As TechGraphs reported in February, MLB Trade Rumors planned a redesign of its web site to provide a more mobile-friendly experience. Thanks to a nudge from Google, that timeline sped up faster than the Milenium Falcon dodging a couple of TIE fighters.

According to a post today at the site, Google’s decision to downrank mobile-unfriendly sites starting Tuesday led owner Tim Dierkes to update the site, which was originally planned for later in the year, immediately. Dierkes wrote:

Some of you have protested the change, saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  We can debate whether the pinch-and-zoom non-mobile-friendly MLBTR experience was broken, but Google definitely thought it was, and will be docking all mobile-unfriendly sites in their search results starting Tuesday.  So while we were planning to go mobile-friendly this year, the Google issue forced our hand to do it now.

Dierkes told me in February that 43 percent of its readers were from mobile devices. MLBTR updated its app just before Spring Training, and the newly design reflects a similar feel to the Trade Rumors app.

So why is Google changing its algorithm? It wants to provide its users with the best results for users. And for mobile users, Google has decided it wants to showcase those sites that load quickly, feature scrollable content easy-to-read buttons for those smaller screens. Google disclosed its plans two months ago and created a guide and test tool to help web developers prepare for the change. For those curious, TechGraphs is mobile-friendly, per Google. Yay us.

Dierkes is still catering to his loyal readers, though. At the bottom of the mobile site is a desktop option, which will allow users to switch back to the old mobile site, as seen below.

Dierkes says he still plans to change its commenting system, which utilizes Disqus currently.

“I don’t trust a third party owning everyone’s comments long-term” Dierkes commented on his post today. “I can’t control if they go out of business, or any number of things that could happen with them. I also have no ability to customize or add features to the comment system or deal with bugs. It really just needs to be under our control, even if there are growing pains.”

Once the new commenting system is in place, comments will be integrated in to the Trade Rumors app, which does not feature the Disqus comments at this time.

“I think it would allow for better customization, better page load speed and also the content would be under our roof,” Dierkes told me.

Yesterday the Google Chrome team launched Chrome 42. The latest version of the popular browser has made some noteworthy changes to the behind-the-scenes things we take for granted. Arguably the biggest change is what will work with Chrome 42 in the near future, as Google plans to phase out old Netscape Plugin Application Programs Interfaces (NPAPI) such as Java and Silverlight extension compatibility entirely by September of this year.

Back in 2013 Google whitelisted many existing NPAPI extensions, meaning they continued usage and compatibility, though they did drop the whitelist of approved NPAPI’s in January of this year. While not blocked yet, the older NPAPI’s were no longer on by default in Chrome. To quote Google:

“In fact, many modern web platform features—including video and audio support—first saw mainstream deployment through NPAPI-based plug-ins. But the web has evolved. Today’s browsers are speedier, safer, and more capable than their ancestors. Meanwhile, NPAPI’s 90s-era architecture has become a leading cause of hangs, crashes, security incidents, and code complexity. Because of this, Chrome will be phasing out NPAPI support over the coming year.”

Google is a company that takes change seriously, as they have a developer timeline and clearly want to stick to it . Unfortunately for the consumer, many major websites still require use of Java or Silverlight for graphics or videos. For example the NBA website specifically recommends Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox.

MLB is no different as it lists Java as a needed plugin, however at least baseball does cite Chrome in its recommended browsers.

Similarly, the NFL initially lists only Explorer and Foxfire for their Game Rewind subscription service, though some digging did reveal Chrome 12 is listed as a minimum requirement.

Even watching a movie or show on Amazon Prime’s streaming service pops up a recommendation to stop using Chrome and switch browsers.

Google is recommending users and developers switch over to a HTML5 or proprietary system such as their Native Client to load graphics packages. As previously noted, HTML5 is far superior to GIFs in quality and size, as well as loading time. Additionally, HTML 5 is friendly on mobile operating system browsers such as Android,  Safari on iOS, Silk on Fire OS and more. While it does seem like Google is bullying websites and consumers alike, it is being done in the name of progress. The ends don’t justify the means, but the rapidly changing pace of technology requires companies, developers and consumers to push forward. A specific quote from Brad Pitt while portraying Billy Beane in Moneyball comes to mind.

