Despite the small screen experience, March Madness Live for iPhone delivers a large amount of quality, interactive content for college hoops fans. Watching live games is a bonus. The app opens with an invitation to play the NCAA bracket game and conveniently includes a real time countdown to bracket lock. Users can log in or sign up using e-mail, Facebook or Google+ to create up to five brackets. Making picks is easy, and the app encourages users to create or join a group. This can be done privately or publicly by sending an invitation via e-mail, Facebook or Google+. Once picks are in, the app offers a pre-populated social "brag" post showing the chosen champion. A full tournament schedule becomes the default page after brackets are completed. Each round of play includes a listing of games by date -- with time, broadcast channel and seed information. Live or past scores are included in each listing, and alerts are offered by game for game start, halftime, start of second half, final score and video recap. Tapping a game leads to the GameCenter, where fans can watch a live game or video recap, read a game summary or look at statistical data. Coke Zero sponsors a social section within GameCenter offering sharable highlights and a curated, interactive fan chat experience showcasing posts from Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Other notable features include a video-centric news section, excitement notifications by team and a zip code based channel finder. As for streaming, March Madness Live offers fans the ability to watch every tournament game live within the app. After three hours of live video is consumed, cable authentication is required. I conducted this review on an iPhone 5 version 7.1, with AT&T LTE coverage and xfinity wireless service. March Madness Live is an ad-supported, free download developed in house by NCAA Digital.
CINDERELLA STORIES: The main bracket within the app can be pinched, zoomed or swiped. There also is a conveniently placed bracket icon that allows users to jump from one section of the bracket to another without having to swipe. A search function offers the ability to find specific games using intuitive typing. Within the GameCenter, a "four factors of success" section offers an impressive bit of statistics including comparative rates of shooting, turnovers, rebounding and free throws. There is also a nifty graphical depiction of the game leader over time. Advertising within the app is clean and unobtrusive. Sponsor logos, static banners and 15-second in-stream ads quietly decorate the content. Social touch points are very well done, particularly the app's "vent" messaging function, which pulls performance information from a user's bracket and encourages them to share to social media. Upset alerts serve as a nice vehicle for self-promotion, pulling fans back into the app to watch close games and view highlights. Lastly, the app's channel finder creates an individualized schedule based on the user's location and cable provider, making it very easy to see where and when games will air. In fact, this feature is present within the live stream, showing channel, score and time remaining in games that are being streamed simultaneously.
UPSETS: While the app does a nice job of cramming itself into an experience suitable for the iPhone, it is maze-like at times. Certain features, like the channel finder, are not obvious at first, and it can be difficult to remember where some features are after closing out of them. So, in short, this app requires a bit of training. The app does have its slow moments as well. I ran into a loading issue once a day during the review period. Aside from that, no other technical issues were observed.
BOTTOM LINE: Socially equipped and brimming with engagement opportunities, March Madness Live handily brings the tournament to the mobile fan. With four million hours of live video watched during the first three days of the tournament, some technical issues are to be expected, but very few were experienced. There are more features in this app than meets the eye, so an upfront tutorial would be a nice addition to the product in future releases.
Amie Sheridan (amie.sheridan31@gmail.com) is a freelance writer in Philadelphia.
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