June 7, 2016
Did you know... Buzzfeed is refusing to run any more Donald Trump/RNC ads. The website’s CEO Jonah Perettitold told staff, “We don’t run cigarette ads because they are hazardous to our health and we won’t accept Trump ads for the exact same reason.” Burn.
Today's Specials
Quiz: Do you know where your food’s from?
Danish, Croissant, Caesar, Vindaloo, Pizza. Really, where did they originate?
Think you know? Take our quick quiz to test your food knowledge. You might even learn something new.
Three Key NBA Finals Stats
The Warriors are just annihilating the Cavaliers, and while it’s still not over, the numbers are pretty grim for the Cavs. Your guests will be talking about the series for sure, so here are three stats to throw into the conversation:
- The Warriors had 15% chance to win the NBA title the morning of Game 5 vs Thunder, according to BPI. Eleven days later? 92%.
- The Warriors won the first two games by a combined 48 points, the largest point-differential through first two games in NBA Finals history.
- Only three teams have blown a 2-0 lead in NBA Finals — ’68-’69 Lakers, ’76-’77 76ers & ‘05-’06 Mavericks.
DON’T SAY THAT YOU LOVE ME [Song]
Why it’s important to you: eSports are here and they will soon demand your attention
If you haven’t noticed, we have been advocating and informing about the incredible leaps that eSports have been making over the past several months. It appears the limits of our influence were exposed, this past weekend, when several CS-Global: Offensive fans visited Buffalo Wild Wings locations across the country. On a Counter-Strike subreddit, fans told varying and multiple stories about being met with cynicism and ridicule when they requested to view the broadcast on TBS.
One server called a table of eSports fans nerds, and while she may have been accurate, it still stung her guests. Guests had a variety of experiences asking to watch the broadcast from being told an outright no to having the event placed on TVs out of their line of sight. To be fair, this is NOT a BWW problem exclusively. It is a problem of perception. They just happen to be the biggest player on the field and, as a sponsor of the event, subject to greater scrutiny. To be fair, they showed incredible vision to sponsor Counter-Strike in the first place, and their core value of showing people what they want to watch is well served.
Let’s look at soccer 20 years ago as an analogy. If you ran a sports bar in the early ‘90s and some guy asked for an English Premier League match between Aston Villa and Liverpool, you would have laughed him out of your bar. Fast forward today and EPL games are found on TV in most bars in the US. Be assured, it won’t take eSports 20 years to be at the same level of soccer. Just take a peek at the engagement numbers that Google published for YouTube views of trailers and live video associated to video games. Monthly, there are 144 billion minutes of these videos viewed. To put that in perspective, the NFL over a single month experience on 65 billion minutes of viewing. So, like it or not, eSports are here and you will be managing more requests as their broadcasts go mainstream.
ALL THE WAY TO HEAVEN
Why it’s important to you: Kimbo Slice paved the way for modern MMA
The world of MMA lost one its pioneers yesterday as Kimbo Slice (ne’ Kevin Ferguson) died at the age of 42. His MMA career began in somewhat nefarious fashion, but he elevated himself as an early Internet superstar. His widely viewed street fights on YouTube and a porn website called SublimeDirectory, helped create the mania behind combat sports. His street fight videos landed him contracts with several sanctioning organizations including EliteXC, UFC and most recently Bellator. He was actually schedule to fight in London in mid-July. Slice was a consummate showman and incredible athlete who participated MMA, boxing, pro wrestling, professional football and even a few movies.
DON’T BE A PWN IN THE GAME
Why it’s important to you: Millions of data breeches means that your passwords might be compromised
Wow, is this right? Was Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter password ‘dadada’? The conclusion can only be that even tech icon’s get lazy when it comes to security. To be fair, Zuckerberg hadn’t sent a tweet since 2012. The Facebook head was a victim of something called ‘pwning’ or ‘being pwned’. This occurs when your online accounts are taken over by hackers that gained a password from one source and use it to control other accounts. In Zuckerberg’s case, it was his LinkedIn profile that released the very creative password.
As a public service we suggest the following three actions.
- Visit the site HaveIBeenPwned.com and see if you were subject to one of the many breech incidents they list.
- Change your frickin’ passwords, will ya! We have suggested this in the past and it’s even more obvious after Mr. Zuckerberg’s folly. Regularly change them and use a simple password protection app.
- Close any social media accounts you aren’t using. They are just points of exposure if you aren’t using them regularly.
The most important step is regularly changing your passwords. We get it. It’s a pain in the behind, but the implications of a security breech should scare the poop out of you.
SPORTS BASIC
Why it’s important to you: More content is a good thing
Since its inception in 2012, the PAC12 Network has been an elusive channel. After almost four years, it still has a very confusing mix of regional and national feed programming. Now, finally, there is some good news for PAC12 fans. Comcast announced that the national feed will now be included in the basic tier around the PAC12 footprint. This means that you won’t have to subscribe to the channel as a sports tier option to show their national broadcasts.
This is probably a good time to announce a change for those of you that are forced to have an alternate programming platform because DIRECTV doesn’t carry the PAC12 Network. Starting later this summer, we will be offering our newest sports guides that allow you to show multiple programming options. No longer will be forced to refer to our guides just for channel name. Instead you will also get the channel numbers for up to two additional platforms side by side with DIRECTV’s channel info. If you want to be among the first to experience our new platform, join our BETA group and help shape the best SportsTV Guide we can build.
Image by Sam Churchill