Much like Futurama’s Lrrr (ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8) in the episode When Aliens Attack, many are getting upset at their current television situation. At this point it isn’t just the millennial crowd versus traditional TV package customers. Certain companies who have helped bring cord cutting to the forefront of people’s minds are now splintering.
Recently Amazon, creators of the Fire Stick and Fire TV, announced they will no longer sell Google’s Chromecast or Apple’s AppleTV. Via Bloomberg, Amazon has not offered new listings for said devices nor will the online retailer continue sales of the Google or Apple products after October 29th. As the linked article notes, it is curious to see Roku among other stream devices, unaffected by these events. Both Google and Apple still have various options for purchasing in stores or online, but seeing the the streaming options battle each other rather than the likes of Comcast, Charter and AT&T et al is disappointing.
For now, the table below is as up-to-date as possible, though again, any Amazon price listed for Chromecast or AppleTV is a deal with an October 29 expiration date. I’ve also separated the table to separate apps based on cost, determined by whether they are a monthly recurring cost, one-time payment, free, or needing a cable subscription.
It’s early October, which means it’s time to start making some mental notes for the approaching decorative gourd season while enjoying some playoff baseball. You’re on your own for the former, but we can help with the latter. The MLB playoffs start on Tuesday, beginning with the American League Wild Card game. Here’s how to watch:
Traditional television: For you squares (like me!) who still want to make use of that giant box around which your living rooms are oriented, all of these games should be available to you. In general, look for the AL games on Fox and the NL games on TBS (somebody maybe tell Ted Turner the Braves didn’t quite make it this year), although you’ll need ESPN, MLB Network, and Fox Sports 1 (now being rebranded as simply FS1) for some of the early action. Here’s a helpful schedule.
MLB.com Gameday: This old standby makes you feel both seriously plugged-in, by virtue of its integrated PITCHf/x and StatCast data, video clips, and social media streams, and seriously devoid of a human experience, by virtue of the fact that, say, Prince Fielder and Don Kelly do not really have the same body types. Free for anyone with a computer and an internet connection. Compare MLB At Bat app for mobile users.
MLB.tv:MLB’s premium, web-based service brought you live streams of all out-of-market television broadcasts during the regular season for a non-negligible fee. Due to the exclusivity of MLB’s playoff television broadcast rights agreements, however, you should not expect this service to be available in the postseason, with the exception of Gameday Audio, which the fine print indicates will remain available to MLB.tv subscribers. Instead, things shift to what the league calls Postseason.tv, which will allow subscribers to view “live alternate video feeds,” but not the main television broadcast feed. This will set you back $9.99 for the entire postseason, and does require you authenticate with you TV provider. But if you already pay for TV, the next two options might be your best bet.
TBS.com: It is not exactly clear what TBS will be offering this year in terms of playoff baseball streaming, but, in 2014, live streams were available to cable subscribers on TBS.com and through the Watch TBS mobile app, giving us every reason to believe the same will be available in 2015. TBS is also available to Sling TV subscribers.
Fox Sports Go: It’s the same story for Fox, which does not appear to have announced the scope of its playoff streaming, but we assume that, at a minimum, live streams will be available to cable subscribers through the Fox Sports Go app and at FoxSportsGo.com, as they were for the 2014 postseason.
Terrestrial radio:ESPN Radio will have every game. Find the dial location of your local ESPN Radio affiliate here. ESPN Radio also provides iOS and Android apps.
Satellite radio:SiriusXM. A subscription is required, but they almost always are offering free trials.
We are about to enter one of those wonderful convergences in sports next week. The baseball season is ending, and the playoffs begin on Tuesday. The NHL season begins on Wednesday. Add in the regular mix of NFL games, and we have a pretty busy week on our hands. Conversely, the sports tech world has been fairly quiet this week, but nevertheless, here are the stories we found interesting.
Non Sports PSA: Just in cases you hadn’t heard, there have been a couple of big data breaches this week. Some 15 million T-Mobile customer records were stolen thanks to a hack on the credit firm Experian. T-Mobile is offering free fraud protection for their users, so if you are one, make sure to sign up for that. Conversely, Patreon also got hacked, so if you use the crowd-funding site, make sure to update your passwords. This isn’t sports, but it’s pretty important so we wanted to pass it along.
A federal ruling involving the NCAA could perhaps open the doors for college sports video games to come back. There has been a two-year gap in releases of NCAA-branded video games, thanks in large part to these pending lawsuits. The reintroduction of the popular football and basketball games could still leave room for future lawsuits (hey, what can’t?), but the possibility is still there.
Do like to watch dudes punch other dudes in the head, but always wished you knew exactly how hard they were getting punched in the head? Well then, HBO might be barking up your tree. They just patented a technology that would place sensors in boxing equipment so that precise measurements of hits could take place. The plan would be to include hit metrics during broadcasts much like baseball or football broadcasts produce real-time stats during games. Quantifiable barbarism — it’s not just for the NFL any more!
