Add the WNBA to the list of professional sports leagues that Amazon wants to help showcase via its Prime Video streaming platform. Amazon and the WNBA reached a multi-year agreement giving Prime Video exclusive global streaming rights to 16 WNBA games per season. The deal will feature a streamed game each week during the regular season, as well as the inaugural Commissioner’s Cup game on Aug.12. It marks the first time Prime Video has exclusive global streaming rights to a women’s professional sports league and when coverage starts on May 29 for the game between the Atlanta Dream and New… Read More
Courtside seats at a Lakers game used to be such a prestigious thing. But 2020 is a different NBA fan experience thanks to the pandemic, and it doesn’t look like Jack Nicholson made it into a test of video technology at a recent practice. As part of its partnership with Microsoft, the NBA is ringing the court with 17-foot video boards to allow a select number of fans to experience upcoming games via Microsoft Teams “Together” mode. A clip of the video collaboration software being put to the test showed up on Twitter over the weekend as Lakers players participated… Read More
Technology is changing the way we watch live sports. The innovation dates back decades, from the advent of the color TV, to the yellow augmented reality first down line, to high-def TV, to internet-powered streaming options. With software and hardware evolving at a rapid pace, what’s next for the industry? How will technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning affect live sports production? And when will the robots take over — if ever? We posed some of those questions to ESPN executives who help put together Monday Night Football (MNF) each week during the NFL season. Earlier this month… Read More
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is never short of courtside enthusiasm while watching his LA Clippers compete, as we documented on an episode of our Numbers Geek podcast this weekend. But on Monday night, he took it to another level, as he witnessed a bit of NBA history as his team overcame the largest deficit ever in the playoffs with a 135-131 victory over the Golden State Warriors. The Clippers trailed by 31 points before mounting a comeback to stun the defending NBA champs at home in game two of the opening round series. Ballmer has owned the team since… Read More
One way to get an tour of Johnson Space Center’s high-security Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility is to question whether people landed on the moon at all. At least that strategy works if you’re an NBA basketball star like Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry. It all started on Monday, with Curry’s riffs on “Winging It,” a basketball-centric podcast on The Ringer. Curry and other basketball players touched on a variety of topics, ranging from golf simulators to dinosaur sounds. After wondering how scientists know what sounds dinosaurs made, Curry segued to the moon-hoax controversy (at around 46:46 in the… Read More
