Archive for nhl

By now, you may have heard that the NHL has partnered up with MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) in a new distribution deal. It’s a bold move for both leagues, and one that shows that the NHL is serious about increasing their online presence and offerings. But hidden in the details are even bigger revelations about the future of MLBAM. From the CBS article:

NHL COO John Collins would not confirm these figures, but word is the league valued the deal at $200 million per year.

The annual breakdown: a $100M rights fee to the NHL, $20M in savings from the league not having to invest in the capital resources/expertise it would take to go on its own, and $80M in equity in MLBAM’s technology business.

The equity portion may not figure in revenue calculations for the purposes of the salary cap. “We were told to expect $120M per year in added revenue… $4M per team,” one governor said.

This new deal is indicative of a fairly serious pivot. MLBAM made a name for itself as a content partner — a company that provided the infrastructure for those who wished to offer online content streaming. The massive system that they built to host their MLB.tv service was essentially leased out to the likes of ESPN, HBO, and WWE.

But with the NHL deal, MLBAM is no longer serving as the back end. They aren’t the ones being paid for hosting, they are paying for distribution rights. And they are buying everything lock, stock, and barrel. Besides being in charge of streaming NHL Center Ice, MLBAM is taking over NHL Network, NHL.com, and individual team web sites. Basically, if you want to view NHL content online, you have to go through MLBAM.

And there’s more. According to Forbes:

Along with the deal, the NHL would have equity in what is now called BAM Tech, a wholly new digital company that will be spun-off of MLB Advanced Media.

There’s the other shoe. What once started as a distribution channel for baseball games has become a lucrative technology business.

But I doubt this is the end for BAM Tech. They could certainly take their subscription fees from baseball and hockey fans along with their licensing fees from HBO and be content being a very profitable company for some time. But if that was the plan, they would have just taken the NHL’s money for distribution rather than paying them for the rights. Sure, they’ll make money from Center Ice and the NHL Network, but it could be indicative of a bigger move.

The “problem” with MLBAM’s business model is that it’s easily repeatable. Any company with enough capital and infrastructure can get in on the action. What MLBAM has that others don’t is partnerships. Right now, it works with two major sports leagues, *edit: I originally neglected to mention that MLBPA also hosts streaming for the PGA*, the biggest name in professional wrestling, the largest sports media company in the world, and the most popular premium cable channel. If one were inclined to, say, start their own over-the-top online TV provider, this would be a pretty good start.

It’s speculation at this point, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see a BAM app available on smartphones and set-top boxes in the near future. While they’d be competing against the likes of Sling TV and PlayStation Vue, the already-formed partnerships along with their world-class technology platform would certainly make them a formidable opponent. And don’t forget that HBO owns Cinemax and is a subsidiary of Time Warner (which just merged with Charter)*, while ESPN happens to be owned by Disney. There are a lot of fingers in a lot of pies here.

* – a studious commenter pointed out my mistake here.

Say you want to pay $120 for MLB.tv. What if BAM Tech could offer that plus HBO, NHL games, the Disney channel, and ESPN offerings for an extra $40 a month? Would the availability of live sports be enough to convince you to cut the cord?

MLBAM already built the gun, and now they’re starting to buy the bullets. There isn’t much stopping the once-quaint sports video service from becoming one of the biggest players in TV.

Few topics are so regularly discussed among my baseball circle of friends and colleagues as local blackout policies. While I am certainly biased in that I watch and talk baseball more than any other sport, I — among plenty of others — have found numerous flaws in MLB’s way of blocking local fans from their favorite teams. By no means is baseball’s governing body alone in limited television access for regional fans, as the NFL, NHL and MLS have a blackout policy of some sort in place, however given the sheer number of MLB games played each season, more baseball games are blacked out than the other sports combined.

To be fair, the NFL did lift local blackouts for the upcoming 2015 season, however as the linked article notes, zero games were blacked out in 2014. NFL games are only subject to local TV blackouts if the game isn’t sold out 72 hours before kickoff rather than the constantly blocked games in other sports. Professional hockey has seen its share of blackouts in TV, though a recent development for the Tampa Bay Lightning may be expanding the definition of “local blackout.”