Microsoft is using traditional prediction models along with your web searches and behaviors to help predict the outcomes of NFL games. Creepy? You bet. Accurate? Well … yeah. Check out TechInsider’s article for the full details. It’s actually fairly interesting in a Big Brother sort of way.
Sports-data aggregation company SportsRadar has reached a new agreement with the NHL to provide their statistics to third-party and media outlets. SportsRadar, based in my home town of Minneapolis, provides data for all kinds of sports to media, fantasy sites, and anyone else who needs real-time, play-by-play data. The NHL expects big things from this partnership, including new interactive and visual web elements. The NHL is already outsourcing their video to MLB Advanced Media, so it kind of makes sense that their real-time stats would be handled by a third party as well.
Finally, Kotaku has a very interesting video about how the American team took home this big esports prize at the latest Dota 2 tournament. I don’t know much about esports (that’s why we keep David Wiers around), but I found the video informative nonetheless.
That’s it for this week. Have a good weekend. Be excellent to each other.
We here at TechGraphs are pretty big fans of Streamable — one of the latest, and in my opinion best ways of sharing media clips, and they’ve just given us a reason to like them even more. Yesterday the company unrolled a new feature for Google Chrome users, an extension that allows users to clip video (and audio if so desired) directly from YouTube as well as Twitch.tv, and a number of smaller sites.
Being able to grab media files directly from Twitch.tv via a Chrome extension isn’t a particularly new option as Oddshot.tv has specialized in that area for months now, however support for web sites other than the esports-streaming site is a welcome sight. Unfortunately traditional sports sites haven’t caught on just yet — which should not surprise — however I’m looking forward to being able to grab a plate appearance or pitch sequence, or perhaps an incredible soccer cross and goal in near real-time.
The maximum length of the clip is 60 seconds, which is mostly enough time to capture whatever in-game moment you’re attempting to save. For the walk-through, I’ve grabbed a clip of my beloved A’s winning their 20th consecutive game, courtesy of MLB’s YouTube Channel. Before getting too far of ourselves, make sure to install the extension. It’s available for free at the Chrome Web Store and can be found by clicking here.
Once you’ve got it installed, make sure to see the Streamable icon/the infinity symbol. It will pop up on any page that is compatible with the extension, in this case the MLB channel.
Now, after finding the clip you want — say, the glory days of seasons past — simply click on the Streamable icon and you’ll open a new page, specifically the editing page for Streamable.
The extension allows users to re-name the clip (YouTube vids retain their name, but you can change it), crop, adjust the speed (as slow as x.50 or s fast as x2 with .25 increments) and to nail down a specific clip to one-tenth of a second of accuracy.
Note the picture below, at first glance it seems like I’m just ripping the clip, but I’ve cropped the black bars out of the original YouTube video and I’ve typed in exactly where in the video I want the clip to begin and end.
Once the clip is finished, you’re given the direct URL or you can use an HTML embed code to share. Within the embed code options you can mute the clip, something I prefer doing because loud (not to mention auto-playing) clips are pretty terrible if you’re not expecting it. Don’t worry, muting the clip within the embed code doesn’t lose the audio. It’s just like a Vine or Instagram video where you can tap the speaker icon for the sound and full experience.
Armed with the perfect clip of the video, observe the final product:
Grab the extension and play around with it. You’ll be sharing priceless moments in non-terrible formats in no time.
SmartKage’s headquarters are in a remote office park, 36 miles and a couple dozen cows away from Boston. But in a batting cage inside, Kevin is warmed up and ready to audition before an audience of MLB scouts and college recruiters from across the country.
Kevin, a 14-year-old shortstop (whose name has been changed for this story), and his father are listening to SmartKage chief operating officer Larry Scannell describe the components of the infielder test. Scannell, a former Red Sox farmhand, runs through the sprinting, agility, throwing, and hitting portions of the test.
“It’s analogous to a physical SAT,” Scannell says. “And if you take it multiple times, just like the SAT, we combine your best scores in each area. It’s not about consistency, it’s about capability.
Once the explanation is over, a few taps on a touch screen start the automated measurement process. The system has been designed to be completely automated. Aside from tapping “next” on the touch screen, no human intervention is required, though Scannell adds the occasional explanatory detail or words of encouragement. And as Kevin takes his hacks against the pitching machine, Scannell and director of information technology Dennis Clemens starts talking about the collaboration with FungoMan that was required to making the pitching machine as consistent as possible.
“We changed out the legs and bolted the machine down,” Clemens said. “The side-to-side adjustment was removed, and we had the agitator adjusted so there were fewer jams.”
“And we swap the balls out every 30 days,” Scannell added. “We’re working with Rawlings and talking about the life of a baseball. And as a former facility owner myself, I mean, these are pearls! We would use these for an entire year, you know? Now …”
“Now the dog eats them,” CEO Corrine Vitolo said. “We take the premise of standardization very seriously.”
