?” would be better.

(Header image via Facebook)