Via CSN Chicago (warning: auto-playing video), Tampa is following in the footsteps of St. Louis and Nashville hockey teams in making it difficult for visiting (read: Chicago) fans to see the game in the stadium. The policy also affects actual Lightning fans living in other states. If fans have the time and the means to follow their favorite team from another state, tickets may not be available for them. A screenshot directly from the Lightning Ticketmaster describes the situation:

Building a home field advantage or looking for any competitive edge is all well and good, but at what point is a line drawn? How far will fans go to avoid the blackout issues, both on TV and in-person? Going back to baseball, there are massive numbers of people who can’t watch games based on their geographic location. One of my friends was recently accepted to graduate school at Iowa State University, located in Ames, Iowa. The sole downside for him thus far, other than the workload, has been being subjected to blackouts for his favorite team — the St. Louis Cardinals. According to Google Maps, Ames is nearly 370 miles away from Busch Stadium, yet he is still blocked off from their games. Running the Ames 50010 zip code through the MLB blackout finder, the Cardinals aren’t the only team subjected to broadcast issues. Both clubs in Chicago, the Twins, Brewers and Royals are blacked out for him. Even if he were a more broad baseball fan without ties to a specific team, his location alone blocks him off from 20 percent of MLB teams.

The lengths organized sports are going to block off fans from games has only been surpassed by those same fans looking for a way to circumvent the blackouts. Last week a free and popular virtual private network (VPN) came under criticism not from any league or association, but its own userbase. The Chrome and Firefox extension Hola! or Hola! Better Internet was denounced as a potential botnet to be used for malicious attacks on websites, to which they responded to Monday. Danger comes in the form of Hola! using other people’s idle bandwidth — and vice-versa — in order to circumvent geo-blocked content. By granting access to your Internet connection, it can be taken over and re-routed, potentially as part of a DDoS attack on a site or IP address. Be it accessing Canada’s or Australia’s Netflix or someone over there accessing the United States selection of TV and shows, Hola! provided a free and easy way to get around geographically-blocked content. Despite it no longer being available in the Chrome Store, the extension is still downloadable straight from the company’s site. I’d urge caution before a download of Hola! is considered, as the recent allegations have once again shown there is no such thing as a free lunch.

According to the Hola website over 47 million people have downloaded the extension to enhance their web browsing, despite the clear risks involved. That such a number of people would be willing to risk their idle connection in order to open the Internet for their browsing or entertainment needs shows the measure of their resolve. Whether companies like Netflix and HBO or leagues such as MLB or NHL open up their blackout restriction policies on their own accord may not matter. As long as people have a workaround — questionable or not — the market will find a way to access the desired content.

(Header image via BizOfBaseball)

Exclusive video broadcasting rights for the World Cup of Hockey 2016 has officially been awarded to ESPN. The Cup is to be held at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto from September 17 through October 1st, 2016 and will pit eight countries against each other in a round-robin format, followed by a semi-final bracket. The finals will be decided by a best-of-three series for the title of best hockey country in the world, at least until the 2018 Winter Olympics.

The press release specifically cites games will be shown on TV via ESPN and ESPN2. It also mentions live access available via the WatchESPN app, though of course that requires a cable subscription. ESPN nailing down major international sporting events is nothing new — see the 2014 World Cup and 2015 Women’s World Cup — but it is curious to them take hockey. The NHL Network and NBC own the US hockey rights as ESPN bowed out of bidding in 2004.

Last month word broke that unofficially ESPN beat out Fox and NBC for the World Cup, though it is doubtful NBC feels threatened. They probably feel secure in their 10-year broadcast deal running through the 2020-21 season. The Worldwide Leader has come under criticism for trending away from hockey, though President of ESPN, John Skipper disagreed:

Look, I don’t think it’s [the criticism] fair,” Skipper said. “I see SportsCenter every day and we cover hockey every day. We do not have a significant differential between highlights of hockey now and when we had it. The only difference is we are not there [as a rights holder]. If we were there for the playoffs, we’d be throwing to the guys calling the game. We can’t do that, but we are at hockey games. We are doing hockey highlights.

Apparently hockey highlights weren’t enough anymore.

(Header image via NHL)

The NHL will be introducing 35 new stats on their website today, ushering in a new era in the ways fans, media, and teams can measure the game. Adding to the puck and player tracking technology the NHL introduced at the 2015 All-Star Weekend, which TechGraphs chronicled, the 2014-2015 season may be remembered as the year the NHL left the analytics ice age and joined U.S. pro sports leagues in adopting advanced sports technology.