The fresh baseballs are more than just a way to give Merlin, a German Shepherd mix who was also on hand, new chew toys. Developing and running a standardized test requires SmartKage to constantly calibrate and maintain their equipment. It also means a significant effort to find the right kind of facilities to partner with, and Scannell said he spent five years evaluating prospective partners.
“I vetted these facilities out on location, years in business, member base and foot traffic, and then the size and the appearance,” he said. “But most importantly, are they going to bring in the business and support it?”
To date, SmartKage has reached agreements with 160 facilities across the country. They began their initial rollout earlier this year, and are currently up and running in about 20 facilities. The company owns the equipment and installs it in the facilities, who then advertise the product to their clients. The tests run around $150, and take around 30 minutes. Different tests exist for infielders, outfielders, catchers, and pitchers; the results are available to professional teams and college programs, with especially high marks forwarded directly to teams.
“We’re a filter and a pre-qualifier for teams,” Scannell said. “It’s about maximizing the time and productivity for scouts.”
Vitolo said her company also has more in-depth relationships with a number of MLB teams (though she refused to say which). These teams lease systems to gauge the fitness and health of their own players. Scannell said the teams also buy prepaid “scout cards” that area scouts give to amateur players they’d like more information on, and that professional players already in the organizations use in the offseason to track their workouts.
“And because we weigh them every single time, we’ll know if they come in overweight before they get into spring training,” Scannell said.
Sample speed and agility data from a SmartKage testing session (courtesy of SmartKage).
The batting cage where the test takes place looks a little unusual. Laser timers are stationed at regular intervals along the length of the cage to track the athlete during speed and agility tests (though these are removed, of course, before hitting begins). The area around home plate is slightly elevated: the platform contains pressure sensors to track things like how a hitter’s weight is distributed during the swing. And hanging from the ceiling are two cameras, evidence of an automated version of Sportvision’s PITCHf/x technology that tracks both incoming pitches and batted balls.
“What we’re doing is we’re bringing these technologies from the major league level, we’re trickling them down through the amateur and collegiate market,” Vitolo said.
Sportvision, of course, should be familiar to tech-savvy baseball fans; their PITCHf/x pitch tracking data have been publicly available since the system was first installed in 2007. And their HITf/x and FIELDf/x technologies have also been available to teams for several years. Soon after their founding, Vitolo said SmartKage began their partnership with Sportvision, ensuring that the same data sources front offices were using to evaluate their professional pitchers and hitters would also be available to judge prospective draftees.
“So when they’re making comparative analysis between players, it’s exact, it’s apples to apples,” Vitolo said. “[Sportvision is] the de facto standard in baseball, and we worked with them on adding metrics to their existing system.”
Even after only a few months, SmartKage is already finding interesting trends in their data. Scannell described how players, after years of counterclockwise baserunning, become almost universally faster going to their right than going to their left. And he also talked about how the technology helped find an injury from a pro pitcher’s plyometric pushup data.
“There was an abnormal kind of regression in one of the pitching shoulders,” Scannell said. “And it turned out that there was a slight tear, and it was enough to red flag an MRI.”
The team is busy completing its first 40 installations, and making plans to roll out to the other facilities they have agreements with. But look in the right places and you’ll see hints — like a Harvard football helmet perched on a filing cabinet — that the company is starting to expand their offerings.
“A lot of the facilities that Larry’s got under contract are multi-sport facilities,” Vitolo said. “So you’ll have a SmartKage baseball, and then you’ll have a SmartSports football.”
Just like the SmartKage, SmartSports Football will offer an automated evaluation tool — a “physical SAT” — to a sport known for its pre-draft scouting combine. But Scannell says the company will offer far more than the handful of metrics traditionally covered.
“We measure five times the amount of metrics as the NFL combine,” Scannell said. “We can do everything the NFL does plus another five times those metrics in addition.”
As more and more of the cages start to appear across the country, the technology that underpins them will improve. SmartKage already has plans to add even more data sources, from pressure sensors in the pitching mound to markerless biometrics to wearable sensor-based technologies. To an outside perspective, digging into a specific aspect of a player’s game from the all the information SmartKage makes available may seem like trying to drink from a fire hose. But Vitolo says her company is ready to adapt to any improvements in technology — and still meet teams’ growing demand for performance and biometric data.
“Leap and the net appears,” Vitolo said. “You have the technology, you’ve got the capacity, and all of a sudden the applications present themselves.”
Drones racing each other at breakneck speeds through an abandoned industrial complex, controlled through VR goggles that broadcast a first-person view simultaneously to the operators and fans alike.
This may seem futuristic, but it was actually one of the most imminent ideas recently discussed in a special panel dedicated to “Drones In Sports”. At last week’s On Deck Sports and Technology Conference, three drone sport experts came together to talk about the potential–and the potential pitfalls–that drones may provide for the future of sports technology.