(Header image via Wikipedia)

It’s Baseball Week on TechGraphs. Our writers have been describing tools they use to keep up with the baseball season. Bryan Cole’s is below.

Look, I get it. Technology makes baseball better. There’s no question. I’m not going to sit here and pretend that being able to flip between any MLB game happening live anywhere around the world*, with a little pull-up menu that instantly that shows how your fantasy teams are doing isn’t amazing. It is.

* – Certain blackout restrictions apply.

If you wanted to follow the 1912 World Series, here’s what you did: you went down to the newspaper office and you stood outside and you watched an electronic scoreboard with mechanical players that operators updated every time they got a telegraph from the stadium. This sounds like an “uphill-both-ways-in-the-snow” style exaggeration, but this really happened. Some people paid as much as 50 cents — the same price as a bleacher seat at the actual Series! — to watch these scoreboards.

Still, baseball is one big nostalgia trip for me: listening to the game on the radio, scoring the game on paper, saving ticket stubs to commemorate the games you went to. But there are still ways to bring some of these parts of the experience into the 21st century.

Radio Broadcasts

We’ll get the easy one out of the way first. An MLB.tv subscription of course includes the home and away audio broadcasts of all games, and you can get an audio-only subscription for just $20 all season. If you speak Spanish (or want to learn the extremely hard way), those broadcasts are available too. If you want still more people talking about baseball, there are a number of baseball-centric podcasts* that go incredibly deep on virtually every aspect of the game.

* – I’ve been looking for a daily baseball podcast on the level of The Basketball Jones for a couple years now, but I still haven’t found anything quite like that.

Keeping Score

Baseball Reference is a thing of wonder. Your dad can start reminiscing about this time he saw Yaz play a doubleheader against the Senators when he was in elementary school and boom, you can tell him who the winning pitchers were before he gets to the part where their car overheated in traffic on the way home.

Before then, the only way to get those details was to keep score with paper and pencil (or a pen, if you felt confident). There are a number of different scorekeeping guides and books, with varying levels of complexity. If you want to just mark down whether a player reached base safely or not, that’s fine. If you want to track balls and strikes, cool. If you want to try to indicate where the ball was hit on that tiny little diamond they give you, go for it.

My only advice is to get one that’s wider than it is tall. Most of the books available in sporting goods stores are designed for Little League coaches, so they have something like 16 lineup slots and only nine innings. But if you happen to be scoring an extra-inning game, your choices are either (a) stop keeping score at the most interesting part, or (b) copy all of the lineup information over again only to have the lead-off hitter hit a walk-off homer in the bottom of the 10th.

Obviously you don’t have to do this to enjoy a baseball game. At the professional level, you don’t even have to do this if you want to see how your favorite player is doing, since it’s usually a couple of smartphone clicks away. But it does give you something tangible to remind you of the game you went to and that, yes, Dad, Tim Wakefield did give up six homers in that game.

Paper Tickets

The ticket stub is a built-in souvenir, a reminder of the specific game you went to (so you can look it up later on Baseball-Reference). And recent tickets — the ones with photos on the front — tell you even more: a generic shot of the stadium or fans cheering tells you that team probably wasn’t very good. But teams have stopped mailing out those admittedly easy-to-lose pieces of paper, instead sending a PDF fans can print at home. And that’s great, and they’re actually really convenient if you’re meeting up with people, but no one’s going to pay for a super-sized PDF printout to hang on their wall.

For once, technology actually offers ways to counter this. Apple’s Passbook can be used in a number of MLB parks and lets you hang on to past tickets, meaning you can actually take your collection with you. Then again, when you think about the phone you were using ten years ago, you realize these digital tickets might not be with you for as long as you’d think.