NHL COO John Collins said of the additions, “You’re going to see a big change in the way we present our stats, in terms of the depth and the utility of how to do it. And that’s before the puck tracking [system].” He later added, “We need to create a digital record of what happens on the ice. That’s standard across the league, and goes much deeper than the current real-time scoring system.”

The two most common advanced stats are Corsi and Fenwick, both of which estimate puck possession. For a primer on advanced NHL statistics check out this primer from Sports Illustrated, or for a deeper dive, take a look at Lighthouse Hockey’s introduction to hockey analytics.

In addition to being used by media and fans, the NHL will begin allowing teams and player agents to use these advanced statistics in arbitration hearings, which will change the criteria for how arbitration eligible players are compensated.

In fact, Jimmy Hascup of USA TODAY wrote an article today about player agent Allan Walsh, who brought up puck-possession metrics in a discussion about the value of one of his clients in a meeting with a general manager. After Walsh told  the officials they were missing an important part of his clients value, Walsh recounted,  “It was kind of like, ‘(expletive), he knows.’ It really brought discussion to a different level.”

But these new metrics aren’t being met with open arms by everyone associated with the NHL. Much like the scouts vs. quants stat wars chronicled in the Michael Lewis book, Moneyball, many in the NHL establishment have been resistant to these new metrics. Josh Gold-Smith from Awful Announcing covered this conflict recently, showing that one NHL columnist compared “analytics folks” to terrorists:

“People who disagree with me are terrorists” – Jack Todd (now with screen shot) pic.twitter.com/GgyHd2Csjk

— Andrew Berkshire (@AndrewBerkshire) October 4, 2014

We’ve seen this story before in baseball and we know how it will end. Regardless of the opinions of stats-truthers, the NHL has already won by embracing advances in sports technology, which will bring dividends to the league and their fans for years to come.

(Image via Wikimedia)

The NHL has long been perceived as somewhat behind the times with their unique brand of legalized fisticuffs, but their latest partnerships with GoPro and Sportsvision could make the NHL the leader of the big four pro sports in player tracking technology.

First, the NHL announced they will broadcast live GoPro footage of its players during telecasts. Previously, GoPro has been relegated to partnerships with extreme sports. This is is their first foray with a major pro sports league. According to Techcrunch, GoPro will receive additional branding opportunities as part of their deal with the NHL as an “Official Partner.” The live broadcasts were a part of the 2015 NHL All-Star Weekend and you can see a clip of some previously shot footage below.

In another announcement, the NHL revealed they would be using player tracking technology in both the Skills Competition and the All-Star Game. The technology was created by Sportvision, which also provides real-time tracking technology for NASCAR and the NFL. To track the players and the puck in real time, Sportsvision has created a puck that contains a microchip and has infrared light tubes around the outside. As Sportsvision CEO Hank Adams explained to Yahoo Sports, “We have infrared cameras up in the catwalks, 10 of them. They see the flash of the puck, which is a unique frequency, and different than the flash of a player tag. And each player tag has a different frequency. We slip it into a pocket of the jersey, and it shines through brightly.”

The puck was the toughest nut to crack, something that took Sportsvision years to perfect. According to the Washington Post, Sportsvision partnered with the NHL’s puck manufacturer to recreate a puck that would play the same way as current game pucks. Adams says, “When you throw the puck on the ice, and the standard puck, they won’t be able to tell the difference,” Adams said. “It’s not livelier, deader, no extra rebound, heavier, it is basically the same puck from their standpoint.”

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman praised the possibilities of the technology, saying, “This is, if I can coin a phrase, in the embryonic stages of a work in progress, but ultimately we are hoping to deliver the kind of data that will create insights and tell stories that avid and casual hockey fans will enjoy. In short, we are attempting to embark upon a journey that hopefully will enable us to create and then maintain a digital record of everything in our game and compile a complete digital history.”

For NHL fans, the technology will provide real-time times stats during broadcasts, including player speed, shot speed, and player ice time, among other information. Below is some footage of the tracking technology in use during the NHL Skills Competition.