As one panelist put it, drones in sports are currently “kind of a Wild West opportunity”, and Matt Higgins, CEO of RSE Ventures and vice-chairman of the Miami Dolphins, kicked the panel off with the example of the Drone Racing League. Earlier this year, the DRL started informally as groups of hobbyists flying drones through parking garages and abandoned buildings, but plans are in the works to turn it into a full-fledged sport, pitting sponsored teams of self-taught drone specialists against ex-military UAV pilots.
The DRL held their first two test flights earlier this year in the New York metro area, and plans to release their first official video “in the next few weeks.” When Higgins (an investor in the DRL) was asked how to make this a spectator sport, though, he responded candidly, “I have no clue.” He expects that streaming services like Twitch and Meerkat will be critical in building fan engagement with drone racing — and there certainly aren’t a lack of ideas to spice the sport up, as Bradley Woodrum outlined earlier this year.
Companies are also thinking about how drones can be used to improve the experience for players and fans in more traditional sports. In the eyes of the panelists, the “low-hanging fruit” was using drones to provide new angles for gameplay and practice, but the Amazon “drone-delivery” model was also a clear influence. The possibilities bantered about by the panel seemed limitless. Dispatching drones on golf courses for tee-side food delivery, handing out tickets with drones during games, the drone t-shirt cannon…
…wait a second, “the drone t-shirt cannon”?
It’s an undeniably cool idea, but taking a few seconds to visualize an unmanned aerial vehicle launching anything at fans may remind you that drones still face a number of psychological (and legal) obstacles. Eben Novy-Williams (a reporter for Bloomberg and the panel’s moderator) noted, as one example, that he was at a recent triathlon where a drone filming at the finish line elicited divided reactions–half the audience loved it, but the other half was clearly uncomfortable.
Chris Proudlove (an aerospace insurance expert with Global Aerospace) agreed that “we’re not quite there” when it comes to drones flying over crowds and that we need to “build a public sense that drones will be operated safely”, but that at the same time we don’t want to overstate the risk. The top concern of Proudlove’s clients when discussing drones was “invasion of privacy,” but he predicted this would be “moot” in less than 10 years. We’ve already become accustomed to ubiquitous smartphones that record video; from a certain perspective, drones aren’t terribly novel, just an extension of technology. The rest of the panel was even more bullish about the long-term prospects of us welcoming our new drone overlords.
But there’s still a lot to be done to make drones seem — and be — safer. Chris described geofencing technology to keep drones in and out of certain locations, such as ‘within the stadium, but at least 20 meters from the stands’, and better use of parachutes and other physical features. (Many of us probably remember the recent drone crash during the 2015 tennis U.S. Open, but the panelists were also well-aware of the 1979 mishap where a lawnmower-shaped model plane killed a fan during halftime at a Jets-Patriots game.) Chris also suggested that regulations distinguishing ‘micro-drones’ (of less than 2 pounds) and ‘the big ones’ could make drone safety easier.
In fact, the panel generally agreed that regulatory issues were the primary roadblock currently facing drones in sports. Right now, commercial use of drones (in the US) is illegal except when exemptions are provided by the FAA, and this is expected to remain the status quo until the FAA issues a full ruling on drones sometime in 2017. Until then, companies will need to build their usage of drones on a case-by-case basis. (Late last week, for example, the news broke that the FAA had allowed the NFL an exemption for drone usage — but only in empty stadiums.)
In short, it looks like we haven’t yet reached a drone-filled future of sport, but that day is likely drawing nigh. When Eben asked the panel for a bold “five-year prediction,” panelist Jon Ollwerther suggested that by 2020, we’d see drones being used in “every major American sport”– even down to the high school level.
Apple’s release of iOS 9 and its ability to allow content blocking on Safari has once again sparked conversation about blocking online advertising. Every now and again, the topic of ad blocker use crops up in the tech news circles. There are arguments made, grandiose solutions proposed, and villains identified. It’s the sites’ fault for allowing such terrible ads. It’s the ad networks’ fault for presenting such hideous and annoying material. It’s Google’s fault, it’s Apple’s fault, it’s Facebook’s fault. There are a lot of reasonable solutions out there — a switch back to native advertising, a rise in reader contributions, more reliance on direct partnerships — and what eventually shakes out will be some combination of those and some other things and it will only work for a little while. It’s a war of attrition between ad networks, content producers, and readers. But while we all contemplate the Future Of Online Publishing, let us not forget the actions we take today and how they affect the sites we use on a regular basis.
In fairness to the reader, it should be noted that these words will be a little biased. It’s always sticky for writers to opine on the mechanisms that directly affect their pocketbooks. Also, many of the sites I mention are staffed by acquaintances of mine, have paid me money to do things for them, or are just places I respect. Considering the audience, most of this is probably understood, but it should be mentioned.
