Amazon is expanding its sports media footprint with a new deal to stream New York Yankees baseball games this season. The Seattle tech giant will stream 21 Yankees games on Prime Video later this year. The live MLB content will be free for Prime members, but only available to those in the Yankees “home-team footprint”: New York state, Connecticut, northeast Pennsylvania, and north and central New Jersey. Related: NFL fans can access live Next Gen Stats for first time via Amazon’s Thursday Night Football stream The games will be simulcasts produced by YES Network. Last year, the Yankees, Sinclair Broadcast Group,… 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
As a professional basketball player in Montenegro, Nikola Mrvaljevic got the idea that there must be a better way for athletes to train. “Not everybody trains efficiently. We tend to get tired and most of the time we don’t know why,” Mrvaljevic said. So he started Strive, a wearable technology startup that seeks to answer how and why athletes fatigue. The Bothell, Wash.-based company aims to quantify the “miles per gallon” for a given athlete. After hanging up his basketball jersey, Mrvaljevic went on to study biomedical and electrical engineering at the University of Rhode Island. He later got an… Read More
Two Microsoft veterans are building apps to help people put down their mobile devices and engage with others in the real world through sports. Seattle-based Mavengo, which launched in 2016, helps sports enthusiasts find and communicate with other players and set up games and matches. The software uses artificial intelligence to manage the monotonous task of organizing and scheduling games and re-matching the winners and losers. Co-founder and CEO Imran Aziz calls it a “personal assistant for sports.” The startup last year raised $400,000 and has been testing an initial version of its app for squash players at three Seattle-area… Read More
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with details from the Sounders’ event announcing Zulily as its new jersey sponsor. [Follow up: From Microsoft to Zulily: Why the Sounders teamed up with Seattle e-commerce company that aims for rebrand] Microsoft Xbox may be out as the Seattle Sounders jersey sponsor, and rumors are swirling about which company will take its place. The Major League Soccer club is hosting an event on Thursday at noon to reveal an “important club announcement,” believed to be a new jersey sponsor. It teased the announcement on social media late Wednesday, and buzz points to another… Read More
