The DumboTron (Skins try selling scores and highlights to fans.)

[Art]

I tried to bold the relating one vs. the other in bold.

How is showing scoring updates (no one sane wants them to be continuous and you're just being difficult in putting it that way) goofy and bad? If the boy's get scored on and it flashes, it riles up the fans. How is that goofy or bad? I think you're being a shill. :laugh:

Now if they offered this, what I think is a pretty cool thing, and still showed the ocassional scoring update then anyone had a problem with that is just wack. But they've made it, at least so far as I can figure, where the only way to get an update on another game is to fork over the money. It's his right to do, I just think it sucks. :2cents: and that's all I'd pay.

KAO. Know what the word shill means. It means I'd find a way to defend the team not showing scores, assuming they are not showing scores. I'm actually in complete agreement that not doing that, if they aren't, is goofy and bad. Thus, it is impossible to shill and you reveal ignorance to ignore what was stated and conclude so.

Then don't ask for it to be continuous if you don't want it. Ask for it to always be provided during normal breaks in the game so no score brings about a crowd reaction that could harm the offense if people got rowdy. The point is, if the team isn't doing this, they should and it is fine to say so.

It must not be confused with the other thing.

[The 12th Commandment]

KAO. Know what the word shill means. It means I'd find a way to defend the team not showing scores, assuming they are not showing scores. I'm actually in complete agreement that not doing that, if they aren't, is goofy and bad. Thus, it is impossible to shill and you reveal ignorance to ignore what was stated and conclude so.

Then don't ask for it to be continuous if you don't want it. Ask for it to always be provided during normal breaks in the game so no score brings about a crowd reaction that could harm the offense if people got rowdy. The point is, if the team isn't doing this, they should and it is fine to say so.

It must not be confused with the other thing.

I guess I was confused, not about the meaning of the word, but about what you thought was goofy. My bad...carry on!

[Walking Deadman]

You do get to see scores......at halftime only

Here's an interesting point:

My wife and I are leaving 403 after the Miami game and my wife needed to use the restroom so while I'm waiting for her a guy on a cell phone says something about the Packers beating the Eagles.....I'm estatic.

So I start yelling to the people walking past me "Packers beat the Eagles!!!!!"

and the crowd goes nuts.

We could have had 90,000 people going nuts inside FedEx had we'd been able to see the score together.....just some food for thought.

[Tastes Like Chicken]

You do get to see scores......at halftime only

Here's an interesting point:

My wife and I are leaving 403 after the Miami game and my wife needed to use the restroom so while I'm waiting for her a guy on a cell phone says something about the Packers beating the Eagles.....I'm estatic.

So I start yelling to the people walking past me "Packers beat the Eagles!!!!!"

and the crowd goes nuts.

We could have had 90,000 people going nuts inside FedEx had we'd been able to see the score together.....just some food for thought.

It was a long time ago that I was a kid at RFK with my Dad, but-- didn't they use to show the scores from around the league? And didn't the entire stadium go nuts when a division rival ESPECIALLY the Cowgirls was losing? I remember it sometimes energizing a crowd that was otherwise flat at the time. Sort of like an unplanned swig of Red Bull...

[deiulay]

It never occured to me that this was the reason we have out of town scoreboard showed less frequently. I took up the offer of a free trial on onening day. The device itself was great, but It took away from the game. Everybody around me kept asking for scores and stats. By halftime, I had given it to a kid next to me to use. If everyone had one, it would certainly be nice. They could at least give everyone in the club levels one so they could stay in thier seats.:2cents:

[Peregrine]

One can only hope once Snyder recoups his investment, he will lay off on the gouging and focus on making games more enjoyable.

One can hope, cant he?

[SkinsFTW]

This is completely ridiculous. :2cents:

Snyder could be trying to find a way to stop people from getting oxygen at the stadium so he could charge for it.

Of course Art would be right there to defend it: "It's not just oxygen people. It's fresher, cleaner and it gives you a buzz too!"

All for 30 dollars per visit to the staudium! :laugh: :laugh: :doh:

[ncsuapex]

as long as the buzz lasted the entire game I'd be down with that. 30 bucks is equal to about 4 beers, no way 4 beers keeps me buzzed all game. Sounds like a fair trade to me.