The ad blockers you install on your browser are both simple and complex. The idea is simple. The blocker scans the code being loaded into the browser, identifies code (usually JavaScript or Flash) that has previously been identified as advertising, and disallows it from loading. The back end — the expanding database of advertising code — can be more complex, but the mechanism is fairly straight forward. These tools stop advertising code from loading. Advertising code can greatly increase the amount of tiem it takes a page to load. It can royally screw up readability and navigation of web pages. It can even install malicious code on your machine. It’s nasty and silly and annoying and nobody likes it. But, to overuse a common trope, it’s the cost of doing business.
Any “free” web site — a web site that does not charge a subscription fee to view its content — needs to make money to run. Bandwidth and server fees need to be covered. Writers have to (hopefully) be paid. Administrative fees have to be taken care of. It’s a business. In lieu of charging you directly, they allow advertisers to display content on their sites. The advertisers pay the web site for the right to do so.
Way back when, advertisers would make direct deals with web sites. Company X would call up Site Y and strike up a deal to advertise their products on the site. This took time and energy, and as the web became exponentially bigger and creating content became easier, this model became quite inefficient. This is where ad networks stepped in. Instead of Site Y working with Company X, Site Y did deals with Network A. Network A did tons of deals with all kinds of companies, and gave Site Y some JavaScript to insert into their code so that Network A could take care of all the rest. Network A would charge the companies, take a little off the top, and pay out Site Y. That’s pretty much where we stand now.
And as the web grew and grew, content expanded rapidly. This created more platforms for ad networks, and drove down the prices that those networks paid to content creators. These days, most sites get about $0.002 per impression or thereabouts. There are certainly other ways for sites to create revenue, but ads don’t pay as much as they used to, and they never paid a whole lot to begin with.
The rise in online advertising also meant that sellers had to do more to get their ads noticed. Ads got goofier, videos began auto-playing, cookies started tracking visitors’ traffic to help in delivering content the robots thought the reader would be interested in. It all culminated in the hot mess we know online advertising to be now. It’s no good, and it bothers almost everyone. And, at the time of this writing, we all need it.
Somewhere down the line — maybe it was the Napster craze, maybe it was the price of so many things getting driven down that the line between paid and free began to disappear — we all decided that it was OK for us to take things from sites and give them nothing in return. The old adage was that if you weren’t paying for a product, you were the product. Your Gmail address isn’t free. Your Facebook account certainly isn’t free. By joining these services, you were entering into a complicit agreement that these services could poke and prod your behavior and use that behavior for their own personal gain. But it’s all in the background. Perhaps this is what conditioned us to think that everything should be free. Online advertising was supposed to follow this model, too. You read something free of charge, and in return you had to see some junky ads. That is, until some smart people created tools that allowed readers to take away those ads, and money started leaking out of creators’ pockets.
When an ad blocker is used, the necessary script isn’t loaded. On the ad networks side, they never see the transaction, so it never gets logged. The site never gets credit for your eyes seeing its content. Bigger companies are affected slightly less. Views of articles on CNN.com, in theory, create brand recognition and increase the likelihood of you watching CNN on TV, where TV ads can be presented to you. For smaller (read: most) sites, this isn’t applicable. They need your eyes, and they need the advertisers to know that your eyes saw the content. Ad blockers stop this from happening.
Your favorite writers (sports or otherwise) need the advertisers to know this. Your favorite spots for opinions, statistics, or humor need this, as well. As someone who expects to consume content for no monetary cost, you agree to allow this. Or, you should. Many don’t. And if you allow ad blockers to prevent these sites from making money, you are, in affect, taking money away from them.
The nice thing about ad-supported content is that it democratizes the Internet. Beyond the cost to acquire Internet access, these sites can be viewed by anyone for free. There is no barrier to entry. Subscription sites aren’t a bad idea at all, but as soon as you do implement that model, you remove the right for some (i.e. lower-income or financially-strapped) readers from seeing your stuff. It’s a choice every creator has to make. But for those that choose to stay free, a horde of challenges await them.
Some of our favorite sites, like Sports Reference, offer ad-free subscriptions that charge a small fee to allow you to browse ad-free. It’s a great solution to the problem, and if you use Sports Reference even more than a little bit, you should consider it. It’s a way to keep ads out of your browser while simultaneously supporting the sites you like.
This site does not offer such subscriptions, nor does its parent site. There are content agreements in place, but ad money still makes up a big chunk of the [x]Graphs family’s revenue. It is a terrible contract that both sides have to enter, but it is necessary.
All of this, and I realize it had been a lot so far, is to say that if you enjoy a site’s content, white-list it from your ad blocker. Are ads annoying? You bet. Do we all wish there was a better way? Certainly. Have we come up with a better idea? Nope. And, until you yourself do, disable that ad blocker. This isn’t a “save our site” plea. This is a call to action to put your money where your mouth is. If you want to read something, suck it up and allow those sites to make money. It’s not pretty, it’s not fun, but it’s only fair.
