120 Sports- Game Changer

donkeypunch · Jun 25, 2014

120sports.com debuting today. Great news for people on the brink of getting rid of cable or already have. ENOY! SUCK IT COMCAST AND BSPN.

Mods please delete if already posted somewhere.

http://mashable.com/2014/06/25/120-sports-espn-cord-cutters/

Two of the largest U.S. professional sports leagues have entered into a joint venture to launch a new video startup tailored to mobile fans and cord cutters that miss being able to tune in to ESPN.

120 Sports launched on Wednesday with equity stakes from Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League, as well as Time Inc., college-sports syndicator Campus Insiders and digital-sports media company Silver Chalice. The operation is already sizable with more than 130 staff based out of Chicago.

The startup features video on demand of sports highlights from professional hockey, baseball, basketball, NASCAR, golf and college sports, as well as eight hours of daily live programming from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. ET (starting at 4 p.m. on Sundays). The major gap is the NFL, which means no professional football highlights. Negotiations between the NFL and 120 Sports are ongoing, according to a 120 Sports spokesperson.

From YouTube to original-content producers like Hulu and more recently Yahoo, companies are flocking to online video; however, sports have lagged behind. Leagues like the NBA and MLB have their own video platforms, but few startups have tried to weave sports video into a package aimed at the daily sports consumer.

Jason Coyle, president of 120 Sports, said at a media briefing that its goal is to provide users with a combination of classic sports coverage and digital media.

"120, we believe, is a television-quality sports network that's created exclusively for digital audiences. News, highlights, like look-ins, analysis, conversations moving at the speed of Twitter, sports to sport, topic to topic, 120 seconds at a time," he said.

The site is supported entirely by ads, and launched with a variety of sponsors, including Verizon, Nissan and Geico. A spokesperson declined to provide details on the revenue split between the equity and content partners.

120 Sports offers an array of live original programming that is quickly transferred into a searchable video-on-demand library of clips. While the site won't be able to show a live game in its entirety, it will offer live "look-ins" to important moments. 120 Sports is available as a free app on iOS and Android (it will arrive in the Google Play store on July 14), as well as through the web at 120Sports.com, with plans to eventually expand to connected devices.

The name for 120 Sports comes from the two-minute segments produced and distributed through the company's 24-hour network. Video content will include original shows with dedicated hosts that discuss the day's news, highlights and controversies in the sports world. 120 Sports and its affiliated leagues said the content is editorially independent, and will be free to touch on all corners of the sports world.

The tone is meant to relate to sports fans in a casual way; hosts are not allowed to wear suits.

Game video from the leagues involved will be the centerpiece, providing users with highlights that are closely integrated with system data; this data, in turn, presents related stories to whatever is being watched. Tiles that run along the bottom of the app change, as the user moves through different topics and teams.

Joe Inzerillo, chief technology officer of MLB Advanced Media, which helped build and powers the tech infrastructure of 120 Sports, said meshing data and video required the building of a custom back end that allowed for the seamless combination of video combined with a variety of other content, including relevant stats, photos and tweets.

"We really had to deconstruct the production process to make [video and data] both parallel and equal," Inzerillo said. "You can see the fact that it's not just television. It's not just a television production. It really is something unique."
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bobmarley · Jun 25, 2014

nice!

Mr. Clutch · Jun 25, 2014

Until we get live sports the cable isn't getting cut

dback816 · Jun 25, 2014

Mr. Clutch said: ↑

Until we get live sports the cable isn't getting cut
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People are already streaming anything that isn't airing on ABC.

Mr. Clutch · Jun 26, 2014

dback816 said: ↑

People are already streaming anything that isn't airing on ABC.
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I feel like your post is misleading

shastarocket · Jun 26, 2014

Bonus Asik trade talk by Antoine Walker!

Terrible analysis like this convinces me that damn near anyone can be on TV

donkeypunch · Jun 26, 2014

shastarocket said: ↑

Bonus Asik trade talk by Antoine Walker!

Terrible analysis like this convinces me that damn near anyone can be on TV
Click to expand...

truer words have never been spoken. I like to think of this network as a small market team (which they are) that swung as big as they could to pick up a free agent in ESPN's Michael Kim (which is only really an MLE kind of player) and ran out of money and had to pick up spare parts to fill out the team.

Im pretty sure Antoine Walker was sitting in his 2 bedroom apartment eating a little Caesars pizza, trying to figure out which nbadl league to try out for and then got a call for this opportunity and jumped at it. They're probably paying him in glazed donuts and give him free reign at a roulette table they have set up in the studio that only pays out little Caesar vouchers. And he couldnt be more happy.

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