Sportacular – Review

Our rating:

By: Jeff Hamilton

Version #: 1.0

Date Released: 2008-07-31

Developer:

Price: 0.00

User Rating:

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For sports fans, the next 8 weeks are the true holiday season. All at once baseball playoffs become the World Series, the NFL playoff race heats up, college football’s bowl season takes shape, pro hoops tips off, hockey is in full swing. Heck, even the MLS is thinking playoffs. And if you have anything more than a passing interest in any of this, sooner or later you’re going to need to know "What’s the score?"

Jeff Hamilton’s Sportacular has the answer. At its core, it’s currently the App Store’s best live, or as close to live as possible, pro sports scoreboard, delivering updates every 30 seconds into a very clean, efficient layout. Extensive testing from my seats at several Nationals baseball games this past season and from my couch during marathon sessions of college football indulgence confirms that the updates are routinely up to the minute, for those that may be wondering about the consistency. And if tracking current scores were all it did, it would certainly be worth the free download and consideration of a spot on the first page of apps. Oh, but there’s more.

Need up to the minute player stats? Sportacular delivers.
League Standings? Yep.
News ticker? Got it.
What about the score of last night’s game? How about a game three weeks ago? Yes and yes.
Want to hide the icons for sports you care nothing about? Sure.
How about the betting line on this weekend’s match ups? Oh yeah.

Start times adjust to reflect you local time zone. Nice. And for the fantasy sports junkie, you can create and save your own roster, with minimal hassle, to track individual player stats on different teams without jumping around from game to game. Swapping players in and out of the fantasy lineup for bye weeks and injuries is also a low stress task. I also track a few key opposing players. Very nice.

So, does it come up short on anything or is it already the final word on iPhone sports information? Well.. I do have a few minor gripes.

Probably the most annoying design glitch is that when viewing the details screen for a game in progress (for baseball, the screen showing balls and strikes; for football, downs and field position) the auto-updates stop, requiring that you manually refresh the view to get new data. Allowing the game details page to auto-update would really help out on those Monday nights when our Sweetie holds the remote hostage to watch Dancing with the Stars and we’re left to track the football game on the phone. (And since I already went there, is anyone else impressed that Warren Sapp can actually dance?)

The rest might be nitpicky. It seems like in several places screen real estate could be put to better use by either making the fonts larger and thereby easier to read or by offering up other relevant data. As it stands, the black background seems to dominate in some places, leaving the view with an empty feel. Also, it would be nice to have the option of customizing the navigation bar at the bottom of the page with a quick link to our favorite teams or other Sportacular functions from the ‘More’ area. And, we’re missing NASCAR and pro boxing data altogether.

Even so, it’s tough to argue with what’s already in place. It’s clearly the frontrunner where pro sports data is concerned as we enter the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. And Jeff’s blog has an outline of a few new features that should be on their way to Apple for approval within the next few weeks. We’ll keep you posted.

Value: HIGH
Would I Buy Again: without a doubt
Learning Curve: very low
Who is it for: sports fans who need up to the minute scores and stats
What I like: easy to navigate; scores delivered consistently quick; what it does, it does well
What I Don’t: It could make better use of the screen space in several places; doesn’t auto-update the details view for games in progress  

Final Statement: If you’re not already acquainted with Sportacular and enjoy the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, let me introduce you to your new best friend.