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We’d heard that the NFL would be bringing the RedZone channel to phones this season, and it looks like Verizon was the highest bidder: NFL Mobile will launch on Big Red next month with the draft, complete with live streaming video of the event, on-demand video analysis from NFL Network, a pick-by-pick draft tracker, and other content. Once the season starts, customers will get RedZone, live streams of Sunday night and Thursday night games, on-demand video highlights and analysis, live home and away radio broadcasts, fantasy info, and the usual nasty ringtones and graphics. That’s a ton of content, and it certainly makes Sprint’s NFL package seem a little light in comparison — we’ll have to see what pricing is like and what devices this’ll run on closer to launch, however. Bring on the draft!

Update: We just confirmed that NFL Mobile will be exclusive to Verizon for the next four years, which means Sprint customers are out of luck. Verizon paid a pretty penny for the rights: the Wall Street Journal values the deal at $720 million.

NFL Mobile comes to Verizon with livestreaming RedZone channel originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EA Sports President Peter Moore told Bloomberg that the popular Madden NFL series of football video games will make its way to Facebook.

We haven’t heard a peep about a launch date. Moore says we will definitely see Madden on the Facebook platform, but the social media version will be simpler than its console cousins, because EA wants to “make Madden more accessible.”

Facebook games are a big deal these days. FarmVille and Mafia Wars developer Zynga just raised $180 million in funding. The news that established (but more niche) long-time video game franchise Civilization is coming to Facebook this summer has gotten a lot of press and interest, too.

More presciently, EA just bought a huge Facebook game company called Playfish for $400 million. The quote from Moore about EA’s Madden plans didn’t mention Playfish, but it’s possible that the acquired company’s resources will be used to develop and publish Madden on Facebook.

EA launched Madden NFL 2010 for the video game consoles just in time for the Super Bowl, so hype for the brand is already high right now. This was a good time for the company to let this news slip out.

Reviews: Facebook

Tags: ea sports, facebook, football, games, madden, nfl, online games, sports, video games

This year the NFL wants you to “Tag the Super Bowl #SB44″ so that it can collect and aggregate tweets and Flickr photos from fans around the world.

The NFL is highlighting the user-tagged Super Bowl content on its new Tag the Super Bowl site, which offers a visually stimulating and unfiltered interactive view of tweets and images that football fans are sharing on Twitter and Flickr with the #SB44 hashtag.

The media-rich microsite (check out the screenshot below) is just a collection of tagged content (including tweets from the NFL’s official Twitter account), but it departs from the norm by displaying content in a grid that you can drag to explore, and by featuring select photos and tweets on the left-hand side.

Tag the Super Bowl is one part curated content and one part social media football art. We do think functionality and filtering could be improved to offer a more tailored experience to site visitors, though.

What we find especially interesting is that the NFL is notorious for being a bully about the rights to its content, which makes this engineered social media strategy around the Super Bowl quite refreshing.

Of course it’s not as if the NFL is altering the licensing rights to its content or broadcasting the game live to the web, but one can hope that social media will continue to push the NFL in new directions, bridging the gap between what the NFL believes to be a major entertainment commodity and what most of us would like to enjoy on our own terms.

For an another unique perspective on this year’s game, you might consider checking out Chad Ochocinco’s OCNN — Ochocinco News Network — which will include an array of opinions, videos, tweets and photos from Ochocinco and other football stars, all of which will be posted to the player’s social media sites.

[via SocialTimes]

Reviews: Flickr, Twitter

Tags: flickr, MARKETING, nfl, social media, sports, Super Bowl, twitter

Sports fans, rejoice: Hulu’s online TV catalog just added the NFL Network to its roster.

The Fox/ABC/NBC joint venture just announced that it’s adding eight shows from the National Football League’s dedicated channel, along with highlights from past seasons for every NFL team. Here are the shows that have just landed on Hulu:

- America’s Game: The Super Bowl Champions: Documentary series on the journey to the big game.

- Hard Knocks: Popular training camp reality show.

- Greatest Games: 90-minute show on some of the NFL’s most famous and historical games.

- Game of the Week: The NFL picks a few of the top games from the week and re-airs them with all of the gaps and waiting around edited out. There are over 70 episodes up now on Hulu.

- Live Wire: A weekly NFL recap show.

- Season in Review: Yes, it’s a review of the last season’s big events.

- Sounds of the Game: The NFL Network mics up players and coaches and turns that into a surprisingly awesome show.

- Super Bowl Highlights: Exactly as it sounds.

Overall, we think this is a big win for Hulu and the NFL Network. This type of content is not readily available, but we can definitely see a lot of people wanting to relive their favorite games or brush up on their NFL history.

Reviews: Hulu

Tags: hulu, nfl, sports, video

Sure, the Wall Street Journal says there’s only 11 minutes of actual action in every NFL game, but on Super Bowl Sunday we’ll be prepped to catch every one of them — and all the commercials, play stoppages and halftime shows in between — in the best quality possible. The Colts and Saints both came close to racking up undefeated regular season records but missed, due either to lackluster play and late season injuries or just a decision to play Curtis Painter. While that means the ‘72 Dolphins get to hang onto a glorious past for one more year, these pass-happy offenses of the future are expected to light up the scoreboard all night and we’ll need to make sure our equipment is up to par for a 2010 Super Bowl experience.

Continue reading Totally blow out the big game! Part V: Super Bowl XLIV

Totally blow out the big game! Part V: Super Bowl XLIV originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The NFL has announced that it’ll be bringing its all-action, all-the-time RedZone content to cellphones in time for next season, offering tons of game-day coverage on the go to anyone willing to pay the price. Thing is, said price hasn’t been announced — but if it’s reasonable, it could put a pretty big dent in the value of Sprint’s existing relationship with the NFL, which brings free live and archived content to subscribers of its Simply Everything plans. Also worried, of course, are the NFL’s traditional content distribution partners — the major networks like CBS and FOX — but realistically, we can’t see ourselves choosing to watch a whole game on a 3-inch display over a 50-inch in high def. With one hand holding the phone, how are we going to hang on to the beer and grub?

[Thanks, Colin]

NFL bringing RedZone channel to phones next season originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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