Baseball GamecastBaseball Gamecast

Robert SawersBarrett Arney

The GamecastThe Gamecast

Provides live updates and a complete summary of a baseball game, including:

•The players and their positions on the field

• The performance of the players so far in that game

• A summary of the game as a whole, inning by inning.

Who wants it?Who wants it?•Baseball fans away from a TV or Computer

•Radios and more simple Cell Phone applications don’t have full game / player summaries.

•Fans not in media coverage area for a particular game (non-local teams, blackouts, etc)

•ESPN.com is currently working on advancing wireless technology.

Example GamecastsExample Gamecasts

ESPN offers a simplified Gamecast:

http://espn.go.com/main.html has more extensive online Gamecasts similar to what this one will be like.

FeaturesFeatures •Baseball diamond with information about position

players selectable by the user.

•Live pitch-by-pitch updates

•Player lineups with their performance and the usual baseball stats.

•Inning by inning game summary

System RequirementsSystem Requirements• A MIDlet provides the interface, a Servlet the functionality.

• The Servlet reads in a live feed in XML and organizes the relevant data for the MIDlet

System Requirements Cont.System Requirements Cont.

Scoreboard of all the games

Selected game

Baseball Diamond and Game status

Lineup and Players’ Stats

Inning by Inning Game Summary

MIDlet System Requirement Details:

System ArchitectureSystem Architecture•Read in an online feed

1) Sportsticker.com is the major commercial feed, but requires a license.

2) The format of a Sportsticker feed is available, so it’s possible to develop a simulated source without the license.

•Parse the feed and send the relevant information to the MIDlet, delays can be rather long and shouldn’t be an issue.

Lifecyle PlanLifecyle Plan•ESPN.com, Yahoo!, etc. have relatively simple score summary MIDlets that have access to SportsTicker data feeds.

•This is an evolution from those products.

•Additional functionality can be added with each spiral because there is A LOT of information available in data feeds. Thus there is always more information that can be presented.

Feasibility Feasibility •Next step in sports coverage for mobile devices.

1) Simple live scoreboards already exist.

2) Current research is being done in this area.

ConclusionConclusion•A Baseball Gamecast is an extension of current scoreboards for cell phones.

•The means exist to create a Gamecast that understands sportsticker.com feeds – the major feed used by Yahoo!, ESPN et. al.

•Long term support is available from companies like the MLB, ESPN.

•A lot of potential future functionality.