The fundamental language of baseball is one of tradition, of grizzled scouts and outdated equipment and 60-year-old men wearing uniforms and suboptimal strategies because That’s How It’s Always Been Done. It’s ridiculous, sure, but if you squint (or if your vision is going), you can convince yourself that Ted Williams and Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax could actually still survive in this game, giving it a link to the past none of the other sports really enjoy. In a few minutes, the nostalgia will pass, and I’ll be back to looking at StatCast data while watching two games at once.

Until then, get off my lawn. I just found the tickets from that road trip I took to see Pedro Martinez pitch against the Braves in Shea Stadium.

(Photo by Scott A. Thornbloom/U.S. Navy)

To celebrate the return of baseball, all this week TechGraph writers will be highlighting their favorite apps, tools, tricks, and more related to our national pastime.

I feel as though I’ve reached the critical mass of baseball fandom. Watching a game on TV — or more accurately via my computer and casted to my TV — isn’t enough anymore. I fully recognized I’m in the minority of what I want out of a baseball broadcast, which is about the nicest way of saying I like the nerd statistics. The perpetually running hamster wheel that is my brain tends to require additional numbers and context when a broadcaster may casually mention what a hot start a player is off to. Or maybe something so extraordinary occurs that a GIF, picture or video must be captured. Thus, here is a list of the apps I find myself turning to when I feel the need to second screen while watching a game.

MLB.com At Bat
Let’s get the obvious one out of the way here. Why watch one game when you can watch four on one screen? Or, watch one game on TV, another on the laptop, with your tablet also running. To be fair, I’ve only been guilty of the triple screen a handful of times.

Twitter
Ain’t no party like a Twitter baseball party! From #WeirdBaseball to #HotTakes, the things baseball people are capable of making catch on is impressive. Sharing the good times and bad across thousands of miles add another level to the baseball viewing experience. I’d be hard pressed to find an app I use more frequently than Twitter while watching a game.

GifBoom
For those moments that have to be immortalized on the interwebs via GIF, GIFBoom, in my opinion, should be the go-to option for Android users. Since switching back to Android — and thus losing my beloved Echograph — GifBoom is a more than adequate replacement. Sporting a timer, a surprisingly solid zoom feature and the ability to convert existing video to GIF form, all for free, there isn’t much to disagree with.

Chromecast
Without this little HDMI dongle, my second screening would be a lot tougher. By pushing my MLB.TV to the television, I can use my laptop (or phone or tablet) for any number of other things. While Chromecast does say it requires a universal plug-n-play router, you can get around that fairly easily.

Google Docs and Sheets
Me, a baseball nerd utilizes a ton of spreadsheets? Shocking, I know. I keep a table of starting pitchers, relief pitchers and position players. Add in historic top-50s and single season records, if I’m ever stranded in the middle of nowhere and my battery isn’t dead, I can find out who holds the single season record for HBP, I can. For what it’s worth, the answer is Hughie Jennings in 1896 with 51 times being plunked. On the documents side of things, I tend to make notes as the game progresses. Rather than maintain a traditional score book — or app equivalent — I use Docs to jot down in-game events I find interesting.

Shazam
I love walk-up music for hitters and entrance music for closers. The whole thing is so campy I can’t help but love it. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s tough to tell exactly which song is being played and thus, enter Shazam! It isn’t always perfect, but does the job well enough for me to keep it on my phone.

Major League Baseball’s MLB.TV is the longest running streaming sports platform of its kind. The mobile version, MLB At-Bat has been tasked with keeping up with new versions of Windows, Macs, and most types of mobile operating systems (sorry Windows Mobile users). It is no easy feat and MLB Advanced Media deserves some recognition. The streaming service has had its flaws, but MLBAM just sent out an update to their apps, including compatibility with the upcoming Apple Watch. Released yesterday, MLBAM was gracious enough to give a free two day trial on the Android, Fire OS, iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch platforms. No signup or auto-renewing fee, just a simple choice of which game(s) you’d like to watch.