[Dana87]

Does Snyder even own Kangaroo TV? Because it is also available in other NFL cities for the same exact price. The dummy that started this thread should do a little more research. And I don't know of any other teams that give you a portable TV that gets clear color broadcasts of every other NFL game for free. This is just another stupid attempt to bad mouth Snyder. I don't have a problem when someone has a legitimate complaint, but this was just stupid. And for all of you jumping on board with this dummy, don't beleive everything you read.

[hail2skins]

I think McKenna visits this site often and the thread started by E-Dog Night about the lack of scores shown at FedEx during the Miami game probably inspired his column. Some of the thread posters made the correlation of lack of scores with the availability of the Kangaroo device so he probably went with that. I don't think he was trying to infer that other stadiums provide live games for free. FedEx has just been very inconsistent in providing out-of-town scores. I know they at least had the captioning thing last year (if not the year before as well), and they seemed to do a decent job (better than they had been) of giving regular score updates on the same screen where the captioning is posted. I don't know why they reverted back to providing very few updates during the Miami game. Maybe they'll do a better job at the NYG game......of course, they'll be like only 3 other games in progress (none divisional, since Philly plays at 1 and Dallas at 8), so people porbably won't care as much this week.

[hail2skins]

Does Snyder even own Kangaroo TV? Because it is also available in other NFL cities for the same exact price. The dummy that started this thread should do a little more research. And I don't know of any other teams that give you a portable TV that gets clear color broadcasts of every other NFL game for free. This is just another stupid attempt to bad mouth Snyder. I don't have a problem when someone has a legitimate complaint, but this was just stupid. And for all of you jumping on board with this dummy, don't beleive everything you read.

It would be interesting to find out if those stadiums which offer Kangaroo have lessened the frequency which they show scores.

[Skins24]

Aren't new scoreboards being installed next year?

Cant "you" buy a small TV like that for about the 150 ish $ and just take it in with you ? This way you have it for any event any time ?

$150??? lol, no way

They cost like $30. I bring one with me all the time. Excellent reception in the stadium.

Edit: oh. Not like the Kangaroo. Just a regular portable TV.

[Art]

This is completely ridiculous. :2cents:

Snyder could be trying to find a way to stop people from getting oxygen at the stadium so he could charge for it.

Of course Art would be right there to defend it: "It's not just oxygen people. It's fresher, cleaner and it gives you a buzz too!"

All for 30 dollars per visit to the staudium! :laugh: :laugh: :doh:

Except I didn't defend it, FTW. This is now the third time you've openly ignored what I've written and claimed it to mean something else. I've said I like the KangarooTV thing and that's good. You may not and that's good. The Kangaroo thing is neither here nor there. It's a device that is optionally used and fun if you like that sort of thing.

The other portion of this is about showing scores from other games, which I've said is stupid should the team not be doing it, and I've even offered up THIS board for fans to organize and petition the team to do what is the only right thing to do.

Yet, you willfully ignored that.

You owe me an apology. Make it snappy.

[AzSkinsFan63]

Yeah and every year Snickers fun size gets smaller while the price goes up...so what!

[forbeskin]

What started out as a Snyder bashing post has turned into a pissing contest between extremers. Only on extremeskins ladies and gentlemen!

[SeattleSkinsFan]

Hey, gotta pay for Archuleta somehow, right?

While I'm not exactly on the bleeding edge of technology, I've got to think that the issue of getting scores will become largely moot before long. Most folks have cell phones, and most of those cell phones already have the capability of accessing real-time data, sports scores being one of the most popular data options. The more that the competing service providers add bandwidth to their networks, the more that data access costs will drop, and therefore the more subscribers that will add data access to their calling plans.

For that matter, most calling plans already allow a la carte data access on a per-minute basis for customers without pre-purchased data plans. My phone is two years old, and I can log on and get sports scores if I want. I just don't, because I'm cheap.

For the price of admission (and everything else in the stadium), shouldn't you be able to at least see scores for free without having to know where to look, and when? Yup. But you can't. So you find another way, and that shouldn't mean having to rent a handheld unit, since a good number of folks already have an alternative means in their pocket.

As for being able to watch another game while you're at the stadium, I personally don't see the appeal. I thought the whole point of a big TV and surround sound speakers was to try to bring the stadium experience into the home, because the best thing is actually being there in person. So why try to bring the living room experience into the stadium by being able to flip to another game? If you're so keen on seeing some other game, too, then record it and watch it when you get home. That way you'll have something to do while you rest your vocal chords after shouting yourself hoarse in support of the Skins.

