If there’s one NFL team that relies on its home stadium crowd noise as a competitive advantage, it’s the Seattle Seahawks. With 70,000 empty seats at CenturyLink Field because of the coronavirus pandemic, fake noise will have to stand in for the celebrated “12th Man” for the foreseeable future. The NFL’s 32 teams will be using artificial crowd noise, supplied by the league, and pumped through stadium sound systems to replicate a bit of what happens during games and to make the entire experience sound a bit better for television. The Seahawks open the season at Atlanta on Sunday and… Read More
Football fans wondering whether the next handoff to a running back could be another Beast Quake have another stat to track thanks to Next Gen Stats, the platform powered by Amazon Web Services. The new stat, called Expected Rush Yards, was born out of the National Football League’s Big Data Bowl, a data analytics competition which focused on the run game this year and sought to answer the question, “When an NFL ball carrier takes a handoff, how many yards should we expect him to gain on the play?” According to Amazon, more than 2,000 people participated in the open-source… Read More
I had one of the more memorable sports moments of my life last night, rooting for my favorite team in the crowd at an NBA game — without leaving my apartment. My big takeaway: Microsoft and the NBA are on to something with their new tech-fueled virtual fan experience. I gave it a spin during Thursday’s Blazers vs. Lakers playoff game, watching the action in Microsoft Teams alongside other fans doing the same, all of us visible in the virtual stands on the live national broadcast. It was pretty epic — well, not that epic, since the Lakers crushed my… Read More
Two Seattle brands are joining forces as the Sounders FC announced a new deal with Amazon on Tuesday in which Prime Video will be the exclusive digital streaming platform for the professional soccer team’s games. Prime members will have access to all non-nationally televised Sounders matches throughout the team’s regional broadcast territory, which includes the entirety of Washington state. The Sounders will be the first Major League Soccer team with club-specific content available from a dedicated team page on Prime Video, and content viewable across a variety of devices will extend beyond matches to include highlights, player interviews, press conferences,… Read More
Steve Ballmer isn’t able to jump out of a courtside seat and cheer on his Los Angeles Clippers in his usual enthusiastic fashion since the NBA returned to action last week. But the former Microsoft CEO and current team owner is still pretty excited about what’s he’s seen when it comes to games during the coronavirus pandemic. “I think it is incredibly well done,” Ballmer told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday about the league’s safety measures to keep team personnel healthy as well as innovations being used to engage fans who can’t be there in person. Ballmer said he was… Read More