The features new to this year’s version are things such as pre-game lineup notifications — strictly on the iPhone for now though — which is great for daily fantasy players, as well as a much needed revamp of the Android and Fire widgets. The full list of updates and additions can be found directly on the MLB website, however another feature worth highlighting is for 7-inch Android or Fire tablet owners being able to feature your favorite team. By selecting a specific club the app will showcase scores, news and video. If any of you are fans of multiple teams, the condensed game option is also available during the trial so you can catch up on each game’s signature events.

For those on the fence about purchasing MLB.TV for the first time — or even renewing it as last season there were major bugs early on — this is the perfect opportunity to preview the system at no charge. Each operating system’s apps are compatible with Google’s Chromecast,  Amazon’s FireTV and Fire Stick for straight forward broadcasts from your device to the television. With 24 games to choose from and zero sign up required, watching live baseball has never been easier.

(Header image via MLB)

Some media companies seemingly redesign their site every year to keep up with the latest technology and best practices in the web content world. But ESPN is an anomaly in this regard, with ESPN’s product SVP Ryan Spoon telling VentureBeat, “Nothing says we need to redesign the site.” ESPN.com is one the highest trafficked websites in the history of the Internet, getting 2.3 million visitors per hour, yet somehow hasn’t redesigned their website for six years!

Again, ESPN.com is a behemoth. The site gets more traffic than CNN, Huffington Post, and BuzzFeed, with 22 million users per day. The staying power of the previous design should be lauded if only for surviving that long, or perhaps it simply shows the power of a media company like ESPN: “You like us so much you’d stare at this ugly site for eternity.”

The roll out of their redesign actually started months ago with the redesign of their mobile app, switching from the curiously named “SportsCenter” to simply “ESPN”. The basic navigation for the website, mobile app and iPad app is about the same now that they are responsively designed.

All three versions come with your favorite teams’ news on the left column (which you can set when you sign in), a news stream in the center, and an “ESPN Now” column on the right, which is a curated Twitter-like feed showing a mix of news, videos, and and Tweets from ESPN personalities that can be easily shared on social media.

So instead  of having a two different versions of the site, one for mobile and one for the web, every version scales to the size of each device providing a pretty uniform experience.

Sixty-one percent of ESPN’s 94 million users in the US view ESPN exclusively on mobile devices, with a good percentage of those users viewing the mobile web version. From Spoon’s piece about the redesign on Medium, it seems ESPN is hoping the new responsive design will be pull those mobile web users to their newly redesigned ESPN app.

ESPN seems to be doubling down on mobile content cards, which appear in the ” ESPN Now” column and can be distributed to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites with one click. This is the latest evolution in mobile content, with creators having less qualms about keeping people on their actual website and instead getting views on whatever platforms are getting eyeballs.

For example, we covered the launch of Snapchat Discover, which ESPN exclusively partnered with to provide content. The partnership has gone better than either side could have imagined, and while neither party would disclose numbers, a recent Winter X Games post logged close to 30 million views. Another new feature with ESPN’s redesign is infinite scroll, with unlimited stories popping up as you scroll down the page — another signal of the shift from the pageview economy mindset.

It is yet to be seen if the new redesign will drive users to ESPN’s new mobile app, but any redesign is welcome at this point, even if it merely draws a “meh” from sports fans. ESPN.com is finally in the 21st century with a responsively designed site, hopefully they won’t wait another six years to update this one.

When Brady Aiken announced last week that he underwent Tommy John surgery to repair the torn UCL in his left arm, he didn’t Tweet it, he didn’t Instagram it and his agent didn’t issue a press release. Rather, the 2014 first overall pick in baseball’s first-year player draft used The Players’ Tribune to publish a column in his voice and to get in front of the story. A strange story filled with little facts, a lot of conjecture and an ending which seemingly screams “I told you so.” It’s the ending that Aiken and his agent want to change. So they did, with the help of Derek Jeter’s digital baby.