The technology will also be used for viewers using a second screen, where fans can follow the game in real time similar to MLB’s At Bat app. Users will able to track in the puck, player position, and ice time in real-time. Below is the second screen software the NHL showed off during All-Star Weekend.

The are plenty more uses for this technology, including the ability to develop advanced analytics like the MLB and NBA, as well as new ways for fans to watch their favorite teams. For the naysayers who remember the glowing puck experiment by Fox Sports in the 1990s all too well, I can assure you this is not a repeat. On the contrary, these new partnerships could provide the NHL an advantage that it doesn’t have over more popular pro sports leagues for years to come.

(Image via gryphon1911)

Major League Soccer has announced they will begin implementing the concussion tracking device xPatch next season in order to further study the effects of head trauma on their players.

The xPatch was recently used in a rugby match by the London-based Saracens (no relation to Friday Night Lights character Matt Saracen, unfortunately). Some in London have dismissed the patches, calling them gimmicky, but Edward Griffith, the Saracens CEO, responded tersely saying, “It is the furthest thing from a gimmick. This is not something we just thought would be good to try out last weekend. This has been nine months in the planning. We have set aside a budget of £350,000 for it for next season funded by the Drake Foundation because we believe wholly in the significance of the research. I don’t want to be visiting these players in 20 or 25 years time in a hospital where they are suffering from dementia or some other neurological condition.”

The xPatch, made by Seattle-based X2 Biosystems, contains a gyroscope and accelerometer that are encased in plastic. They are 1” by 3” and placed on a bone behind the players ear and taped down for games. The xPatch records all of the head trauma a player experiences and sends the information to trainers via an app.

A device like the xPatch may have been able to better track the head trauma former MLS star Taylor Twellman experienced during his career (he retired after suffering his sixth concussion). Twellman has since committed to donating his brain after his death for concussion reasearch and has his own foundation, Think Taylor, to raise money and awareness for concussion prevention.

Further implementation of the device could also help prevent scenarios like the one that occurred during the NFL playoffs on January 3rd, when the Ravens Courtney Upshaw had a rare clean sack of Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who’s helmet bounced off the turf when he went down.

Roethlisberger returned to the game five minutes later after having his neck and shoulders tested and going through the NFL concussion protocol. He looked shaky when he returned to the huddle and proceeded to throw an interception on his first snap, causing some to speculate that he returned to the game too soon.

Dr. Matt Matava of the NFL Physician Society explained to the Guardian previously that X2 Biosystems technology, “has allowed us to accurately diagnose concussions immediately following an injury [about six to eight minutes after a hit]. The software also allows us to compare the players’ injury date to their baseline in order to objectively assess changes in mental status.” All 32 NFL teams currently use X2’s concussion management software.

The hope is that the technology becomes unobtrusive enough for players of all contact sports to use during games to detect in-game head trauma and track the sub-concussive impacts a player experiences over the course of his career. Considering the tragic deaths of former NFL stars Junior Seau and Dave Duerson, and the nightmare that the NFL concussion settlement has become, it’s a breakthrough that can’t come soon enough.

(Image via Bay Area Bias)

GoPro, the popular rugged-camera maker, has come to an agreement with the NHL to use the mountable cameras to create a point-of-view look for fans in NHL promos and game broadcasts. According to AdWeek, around a dozen NHL players were outfitted with GoPro cameras during a recent media tour. With cameras on their helmets, jerseys and masks, GoPro filmed the players doing various acts of shooting, skating, and puck handling. The video will be mainly used for promotional material, but some is expected to be cut in to various broadcasts on NBC, Rogers Network, and the NHL Network.

Plenty of hockey-related material shot with GoPros can be found on YouTube, but not of it has to do with the NHL — the best of the best — as of yet. Affixing the cameras to top-tier players will give fans one of the closest approximations available as to what it’s like to play in an NHL game. The footage can provide not only a totally new point of view, but a better realization of just how fast the game can be.

GoPro cameras were made for this kind of thing. Getting their start as the camera of record for extreme sports, they have branched into almost any field imaginable. While people are using GoPros for anything these days, they got their start in sports. It is almost slightly curious as to why it has taken this long for this kind of partnership to flourish. Nevertheless, it makes perfect sense, and should give a more in-depth look at the sport while perhaps even drawing in a few new ones.

(Header photo via Tom Hart)