Kevin Durant of the Golden State Warriors shoots a jumper over George Hill of the Cleveland Cavaliers during the first half in Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals at ORACLE Arena. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
Tel-Aviv-based software design company Vivala Technologies announced the official launch of Hoopit, a mobile game in which users can make real-time predictions for NBA and NCAA games.
Users who download the free app can make predictions such as selecting the team that scores next or choosing the player who scores next, and determine the spot on the floor where the next shot will be taken from. Hoopit’s algorithms then determine the probability of each eligible prediction and reward users with game coins and various in-app rewards.
Hoopit is available on the Google Play and Apple app store. Its official launch comes after Hoopit’s beta test during the 2017-18 NBA playoffs. When there are no live games happening, Hoopit lets users make practice guesses for future games and provides access to pregame statistical analysis that can help make for better informed predictions during upcoming games.
“It was exciting to see the enthusiastic reception of the app during the NBA playoffs”, said Itay Barak, co-founder and CEO of Vivala Technologies, in a press release. “Users easily accepted the challenge of pinpointing the location of scores, although this kind of interaction was never done before. We are happy to enhance the viewing experience of basketball fans throughout the world and looking forward to launching additional apps catered to many other popular sports.”
A global leaderboard will track and rank the success of all Hoopit users and the outcomes of predictions they make. The app also allows users to create private leagues and challenge friends to one-one-one prediction contests.
SportTechie Takeaway
Predicting the outcome of plays as they happen was the next natural progression in the daily fantasy sports ecosystem. Although Hoopit only currently offers in-game tokens as prizes, offering real money to players who make successful predictions could be a future evolution as the legalization of sports betting spreads across more states in the U.S. Yahoo Sports released a prediction-based mobile fantasy sports app last month, which offers users weekly cash prizes to those who score well.