Jeter created The Players’ Tribune as a platform for “athletes and newsmakers to share information” as he’s quoted in the About section. On Thursday, David Ortiz used the outlet to complain that he’s the most tested player in baseball for substance abuse. It created enough of a buzz that the New York Times printed an article about the inner workings of the website and how the Ortiz story came about. Read the story if you want to know the details, as it’s a great article. Spoiler alert – the athletes don’t write the story themselves. Also, Santa Claus is your parents.

My interest in this “digital venture” of Jeter’s, as the Times called it, is the idea of controlling the narrative. Michael Wolff succinctly summed up this idea for USA Today:

Among the most prevalent and up-to-date phrases in business, politics and savvy American life is “controlling the narrative.”

That is, telling it your way, before someone else gets to tell it — and possibly tell it better — their way. And getting the public to relate to you on a more intimate level: In a social-media world, being impersonal is being out of it.

And when it comes to the Tribune, an athlete can do all these things with the cleanest image of any super star athlete of any time standing behind him or her. For those athletes with questionable credibility, the hope is Jeter’s iconic integrity can muffle the distractions one brings to a story and allow the reader to really hear the athlete’s voice.

Richard Sandomir’s Times piece echoes the sentiment:

The roster of athletes (and former players) featured on the site is lengthy and has included Jason Collins, Danica Patrick, Billie Jean King, Paul Pierce, Larry Sanders, Tyson Chandler, Eric LeGrand, Elena Delle Donne, Chris Long, Andrew McCutchen and Sue Bird. The accumulated message is that athletes, with help from a website overseen by an image-conscious superstar, can freely tell their stories and share their views as if they were credentialed writers. If they ultimately cannot bypass the ravenous news media in locker rooms or the digital hordes of social media, at least they can better set their own agenda.

When I first read that Aiken posted the news at the Tribune I rolled my eyes. Well, first, my story-idea radar perked up, but then I rolled my eyes.

Maybe I’m just being cynical. But how could this in any way keep the media and fans from slapping Jeff Luhnow and the Houston Astros on the back after Aiken and the Astros couldn’t agree to terms because the Astros feared the risk of Aiken’s almost UCL-less (or almost) elbow? Ludnow was crucified and the Astros public perception trampled after the general manager fumbled negotiations and ultimately lost fifth-round pick Jacob Nix as well. As Houston Chronicle reporter Evan Drellich, who has superbly covered the saga, tweeted last week “what Brady Aiken wrote should be taken as a press release.”

To my surprise, it’s kind of worked.

Know this – Aiken’s agent is Casey Close, the same as Jeter’s. Close constantly used the media to try and gain leverage over the Astros during negotiations last summer. Close voicerfously banged the “My client isn’t injured” drum, painted Ludnow as the villain and once the signing deadline expired, appeared to have won the public relations war.

Close recognized that any elbow injury to Aiken would erase everything. Ludnow and the Astros would come out as smart, right and justified. And Close would take the blame as to why Aiken didn’t sign a $5 million offer on the final day of negotiations (down from the $6.5 million initial offer, but up from the $3.1 million low-ball offer), missed a year of pitching development and a probable first-round slide in June’s 2015 draft.

So Close reaches out to his best client ever, Jeter, secures space for Aiken to break the news, and does it his way. Frank Sinatra surely would be proud.

Since last summer, a lot of people have wondered how I could have turned down a multi-million-dollar signing bonus after being picked first in the Draft. Now, I know they’ll probably be wondering about it again. I can honestly say I don’t regret not signing. It was a very difficult decision, but it also was an informed decision based on circumstances only a few people know the truth about. My family and I planned for all the possible outcomes. We weighed the pros and cons, talked with friends and mentors and doctors whose opinions we value and discussed it over a number of family dinners. This wasn’t a decision we made lightly.