Think about where we would be without Baseball Reference or Baseball Savant or VICE Sports or Deadspin or SB Nation. Your personal thoughts about these places aside, they helped and continue to help shape the landscape of the business. They aren’t needed on a purely utilitarian scale, but they help us research, enjoy, learn, and appreciate our favorite sports better than most sites can. A world without these sites is a world run solely by Disney, News Corp, and Viacom. Independent sites are good for everyone, regardless of subject matter.
Most independent and/or freelance sports writers on Twitter are pretty approachable. Ask them about the lavish lifestyle they lead as writers. It’s hard. Revenues are falling and therefor pay is falling. And never forget that the marketplace of writers is also growing. It sucks out there. Look at what happened to Sports on Earth. It was a pie in the sky idea that promoted quality writing over everything else and it failed. Money is hard to come by.
Will this ever be fixed? Who knows. Maybe the Golden Age of Internet Writing (if there ever was one) is dead. But until the bouncer kicks us out, let’s all work to make sure the people we like and and admire get as much as they can for all their work. If you use an ad blocker, white-list your go-to sites. If you don’t know how to, Google it. Google will gladly take your query and enter it into the ever-growing list of queries that you allowed it to capture by agreeing to use their service. The Internet is a grimy place full of trade offs. It’s not changing any time soon. Let’s at least support those crazy enough to try and make a living off of it.
Before the drones assume full command of our last vestiges of leisure, we wanted to provide you with this News Roundup, which highlights the sports-tech stories from the past week that we found interesting.
It’s late September, which means MLB rosters have expanded in anticipation of the playoffs. Managers’ toolkits are expanding too, as teams now are permitted to use iPads (and other companies’ tablets, presumably) in the dugout during games. The unsurprising catch is that the tablets cannot be connected to a network, and all data– such as batter spray charts and pitcher video– stored on them must be downloaded to the devices no later than three hours before game time. Also, while the devices are allowed in dugouts, bullpens currently remain off-limits, probably because bored relievers are highly susceptible to gaming addiction. So far, reports indicate the Reds and Cardinals are using iPads to some extent in their dugouts. MLB previously restricted use of Apple Watches in dugouts, and the blanket ban on cell phones remains in place. That doesn’t apply to us fans, though, which is neat because a company called Scoutee is developing an app that will turn your smartphone into baseball radar gun.
“Cord-cutting”– the process of disentangling oneself from the expensive morass of packaged cable and satellite television services– is a popular subject around these parts. While new media technology is making this beneficial transition a reality for more and more consumers, the shift is not without its human costs. As people are learning, one of the priciest television channels is ESPN, which, alone, accounts for more than $6.00 of cable and satellite subscribers’ monthly bills, regardless of whether they watch the channel. With cord-cutting on the rise, however, the Worldwide Leader may not be able to sustain its operation by spreading its costs across a broad pool of cable and satellite customers. According to a recent report, ESPN is losing “millions” of subscribers and, in light of the billions of dollars it has committed to broadcast rights for live sporting events, “is gearing up to lay off hundreds of employees to trim costs.” The move away from traditional television services isn’t a total job-killer, though: the linked story quotes John Brillhart, a Minnesota man who works full-time as a “cord-cutting consultant,” and whose name may be the secret identity of Minnesota resident and TechGraphs Managing Editor David G. Temple.
We love science at TechGraphs, and here we find a report on work by some Swedish researchers who set out to discover whether athletic success breeds further success. The study examined professional golfers and compared the performances of the last person to make the cut and the first one to miss the cut at a particular tournament– two very similar golfers– in subsequent tournaments: “In other words, they were asking, if you just happen, largely by chance, to make the cut in tournament A, does that change your odds of making the cut in tournament B?” The result was a strong “yes,” as the researchers found that the golfer who just made the cut in tournament A was much more likely to make the cut in tournament B.
I’ve long contended that the NBA offseason is more exciting than the NBA season itself, and while that contention may merely be a reflection of my personal taste, there’s no doubt that the fairly public tug of war between the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Clippers over DeAndre Jordan was one of the wildest basketball stories since the release of the last AND1 Mixtape. The modern twist on this saga was that the public largely was able to follow the developing story in real time thanks to an emoji battle on Twitter set off by Dallas’ Chandler Parsons. Now comes news that the whole thing was an accident, and that Parsons’ opening salvo actually had nothing to do with Jordan at all. Whatever you think about emojis, or even if you just read that word for the first time in your life, this story clearly illustrates the relative practical merit of New Criticism over traditional authorial intent.
