Amazon is poised to become a live sports powerhouse as soon as next year, a new report predicts, as more tech companies are seeking out streaming rights for top leagues in the U.S. and abroad. The report from Juniper Research covers 10 tech trends for 2018. The presence of Amazon, and to a lesser extent Facebook, as top contenders for major sports packages is the firm’s number one trend to watch for next year. Amazon’s biggest foray into live sports so far came when it dropped a reported $50 million to stream 11 NFL Thursday Night Football games. Amazon beat… Read More
Retired All-Star pitcher Roy Halladay died today when his plane, an amphibious light-sport aircraft known as the Icon A5, crashed into the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast. Halladay’s death at the age of 40 was particularly poignant, and not only because of his stellar career as one of only six pitchers to win the Cy Young Award in the American League (with the Toronto Blue Jays, 2003) as well as the National League (with the Philadelphia Phillies, 2010). He received the plane a month ago from Icon Aircraft, and became one of its biggest boosters on Twitter: Can’t… Read More
We’ve seen 22-foot tall cactuses and a Georgia city offering to change its name. But football-crazed Michigan is taking a gridiron approach to wooing Amazon’s second headquarters, known as HQ2. In last night’s Michigan-Michigan State football game, the head coaches of the rival schools found common ground when they donned headsets with a special message touting Detroit’s bid for Amazon’s “second home.” Their headsets proudly claimed: #amazondetroit! #AmazonHQ2. Here’s a look at Michigan State football coach Mark Dantonio and Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh with the specially-branded headphones. They may be rivals on the field, but #AmazonDetroit is something we can all agree… Read More
The most dominant team of geeks in the second season of IT Sports League softball proved to be Whitepages as they took the title last week from defending champs SimplyMeasured. The Whitepages Wombats, captained by revenue accounting manager Erin Schindler, beat SimplyMeasured 15-8 at Seattle’s Queen Anne Field and finished the season with a 9-1 record. Whitepages reached the championship game by beating a team from Quantum, 24-12. SimplyMeasured, which took the title last summer, finished with two losses this year. They beat TINYPulse 21-8 to reach the final game. Quantum beat TINYPulse 11-8 to finish third this year. TINYPulse… Read More
Spoiler alert: This report doesn’t give away any major plot twists in “17776,” SB Nation’s online presentation, but if you want to stay totally in the dark, wait to read this item until after you’ve checked it out. What do space probes and football have in common? A weird and wonderful tale on the sports website SB Nation provides an answer, but you have to work for it. As readers scroll through conversations from the future, author and illustrator Jon Bois introduces readers to Nine, Ten and Juice — referring to NASA’s Pioneer 9 and Pioneer 10 probes plus the… Read More