[Heidenreich]

I knew the scores of every game while I was at the opener. All I had to do is use my cell phone.

Internet on the phone, nice & easy.

I use it when I'm at Giants stadium too, because it's more up to date than the scores that are flashed up there.....

[zoony]

wow, GV called this one! Good job GV...

You guys better stop telling Danny that you are going to stop buying his beer. We've been hitting the tailgate pretty hard for 4 hours for years....then (the majority of us) don't eat / drink anything in the stadium.

If Danny gets wind that he's got a drink/food revolt he'll figure out some way to tax what you bring to the tailgate.....an import or "corking fee" of sorts.

Speaking of the master marketing midget....get ready for a real push on the Kangaroo. My b-inlaw and I hypothesized the unreadable scoreboards across from us are setting the stage for selling the "Kangaroo".

Want to see replays of the big plays? We didn't see the hit on Campbell at the stadium last night. Rent a Kangaroo.

Year 2 of the Fed Ex Field food/beverage began last night.

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4034307&highlight=kangaroo#post4034307

[Art]

If the team doesn't show highlights of its own game at the stadium fans will revolt, as they should. That will not occur.

[CounterTrey]

I used Kangaroo TV at a Formula 1 race this year in Montreal and have used it at some NASCAR races and its really cool. It will take some time to get it to work properly at the stadium but if was going to tailgate before and fater the game I would get one. I've used it twice and its a very good product..

[Rypien1191]

To anyone who is watching the Skins AT Fedex - instead of paying $40 for one of those stupid things, you can just text for free to find out scores. If you want to know the cowboys score, for example, text "cowboys" to 46645 (thats Google without the e). Within seconds, you have the score of any professional team you want (that includes football, baseball, basketball, etc. Just text the team name to 46645. Problem solved. You shouldnt be watching another game on TV if youre in Fedex anyway.

[BAFGA]

Aren't new scoreboards being installed next year?

$150??? lol, no way

They cost like $30. I bring one with me all the time. Excellent reception in the stadium.

Edit: oh. Not like the Kangaroo. Just a regular portable TV.

Only problem with the whole portable TV thing is that they will become obsolete when everyone switches to digital in 2009. I don't even know if they're coming out with portable digital TVs yet. I tried a google search but didn't see any. Then again, I didn't look too hard.

[FFskinsfan72]

The DumboTron

Skins try selling scores and highlights to fans.

By Dave McKenna

Posted: September 19, 2007

Click link for full article:

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=8076

The Lord giveth; Dan Snyder selleth. Skins fans, open your wallets for KangarooTV.

That’s the new in-house narrowcast system now available at FedExField. For the season opener against Miami, kiosks inside the stadium rented out hand-held video monitors about the size of an iPhone.

For $24.95 per day or $149.95 for every Sunday home game this season, ticketholders can get scores and highlights of other NFL games while watching the Skins.

Of course, that sort of stuff comes with the price of admission almost everywhere else.

In big-time sports, for better or worse, the game-day experience is about more than the game at hand. It’s been that way for some time. No matter who the Skins were playing, nothing would incite more delirium at RFK than bad news about the Dallas Cowboys. A recent viral clip of a stadium full of Michigan State rooters going bonkers as word arrives that the hated Michigan Wolverines were losing to Appalachian State shows this isn’t a local phenomenon.

It’s not just about rivalries, either: Gamblers have always wanted to keep up with the world outside the stadium, and now the fantasy-football boom means more eyeballs than ever are wandering up from the field toward the scoreboards and big screens in search of scores and highlights.

In most stadiums, this sort of info is plentiful and free. But the introduction of KangarooTV shows that for Snyder’s customers, nothing is priceless.

KangarooTV isn’t local or new. The company is based in Mirabel, Quebec, and until a round of test-marketing at NFL stadiums last year, it had concentrated its narrowcasting products on auto racing, particularly Formula 1 and endurance racing events. The personal monitors make more sense in that realm, since racing fans (excepting those at some NASCAR short tracks) aren’t used to getting all the action from one vantage point.

Football fans are. But the Redskins have been softening up the fan base for a product like KangarooTV’s pay-per-view offerings, which will be provided by DirecTV, for some time.

At some point a few years ago, with no announcement or explanation, the FedExField scoreboard operators simply stopped rotating scores of other NFL games. Redskins spokesman Karl Swanson says the old system was done away with to make space for captions of the house PA announcer for the hearing-impaired; scores are now periodically posted on the stadium’s end zone Jumbotrons, he says, “when the action allows.”