Yesterday, we told you that daily fantasy sports site DraftKings has expanded its offerings to include esports (i.e., competitive video game playing). Not to be left in the e-dust, DraftKings rival FanDuel responded simply by buying another site, AlphaDraft, that already offered daily fantasy contests for esports, for an undisclosed amount under $25 million. I’m as tired of the DraftKings and FanDuel advertisements as everyone else, though, so my request to the two competitors is that they not bother me until I can play daily fantasy sports daily fantasy contests. If I can bet on people playing a video game like League of Legends, I should be able to bet on somebody playing DraftKings or FanDuel.
On that metanote, we bid you a good weekend and respectfully request that you be excellent to each other.
DraftKings, the daily fantasy site that has saturated the TV airwaves with commercials lately, has just launched their newest wing: esports. As of right now their esports division consists solely of League of Legends matches, however I wouldn’t be surprised to see Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2 and more titles added. It should come as no surprise to see those three games be the most watched of August for Twitch.tv. DraftKings isn’t considered gambling, but more of a skill game — though Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and Washington consider it online gambling and prevent their residents from playing it — and esports, the same as in in the traditional athletic world is unfortunately no stranger to gambling and match fixing. From bans in CS:GO due to match fixing last year to StarCraft banning numerous player in 2010 due to a network of match throwers, sadly once money gets involved, people tend to have their morals become a bit more flexible.
While DK may or may not be considered gambling, they are just the latest website to offer payouts based on investments. Ranging from websites such as CSGO Lounge to CSGO Loot, Gosu Gamers and plenty more, there is money to be made — or lost — by wagering your weapon or player “skins” depending on the game. They’re nothing more than digital pixels, but they carry real world monetary value, sometimes in excess of the tens of thousands of dollars. In the Counter-Strike realm, the sponsoring of so-called gambling sites — not DraftKings, but the others — has been banned in ESEA, a top competitive league. Citing a conflict of interest, insider knowledge and general professionalism, ESEA is making a stand against gambling. Of all the leagues to take the moral high ground on an issue, it’s interesting that ESEA does it, given their shady history. Regardless of previous transgressions, it is likely for the best to see gambling sites being barred from team sponsorship.
An entirely different issue is when people under age-21 wager their skins. These items are worth lots of money, just look at some screencaps from Steam’s Community Market page. Steam is the software distribution portion of Valve, creators of CS:GO and Dota 2. Some of the items for sale on the Valve Community Market are going for $400 dollars, while otherthirdpartymarketplaces are trading and betting items worth much more money than that.
While this is certainly an exciting time to be an esports fan — the prize pools have never been bigger, corporate sponsorships are flowing in and possibly a major television league and broadcast deal in the works — seeing as DraftKings sees League of Legends on par with traditional sports, we can’t get too far ahead of ourselves. We’ve already seen entire organizations get taken down for throwing matches, some for cheating and with yet another website now offering to exchange cash (not just weapon skins with value tied to them) based on esports results, the cynic in me fears the worst.
Earlier this week, NYC’s Bohemian National Hall played host to hundreds of sports executives, entrepreneurs, and others looking to learn about the very latest in sports technology. Since 2013, the On Deck Sports and Technology Conference (organized and presented by SeatGeek) has provided a forum to showcase what products are “on deck” to help fans follow, analyze, and participate in sports.
On Deck has a slight bent towards sports startups, so a decent amount of the conference was geared more towards raising capital, scaling businesses, etc. Still, there were plenty of fascinating talks, panels and interviews for anyone interested in straight sports tech.
Statcast And Beyond
Possibly the most entertaining talk of the day was Joe Inzerillo’s (CTO, MLBAM) update on MLB’s Statcast, which is finally getting its moment in the sun this season. For those who needed a refresher on how Statcast operates, Inzerillo discussed its missile-technology radar system, its stereoscopically-placed cameras, and how these allow each Major League ballpark to track the movements of every player on the field (plus the ball) at any given time.
Once Statcast has this information, as Inzerillo pointed out, it can then provide real-time data on pitch velocity (actual and perceived), player velocity and reaction time, and a horde of other quantitative metrics, plus more advanced data on a 12-second delay, like fielding route efficiency. This data is just inherently cool (as you likely know if you’ve seen a Statcast-enhanced game or highlight on television), but it’s also already being used to both question and confirm existing baseball strategies.
For an example of the latter, Inzerillo looked at the fallacy of sliding into first using Statcast to plot Eric Hosmer’s 1B slide in Game 7 of the last World Series. Hosmer hit a peak speed of 20.9 MPH before sliding and being out by less than a tenth of a second. If he had just kept running, Statcast found, he would have been safe by nearly a foot. Statcast is already getting noticed by clubs, and even players — batters like to talk smack, apparently, over who has the highest exit velocity.
During questions, Inzerillo was slightly cautious about committing to the future of Statcast, but he did mention that minor league stadiums were a natural next step, and that there was plenty of work being done on developing new metrics. Statcast already tracks ‘defensive range’ for fielders, for example, but since a player doesn’t travel the same speed in every direction, there’s a need to find the more amorphous ‘effective defensive range’ and how it changes–such as during defensive shifts.