Brady Aiken, The Players’ Tribune, March 26, 2015

Close and Aikens attempt to tackle the pending issues head on. First, they spell out why they don’t regret the decision not to sign. And in doing so, they jab the Astros with a quick left to the jaw. “The money wasn’t the only factor to consider,” Aiken wrote. “I wanted to play somewhere I felt comfortable, with a support system I felt would lay the groundwork for a successful and long career. Making sure I had that in place was worth the frustration of not being able to get on with my career sooner.”

Second, the Aiken camp has solely focused on preparing for the 2015 draft. Aiken said he was throwing harder and better, his workouts were his best and he was looking towards the future. The message is that Aiken was ready to be another top five pick in the draft. In fact, he may be a better pitcher than a year ago, despite not playing competitively.

And his final point, he’s just a human being. Just like the fans. He’s hit an obstacle, he’s going to work hard, and God willing, he’ll come out on top.

I already have a plan in place to rehab my arm, and I plan to come back better than ever. I also know God has a plan for me. Injuries are part of the job, but so is coming back. I can’t wait to get back on the mound. I can’t wait to compete again.

And to my surprise, this whole thing kind of worked. Unless I missed it, Houston hasn’t thrown the Astros and Luhnow a parade (which I would’ve done if I was in the GM’s seat). Astros blog The Crawfish Boxes chronicled tweets from media following the news. Drellich wrote the most pro-Astros tweet when he said there wasn’t any doubt that this validates the Astros concern. But then a day later he penned this lede: “If you think Brady Aiken’s Tommy John surgery proves the Astros right about the unsigned draft pick, you’re wrong.” Jim Callis of mlb.com took a more even, rational approach. This does add some credibility back to Luhnow, but no one “won” this.

To each side’s credit, since the Aiken story was published, Close and Luhnow have remained quiet. It’s the smart thing to do, to avoid us hating either one of them more. In the end, this is a story about a gifted teenager caught up in the middle of finances and an ugly negotiation played in the media who has suffered a setback and can’t fulfill his dream of pitching professionally for 16 more months. Aiken isn’t an asset, he’s a young man with a family, dreams and a face – not just a high-priced arm. And had Drellich or Ken Rosenthal or any other baseball reporter broke this story, I think this aspect of the story would’ve been lost.

Players and agents can’t control the media. How boring would that be? SO MANY CLICHES! And just because a player gets in front of their story, doesn’t mean everything is peaches. The media digs, it follows up and it talks to other people in the story, whereas the athlete is giving his or her view. And a good reporter can crush a poorly-handled article “written” by a player, thrashing the credibility they were hoping to gain.

But in this instance, it’s helped. The Players’ Tribune allowed us all to listen to Aiken’s voice first. He set the tone. And unless Close or Luhnow speak up to add to it, this is what the story is. While it may not be the exact ending Aiken and Close hoped for, it’s certainly far better than the one I envisioned — the one where Luhnow wakes up the next morning in a Houston mansion naked in a bath of champagne, monkeys smoking cigars and a “I told you so” tattoo on his bum.

As incredible as GIF(V)s and HTML5 videos are at capturing highlights, sometimes video alone does not do a moment justice. When an occasion calls for audio and video, Vine has filled that niche very well. Until today all Vines were recorded in 480p, however now iOS devices are able to record in 720p. The blog states an Android app update will follow shortly, however no word on Windows devices just yet.

After partnering and covering the NBA so successfully — the NBA Vine account has over 381 million loops — with both regular season and All-Star game coverage, at least one league is embracing the technology. On the other hand, arguably the best soccer league in the world, the Premier League seems set against sharing goals and highlights. In an interview prior to the season, Dan Johnson, director of communications for the Premier League was quoted

“You can understand that fans see something, they can capture it, they can share it, but ultimately it is against the law. It’s a breach of copyright and we would discourage fans from doing it, we’re developing technologies like gif crawlers, Vine crawlers, working with Twitter to look to curtail this kind of activity. I know it sounds as if we’re killjoys but we have to protect our intellectual property.”

