All season leads up to this: The NCAA Tournament, better known as March Madness. Sixty eight teams have been playing for the past five months to get to this tournament – to have a chance at glory. It’s the same opportunity you have thanks to office pools, and you don’t even have to play the games.
March Madness is always full of great games, interesting match ups, and tons of drama. Even if you don’t really care about basketball, it’s hard to turn away from these games – probably because you have money on them. Don’t miss a moment of the tournament, catch it all with the help of these mobile apps.
NCAA March Madness Live
The official app of the tournament, March Madness Live is an absolute must have. It allows you to stream every game on your phone or tablet (note that certain games will require you to login through your cable provider). It’s the ultimate second-screen tool, with live updates of information from every game of the tournament. It even gives you a literal second screen to watch the games on. If you do happen to miss the end of a particularly good game for whatever reason, you can back track, and check out the highlights so you won’t miss those water cooler moments that these games generate.
CBS Sports
CBS will broadcast a large share of the NCAA Tournament games in 2016, including the Elite 8, sweet 16 and first and second rounds, so why not grab the company’s official app? CBS Sports allows you to watch live video of the tournament games, tune in to the radio broadcasts on CBS Radio stations, and view the daily schedule, so you can see what games will be on the docket. You can also check out coverage from other sports with the app.
March Mania 2016
Catching all the March Madness news can be overwhelming with so many headlines and opinions flooding in from so many sources. keeping track of it all gets especially difficult with all the responsibilities of life distracting you. This iOS app March Mania 2016 will help simplify it all by aggregating all the latest news and videos from a wide range of popular and important news sources, as all as content straight from the NCAA, so you never miss a major headline or hot take. You can even curate your feed to focus on your favorite teams.
Thuuz
The fun of watching games during March Madness is you never know when there will be an upset or a crazy ending. Those games can happen at any time and often occur when you least expect it. Thuuz is the app you want to have, so you can make sure you’re not missing out on any of those matches. Using an algorithm that scores games on watchability, Thuuz will give you a heads up when a game gets interesting. It makes sure that if there’s a game worth watching, you find out about it as it’s happening.
TuneIn Pro ($10)
Being able to watch all of the games from anywhere is great, but sometimes it’s just not a viable option. There are, unfortunately, bosses who run workplaces where they expect things to be done, who would be upset to see people gathered around a tablet, watching the last minutes of a potential upset. As tragic as that is, you can still get your fix and catch all of the action with TuneIn Pro. Check out the radio broadcasts of the games, and listen to some of the best play-by-play announcers talk you through the action, perfect for those moments you can’t watch the game.
ESPN Tournament Challenge
During the NCAA Tournament, there are a lot of powerhouse schools playing, with stars on their roster who will go on to successful careers in professional basketball. There are also tons of teams you’ve never heard of, from schools you didn’t know existed, with players who will end up being accountants. ESPN Tournament Challenge will let you know about every one of those teams and players, providing stats, information, and highlights for every school in the field.
Are You Watching This?
If you have friends who are into sports as much as you are, and you catch a must-see moment during the tournament, you’re guaranteed to say the name of this app at least a couple times. Are You Watching This keeps you updated on scores from around the tournament, gives you a heads up when one is getting good, and allows you to switch on the game with just a swipe if you have DirectTV, Google TV, or TiVo. The second a game becomes worth watching, it can go from your phone to the TV so you can see every play.
FanCake
As much as we’d love to believe that every game is going to be a good one, it’s pretty inevitable that some will turn into blowouts. But don’t fool yourself and pretend like you aren’t going to watch anyway. You should be rewarded for your dedication to sit through even the ugliest of games. FanCake keeps you engaged in every game by allowing you to play along in real time with live challenges and predictions. Rack up enough points in the app, and you can turn your hours in front of the television into real life gear or tickets to see your favorite teams.
Bracket the Madness
There are tons of sites you can visit to get your March Madness fix or fill out your bracket, but Bracket the Madness brings some new flair to the annual tradition. The app makes it easy to create pools and brackets with friends by inviting people via Facebook, email, and text. It has all the standard features you’d expect, plus some fun extras like a built-in messaging service. It also has added features for competition like Bracket Shield to keep people from seeing your picks.
theScore
TheScore serves all sports, but come NCAA tournament time, it’s all in on March Madness. The app makes it easy to track your favorite team’s success and progress through the field of 64, and you can personalize just about everything with it so you’re always getting the scores that matter to you. Most importantly, it keeps a close eye on the games that make March Madness so fun: the upsets. If a David is about to knock off a Goliath, the app will send you a push notification, so you don’t miss the bracket-busting event.
WatchESPN
Though ESPN may not be airing the tournament this year, you can be sure they’ll be covering the highlights and results of every game. Using the app requires a valid cable subscription, but if you happen to have that, you’ll have complete access to all of ESPN’s March Madness content, and can even stream their live programming on your mobile device.
IFTTT
IFTTT isn’t your typical March Madness app. It’s an app for creating shortcuts and simplifying tasks, and it can come in extremely handy when put to work on keeping you informed about March Madness. You can set up “recipes” within the app that will make sure you’ll never miss a minute of the action. Create a command to get a call when your favorite team is about to play, get an email any time there’s an article on your team published on ESPN, automatically trash talk you friends on Twitter. If you can think it, IFTTT can do it.
FanCred
Can’t make it to any of the tournament’s biggest games in person? Don’t worry, FanCred turns your phone into a mobile arena, where you can get rowdy with your fellow fans. The sports-centric social network asks fans to fill out their profiles and take part in the action, rooting on their team, while talking the occasional bit of trash to their opponent. The app makes it easy to connect with fellow fanatics, and keep up with all of the news surrounding your team. If you can make it to the game, share photos from the event and let others enjoy the action from afar.