On the football side of things, Sportradar’s Tom Masterman talked about the NFL’s NGS (Next Gen Stats) platform, which is collecting data on every single game in 2015 to track, analyze, and visualize how players are moving on the field. NGS is already being distributed to clubs, media, and health and safety personnel; the long-term goal is to have X,Y,Z coordinates for every player and official, plus the ball.
Go Bucks
On Deck’s attendees weren’t just league officials and startup managers–the conference started with a live interview of Wes Edens, who became co-owner of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks in 2014. Much of the conversation focused on the new Bucks arena, which was being voted on by the Milwaukee city council literally as the interview was ongoing. As it’s currently planned, the presently-unnamed arena will focus heavily on keeping fans digitally connected — giving attendees plenty of WiFi, for example. At the same time, Edens noted, they want to avoid fans using technology to become distracted from the game going on in front of them. (Edens used the phrase “Instagram culture”, specifically, though he noted that he himself has had these sorts of problems before.)
Edens was similarly balanced when the discussion turned to analytics. One of the first things Edens did after buying the Bucks was to build their analytics program — bringing on employees, consultants and even discussing methodologies with other owners. There’s definitely a “golden age” of analytics in basketball going on. Edens even thinks the NBA will end up surpassing the MLB as the leader in sports technology. But when he was asked about how the players feel?
“It’s a good question,” Edens replied. “There’s definitely lines that can be crossed” with having too much data being made public, at least when it can affect the privacy of the players (such as rest/injury issues).
Edens also briefly discussed the role of the referees and the potential benefits of replay and “the new center across the river“. Could we see yet more referee technology, even an Oculus Rift-type headset for NBA officials, in the future? “Totally possible.”
Era of Mobility
When it came time to look at how fans themselves were interacting with sports, technologically, it became clear that mobile is “it.” In that panel about growing sports startups I mentioned earlier, representatives from SeatGeek, FanDuel and Krossover all praised the importance of the mobile web for their companies–SeatGeek’s rep described it as a “tale of two companies”, pre- and post-mobile, and Krossover’s founder mentioned they’re considering dumping their web app altogether in lieu of just being on smartphones and tablets. When Yahoo Sports’ VP of engineering presented a chart showing their fantasy football traffic from this season’s Week 1, the fraction of non-mobile data was a pretty small sliver at the top.
Trust me, it’s there.
Even companies you might never expect to get in the mobile game are joining and succeeding. Jeremy Strauser had 20 years of gaming experience at EA Sports and Zynga before joining one of the most loved and enduring brands in the sports industry, Topps. Yep, they’re digital playing cards.
Topps first got into the digital game 4 years ago and how has three top-selling sports card apps, plus a newly launched Star Wars-themed set. Why should you be interested in buying trading cards on your phone? One starting point is the capabilities the digital platform provides — literally hundreds of thousands of different designs, the ability to create all manner of rare and unique cards, etc.
Topps is also rolling out a daily fantasy sports feature (DFS was a major topic of conversation at On Deck) that allows you to compete using the players in your card deck and swapping them in and out in real time as they go up to pitch or bat. It probably doesn’t hurt, either, that they won’t take up space under your bed or get thrown out by your mom when you’re away at college.
Coming To Your Hometown
If you want to look for the next wave of sports technology, though, look to your neighborhood.
Rather than providing new tools or analytics for MLB, the NFL or the NBA, the newest sports apps want to help you participate in sports in your own town. On Deck wrapped up with a “Startup Pitch Contest” a la Shark Tank where teams had four minutes to present their groundbreaking app to a group of judges. The six competitors included:
Wooter – a search engine for finding and joining sports and activities like local rec leagues. Wooter provides profiles for leagues looking to form teams, players looking to join them, and the tools to process payment and set up other logistics.
NextPlay – helping youth coaches conduct tryouts and league drafts. For $15/month, instead of taking a stopwatch, a bunch of handwritten notes, and an Excel spreadsheet to put together youth rosters, NextPlay handles all the data collection and analytics itself. Their beta has been used by “a couple hundred organizations” and over 10,000 athletes.
ScoreStream – filling a gap in local journalism by crowdsourcing reports on high school sports.
With a really impressive presentation, broad coverage (10,300 HS games covered last week alone) and the #1 iOS app for high school sports, I really thought Scorestream would walk away with the prize, but it ended up going to…
SidelineSwap, a P2P marketplace for sporting goods. SidelineSwap has over 43,000 registered users who’re interested in trading out sporting gear just collecting dust in their basement or garage. They’re working on building partnerships with youth organizations and promoting used college-branded material, which should play very well with their chief audience of high school students.
On the whole, On Deck was a whirlwind experience for learning about cutting-edge sports tech. This report only covers part of everything I caught there. Watch for further updates and profiles soon!