Killjoys indeed. It is worth noting while the Vine official blog post does have a Premier League goal in it, Chelsea versus Crystal Palace, it is from the 2013 season and takes place before Johnson’s remarks.

Despite 720p not being particularly earth shattering on mobile devices these days, seeing Vine working to improve their overall user experience, is good for everyone, particularly sports and esports fans.

(Header image via Facebook)

Periscope and Meerkat are both apps that do pretty much the same thing. They allow a smartphone user to broadcast live video. People can already do that, but these two apps tap into the power of social media, mainly Twitter. Periscope was actually bought by Twitter before it even launched. These apps provide users a way to instantly share immediate video. Think Vine, but without time limits and in the moment. This can be used for frivolous things like people broadcasting themselves eating breakfast, or serious things like streaming video of an explosion in New York City. These apps are only a few days old, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see them branch into sports very soon.

Meerkat and Periscope might be that perfect bridge between live and televised sports. At home, you get all the camera angles and slick replays and a comfy seat and cheaper beer. But there’s obviously something about the game that draws people to see it live. Nobody goes just to overpay for hotdogs. There’s an electricity at live games — there’s a feeling of being part of a shared experience. Teams sell expensive box seats to try and bring the feeling of the living room to the game. Meerkat and Periscope might be able to bring the feeling of the game to the living room — for free.

Say you have some kind of brain damage so you’re watching the Houston Astros on purpose. You’ve been watching the whole game on TV, and now the Astros have managed to mount a comeback in the ninth inning. George Springer is up to bat. You lean in a little closer to the TV when you get an alert on your phone. An Astros fan you follow on Twitter is at the game and is streaming the at-bat from the stands. You click. On TV, you can see the pitcher sweat. On your phone, you can hear the crowd roaring. On TV, you see Springer take a monster swing. On your phone, you see everyone in the stands rise to their feet, jumping and giving high fives. On TV, you see Springer round the bases. You can hear fireworks from both.

Meerkat and Periscope will not replace the feeling of being somewhere. But nothing will, so that’s not the point. These apps are trying to digitize shared experiences. I’m still not sure how or if it will work. But sports seem like the perfect arena. Baseball season is starting. NHL playoffs are around the corner. The Sweet Sixteen is in full swing. The testing space is there, Periscope and Meerkat just need the lab rats.

For tablets with data plans — and thus excluding Wi-Fi only variants — Compass Intelligence released numbers for the five largest wireless carriers from last year. More than 19 million tablets were sold with wireless activations in 2014 according to the information. For overall tablet numbers it should come as no surprise to see Verizon and AT&T lead the way, with 35.1% and 30.4% of the activations respectively. Sprint and T-Mobile are nearly tied, with U.S. Cellular and other companies rounding out the chart.

Tablets have certainly found more than just a niche fan base over the years and their sales as well as usage numbers have climbed. Sports leagues and networks have taken notice, particularly as the second screening experience grows more popular. Statista released a survey conducted about second screening in June of last year. A reported 44% of sports fans utilized another screen last year for live scores of other games currently being played, and 1-in-5 fans watched clips or highlights or was talking with a friend about the games. Somewhat surprisingly fewer than 1-in-7 claimed they utilized their screens for social networking or watching a separate live game.

Currently in the midst of March Madness, four games are slated today, however two games will overlap each other. Tip off times for 7:15 and 7:45 eastern as well as 9:45 and 10:17, thus ensuring those without multiple TV’s will be forced to either swap between channels or utilize a second screen. With baseball season just around the corner, games happen concurrently every day, though MLB.TV does allow watching four games at once with their picture-in-picture feature. Similarly, NFL Sunday Ticket allows the user to view eight games simultaneously

Presuming the tablet market continues to grow, something the trends suggest would be a safe assumption, count on seeing even more sports fans make the jump to second screening. Already broadcasts are inundated with suggested hashtags, plugs for apps and commercials displaying the best features of online subscriptions. Eventually sports broadcasts may reach the point where second screening is the norm.

(Header image via Digital Trends)