The National Football League and Verizon Wireless has partnered with a mobile distribution deal that will bring live NFL games onto phones at the start of next season.
The paid service will work on BlackBerrys and Android phones. Verizon hasn’t set prices for service, but an announcement is expected in weeks.
More from the WSJ: The deal marks a significant shift in strategy for the NFL, which has never before allowed mobile access to its games on Sunday afternoons. Doing so was long considered by broadcasters to be a threat to the NFL’s golden goose—its Sunday afternoon broadcasts that generate some $1.4 billion in license fees from News Corp.’s Fox and CBS Corp’s. CBS, whose executives have said they will keep a close eye on the impact of mobile distribution on their ratings.
Verizon’s four-year deal, which they took over from Sprint, is reportedly worth about $720 million.
Football is one the most popular sport in the world, so in anticipation of the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2010, design firm AGENT came up with a unique concept for the game’s ball equipment. The CTRUS concept ball would be embedded with GPS and RFID tracking, allowing game officials to more accurately judge games.
The most interesting part of the new tech-enhanced ball would be its transparent, somewhat skeletal looks.
In what must be the biggest social media own goal this year, British football clubs Manchester United and Manchester City have both banned their players from using Twitter.
The Manchester Evening News reports that players were told to stay away from social media services after a number of fake accounts were uncovered recently.
Manchester United issued a statement yesterday confirming that none of its players had accounts, while the club’s rivals Manchester City confirmed to the Manchester Evening News that they had the same policy.
I find this crazy, especially when Manchester United is in so much debt! Social media could be leverage to increase their current revenue streams and even develop new revenue streams such as YouTube channels with more activity, Official twitter account with targeted ads, etc.
ITV has really finally started to accept new media and has launched a new trial around Twitter and the FA Cup final. Football fans will be able to watch the real time buzz around the FA Cup final on ITV.com.
The broadcaster is integrating applications built around the successful micro blogging tool Twitter to reflect the online ‘noise’ generated by the clash between Everton and Chelsea on 30th May.
Twitterfall – a site which cascades comments made on Twitter – will be embedded into the football section of itv.com of the day of the game, allowing fans to see ‘tweets’ about the match as it progresses.
A tool developed by London company thruSITES will allow fans to see which of the players is generating the most chatter on Twitter. The players’ names and faces will appear alongside bars which will move up and down to reflect the buzz around players during the game. The tool will be available after the match so that fans can scrub along a timeline to see which players caused a buzz at crucial moments.
Fans will also be able to submit their thoughts using web based audio comment service AudioBoo. The application will allow iPhone users to submit their comments to the site for other fans to hear.
The tools will be available on the site on a special FA Cup Buzz page from around 1pm on 30th May. The page will be accessed via http://itv.com/football.
I think it would have been better to design a page intergrates all of these services and also offers free live streaming of the game. Thus, I could watch the game on the same screen see the buzz around the players and the game.
In what must be the biggest social media own goal this year, British football clubs Manchester United and Manchester City have both banned their players from using Twitter.
