Comcast said it is adding athlete profiles and more stats and game info to its X1 sports app in time for the start of the new NBA season.

Those additions, which leverage enhancements made to the app for the Rio Olympics, tack on pre-game data, such as team rosters, player profiles and conference standings, alongside in-game, real-time access to team and individual stats such as points, assists, rebounds, shot maps and scoring summaries. The app’s post-game analysis will include a full recap of both teams’ performances.

RELATED: Comcast’s X1 Blends Sports with Interactivity

“We’re also adding voice search to the sports experience within X1,” following similar enhancements added for Comcast’s coverage of the Rio games, Preston Smalley, VP of product, sports and X1 apps, explained in this blog post, noting that subs can use the X1 voice mote to have the sports app pull up game-related data and graphics by saying things like “Philadelphia Eagles stats,” or “Eli Manning touchdowns.”

The new voice feature will be available in the “coming weeks” for football games and will be added to basketball and hockey later this year, Smalley said.

He said more than 35% of Comcast X1 homes “engaged regularly” with the sports app during the Rio games.

Earlier this year, Comcast acquired OneTwoSee, a Philadelphia-based startup that developed some of the technologies that underpin the X1 sports app.

Stingray Digital Group said it hired Rick Bergan, a former distribution executive at rival music programming provider Music Choice, as head of content distribution for the United States, a newly created position. Bergan most recently was at OneTwoSee, a Philadelphia-based startup company in the realm of sports technology and data that was recently acquired by Comcast, Stingray said. Previously he was senior vice president of distribution at Music Choice. Stingray said Bergan will work closely with Brian Decker, the SVP of U.S. sales, and will be responsible for sales development and building relationships with sales agents and TV operators in this country. Stingray Digital is based in Montreal, Canada. Bergan will be based on the East Coast and joins Stingray on Aug. 15, the company said.

“We are thrilled to welcome Rick as part of Stingray’s growing management team,” Eric Boyko, co-founder, president and CEO of Stingray, said in a release. “He is a team player with extensive expertise in music distribution, marketing and business development. His ability to constantly innovate, his energetic leadership style, and his faultless reputation are strong foundations on which we can continue to grow and build our business in the U.S. market.”

Music Choice in June sued Stingray Digital in federal court in Texas, claiming the Canadian company had infringed on patents held by Music Choice in gaining pay-TV affiliate customers in the United States, particularly citing Stingray's service provision to AT&T U-verse. Stingray Digital denied the infringement claims and said it would contest the lawsuit. Music Choice is owned by a partnership among subsidiaries of Microsoft, Arris, Sony Corp. of America, EMI Music Publishing, Time Warner Inc. and these U.S. cable providers: Comcast Cable Communications, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable (now owned by Charter Communications).

Comcast has launched basketball “Extras” for its X1 Sports app as the NCAA March Madness men’s college basketball tournament tips off today.

The interactive app, which appears on the big screen amid the live action, provides in-game, team-by-team stats such as steals, rebounds and fouls, as well as a view of the updated tournament bracket. Post-game, the app will provide a recap of the matchup, including by-quarter scores and the "Xfinity Player of the Game.”

Comcast said a future update to the app, to launch in time for the tournament’s Final Four, will pull up full team rosters and detailed individual player stats, including shooting percentages by court location.

The technology powering the app is from OneTwoSee, the Philadelphia-based startup that Comcast acquired earlier this month.

Comcast has been using the vendor’s tech for apps that sync up with NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball games, with plans on tap to do the same for soccer and National Hockey League games

 About 35% of Comcast’s video base is on X1, a number that could push 50% this year, Comcast CEO and chairman Brian Roberts said at the recent Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco. 

Looking to engage more deeply with stat-hungry baseball fans, Comcast has begun to roll out a data-driven, integrated interactive feature for its X1 platform that analyzes and illustrates pitcher-hitter and team-to-team matchups, tracks fantasy points, computes win probabilities, and shows which portion of the ballpark individual batters tend to put the ball into play.

That “Baseball Extras” capability, offered before, during and after live Major League Baseball games in partnership with a Philadelphia startup called OneTwoSee (subscription required), is going live this week as an enhancement to the Xfinity Sports App for X1, Comcast’s IP-capable video platform.

Going forward, Comcast’s plan is to offer similar interactive features for other sports, including NFL and NCAA football games, NASCAR races, pro and college basketball, NHL hockey, and professional soccer from several leagues, including Major League Soccer, the English Premier League, and some Spanish leagues.

The platform is being made to support “all major sports,” Preston Smalley, Comcast’s executive director, product, explained during a recent demo of the Extras product.  

Comcast is entering this new interactive game by licensing that data from several third parties. But to create the graphical renderings and illustrations that will accompany that data, Comcast is feeding that data a platform from OneTwoSee, a Philadelphia-based startup. The app itself is “native” to the X1 guide, meaning it comes in over Comcast’s managed IP network, not via a public Internet connection.

Baseball Extras will be offered pre-game, during the game and post-game. Before the game, viewers can pull up player and team stats and a stat-rich graphical preview. During the game, the system will show the aforementioned match-up scenarios, present fantasy information, and employ algorithms to determine a game’s general excitement-level using a rating of 1 to 10 (Thuuz Sports, an outfit that counts Dish Network among its partners, offers a platform for mobile devices and set-tops that relies on an excitement scale of 1 to 100). The Baseball Extras app will also offer a full post-game analysis.

Update: Comcast is providing its excitement-level rating in the "Extras" app for X1 based on an integration with Thuuz's algorithms, acccording to a Thuuz official, who notes that Thuuz is also a Comcast customer. 

The commercial introduction of Baseball Extras followed some earlier work Comcast and OneTwoSee did on X1 around some of the NFL’s post-season games, including the Super Bowl.

A deeper look at Sports Extras and Comcast’s partnership with OneTwoSee will be featured in the July 6 issue of Multichannel News.

OneTwoSee, a Philadelphia-based multiscreen startup that specializes in interactive apps that sync up contextual data with live sports broadcasts, said it has inked a new multi-year deal to continue to produce interactive elements for FoxSports.com and Fox Sports’ coverage of a MLB, NBA, NCAA basketball and NHL games.

Financial terms were not disclosed. Under the new deal, OneTwoSee’s apps will continue to bring interactive enhancements to Fox Sports’ GameTrax product. Those apps, which include player trackers, win probability and momentum meters, team and player comparisons, and social media modules, are offered in pre-, live and post-game forms for every game of each sport.

OneTwoSee, a company founded in 2010 that has raised about $3 million so far, makes and licenses white-label products and apps that can present real-time data and stats pertaining to sporting events and presenting them on devices such as tablets, PCs and IP-connected set-tops and TVs.

Other OneTwoSee customers including Comcast, which is using the vendor’s platform for its Sports Extras app on the MSO’s X1 platform (subscription required), NBC Sports, Canada’s TSN, YES Network, Comcast SportsNet and LG Electronics, among others.

“Since its creation, FOX Sports has been known as the cutting-edge trendsetter in sports media,” said Chris Reynolds, co-founder and CEO of OneTwoSee, in a statement. “Since OneTwoSee is the pacesetter in developing fan engagement products, its makes for a great partnership to continue to develop and provide FOX with innovative and enhanced experiences for their GameTrax application.”