View From The Editor: Bowled over by US Sports - February 2005  

Officer Samuel N Bearden

Planning and more planning

At sports agent Leigh Steinberg's party we got to quaff our favourite White Zinfandel wine which by coincidence is also the drink of choice of Basketball Hall of Famer Walt 'Clyde' Frazier - a lovely chap whom S&T met in our hotel bar in New York the previous week (The Plaza, darling). Clyde is not only a Knicks legend and a commentator on the Madison Square Garden TV network, but also a nifty dresser, looking rather spiffy that evening in his full-length vintage coat.
Back at the Steinberg party, we also found out that sports architectural company HOK Sport had been planning for the Super Bowl at Jacksonville's Alltel Stadium for well over a year, with the six weeks prior to the event being the most frenzied. Placing media and broadcasting compounds as well as figuring out camera locations was all part of HOK's job with the firm having the planning of more than 20 Super Bowls on its resume.
Host broadcaster Fox Sports had been planning its own operations for around two years, for its crew of 300 staff and around 50 cameras, including 12 turf cams that were installed on the morning of the game. The Fox Sports yacht also deserves a special mention for having the most salubrious furnishings and fittings that S&T has ever seen on water. Nice.
"As television audiences in the US continue to splinter given the explosion of available channel and entertainment choices, the Super Bowl remains the country's greatest single communal event," says Fox Sports' Lou D'Ermilio on the importance of Super Bowl XXXIX for the network, speaking to S&T. "High profile sports events such as the Super Bowl, World Series and Daytona 500 provide superb payoffs to Fox's strong regular-season coverage of the NFL, MLB and NASCAR." The payoffs are far as Super Bowl XXXIX was concerned were indeed 'Super' with Fox's game coverage, post game coverage and first half of The Simpsons (that it aired afterwards) providing Fox's highest rated night ever in terms of total viewers.

Hoops a plenty

During the week prior to the Super Bowl, S&T caught up with both the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball in a temperature-challenged New York City, but decided to leave calling the NHL until the weather improves (just a hunch). As well as treating S&T to the New York Knicks v Phoenix Suns at Madison Square Garden (and therefore the opportunity to salivate over Suns player Steve Nash in person), the NBA kindly took S&T on a tour of its digital media centre in Secaucus, New Jersey. "An advantage of our broadcasting and digital set-up compared to other sports leagues in the US is that we have everything under one roof in one digital media centre," says Stephen Hellmuth, NBA Entertainment's senior vice president of operations and technology, "which makes everything super-efficient and cohesive. It's one 'factory' for everything." The league is also developing a digital media management system that is already up and running internally, allowing NBA staff to search for and select video content for hundreds of hours of NBA matches online. "We are planning on offering this as a service to our partners in the future," says Michael S Gliedman, senior vice president and chief information officer for NBA Entertainment. "They will be able to select what they want using a series of simple search strings and then order it immediately."
As well as producing content for its broadcasters and websites NBA.com and WNBA.com, the league's own 24/7 channel, NBA TV, also operates out of the Secaucus studios. Currently in its sixth year of operation, NBA TV is available in 66m US homes and in more than 40 countries outside the US and was the first league-operated channel to launch.
One bit of simple technology that has boosted NBA TV programming this season is the videophone. "NBA TV videophones have been set up in all 29 NBA arenas and can be utilised on a nightly basis to report breaking news and to televise exclusive player interviews," says NBA Entertainment's Richard Kopilnick, who is senior director of programming.
A technology that has been leading the way for the NBA is wireless, says vice president of interactive services for NBA Entertainment, Brenda Spoonemore. "Wireless has been a great success for us this season," she explains. "Everyone knows how to use their mobile phone. It's their own device and they have a deep connection to it. They can for example vote for an MVP of a game no matter where they are - at home or in a bar - and feel part of the action. We have stepped into wireless full force this year with live game applications, fantasy games, twitch games, ringtones and video highlights delivered directly to phones."

Baseball goes back to basics

Across town from the NBA, following fortification from a Starbucks Hot Chocolate (WiFi T-Mobile hotspot central) was S&T's next stop, Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), where we caught up with its president and chief executive officer Bob Bowman. Recently, MLBAM had signed a deal with the Major League Baseball Players Association, giving the former the rights to player and team images and trademarks for exploitation digitally and interactively. MLBAM had also just announced a 10-year online partnership with Minor League Baseball agreement making MLBAM the exclusive provider of internet-related services and other interactive media services to the Minor League, so Bowman was understandably feeling rather bullish. But to find out just how bullish he was, you will have to wait until next month's S&T when we will profile what MLBAM has in store for its new raft of minor league websites. S&T is a terrible tease, we know, but it will be worth the wait, we assure you.
In the interests of developing our knowledge of US sports further, S&T is now off to study every photograph of NBA player Steve Nash that we can find on the internet. It's a tough life, but we feel we owe it to ourselves after all that partying in Jacksonville.
See you in a few weeks time at Sport and Technology: The Conference 2005, here in balmy (compared with New York), London!

Rachael Church - Editor

Do you fancy Steve Nash? Or do you prefer the New England Patriots' Tom Brady? If you have any comments or feedback on this article or any of the features in S&T, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please e-mail your comments to editor@sportandtechnology.com.

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