Well, perhaps, but try to find somebody who’s seen ’em lately.And while the scores have become hard to find, there’s no shortage of scoreboard space for, say, fast food restaurants or financial institutions.

As for highlights, well, nobody goes to FedExField anymore for the highlights—and that has nothing to do with the quality of the Skins’ play since moving to the lamentable Landover outpost in 1997.

No, the scoreboard at FedExField is plain awful, with just two small sections of the five-section scoreboards located above each end zone devoted to fuzzy video fare. The other three panels are taken up by billboard advertisements.

Even without FedExField’s crappy video offerings, D.C. would still rank as perhaps the worst scoreboard town in the land. Look around: At Nationals games, it’s about impossible to see RFK’s old-school single screen from the outfield seats.

And though the Caps’ and Wizards’ home, now called the Verizon Center, isn’t even a decade old, it seems like it’s been years since landlord Abe Pollin admitted that its video system—which he himself installed—was bush league. (Another irony here: Pollin is hailed as a pioneer in the arena-video realm, because his Capital Centre, which opened in 1973, was the first coliseum equipped with a big screen TV, called the TelScreen.)

His whining convinced the D.C. Council to make taxpayers pay $50 million for a package of improvements to the arena, highlighted by bigger big screens.

And, in fairness to Snyder, he inherited the petite and analog Jumbotrons.

But he’s done nothing to improve the product since taking over, this despite years of complaints from fans and the fact that many other NFL stadiums have installed huge and hi-def screens. (Look up the road in Baltimore for some perspective.)

Even if Snyder didn’t have a gouging history, trying to get fans to rent little video screens to fans would seem cheesy—like a budget airline that charges for headphones. But, given his past, and throwing in the removal of scores and his sticking with a crappy scoreboard, it doesn’t take a great leap in logic to think KangarooTV is part of yet another devious plan to dig deeper into fans’ wallets.

In any case, KangarooTV represents the latest chapter in Snyder’s bid to control every bit of information the fans get. Since buying the team in 1999, after all, he has taken over Redskins fan newsletters, a Redskins fan message board, Redskins preseason television broadcasts, Redskins regular season radio broadcasts, and almost every Redskins-related television show in the market.

By now, only Snyder obsessives—full disclosure: I’m one—can hope to differentiate between Redskins news and Redskins propaganda. The Washington Post ran a story in its TV section a couple weeks ago about all the Redskins-related programming now running on local television. The story, bizarrely, did not mention that Snyder produces and procures air time for all but one of the six noncable shows airing this season—the only non-Snyder offering is Redskins Report on WRC-TV, which is hosted by Snyder employees George Michael and Sonny Jurgensen. The article concluded, however, that all these infomercials proved how “frenzied” the town is for football.

If commercial airtime is the standard, D.C. is even more frenzied for the George Foreman Grill, John Basedow, and Bath Fitters.

[SkinsFTW]

Except I didn't defend it, FTW. This is now the third time you've openly ignored what I've written and claimed it to mean something else. I've said I like the KangarooTV thing and that's good. You may not and that's good. The Kangaroo thing is neither here nor there. It's a device that is optionally used and fun if you like that sort of thing.

The other portion of this is about showing scores from other games, which I've said is stupid should the team not be doing it, and I've even offered up THIS board for fans to organize and petition the team to do what is the only right thing to do.

Yet, you willfully ignored that.

You owe me an apology. Make it snappy.

I reread your post and see that you did say that they should post the scores without having to purchase this thing. I apologize for saying that you'd endorse Snyder's sale of oxygen if he could get away with it.

Your first paragraph sounded like you were endorsing this being the only way to get game scores. (Kinda like how Subway talks up their new "double meat" sandwiches that are only double because they put 1/2 the normal meat on regular sandwiches now, lol)

From what many posters have said here, there are no scores at the games. That makes it obvious that the intent is just that. I do find it ridiculous that Redskins fans will have to petition to get something back that every fan has had since scoreboards were installed in stadiums.

This sort of gadget also seems like it's designed to attract fans of other teams rather than more Redskins fans. I can just see all the Cowboys/Eagles/Giants fans going to the games now to root against the Redskins but watching their team play on the little handheld. Thats lame. :2cents:

[Art]

Appreciate that FTW.

I do like Kangaroo TV, but, think it's abysmal business for a football team not to have scores running. Pretty simple for me.