If you want to keep up with your favourite team or stay on top of the latest sporting news, nothing beats a sports app. Making the most of your phone’s data connection, they can keep you in the loop on match day, or tip you off to rumours long before they make the press. Many sport apps are specific – tied to a particular league, sport or broadcaster – but others can give you the wider picture. So which are the best sports apps? Check out our guide.
Major league players
It’s easy to be daunted by the number of sports apps available – loads of teams, leagues, sports and even athletes have their own apps. There’s no single ‘right’ choice for you – people are into sports for different reasons, and not everyone agrees on the ideal app.
If you’re mostly after things like race, match or fixture news, along with official announcements, look for the official app for your league, sport or competition. While these typically only give you ‘official’ news, they’re still a good source for the fundamentals.
Broadcaster apps are great if you like more informed commentary, along with the chance to see replays and deeper analysis. If you’re prepared to get your hands dirty, social apps like Twitter and Instagram let you get the latest from athletes, players, teams, sponsors, tipsters and pundits – just be sure to take some of the more ‘out there’ posts with a pinch of salt.
Of course, the beauty of it all is that you can mix and match the apps that suit you. Let Twitter tip you off to developing stories, for example, then enjoy expert analysis from a broadcaster or writer once the news breaks. Get headline notifications on match day, then catch up with other goals or highlights on the train home.
Here we’ve picked five of the best sports apps available. They’re each a little different – discover more in our best sports app guide.
BBC Sport
Mozillion rating
Why install?Wide range of quality content
Why avoid it?Not great for video
Long gone are the days when national broadcasters showed all the best sports for free, but the BBC still does a great job of creating written and broadcast sports content. The BBC Sport app takes all of this, and delivers the bits you care about directly to your phone.
Like other apps with comprehensive coverage, BBC Sport starts by asking you to select the sports and topics that interest you. There’s a huge and varied list available, literally spanning American football to wrestling, via less mainstream options like bowls, judo, skateboarding or water polo.
Once selected, relevant stories show up on the app’s My Sport page, giving you a quick and highly personalised overview of the sporting stories you’re likely to care about – you can use the All Sport page to catch up on the rest.
This app offers notifications for all the stories covered by your interests, but – thankfully – you can mute all or some depending on the sport. This vital feature helps you avoid spoilers if you plan to watch highlights later. For example, you can switch off goals, half-time and final scores in football, or practice, qualifying or race results in Formula 1.
This might not be the only sports app you ever need – it’s light on video content, in particular. Still, it’s a free source of comprehensive, quality coverage. As such, it should be on every sports fan’s phone.
Bleacher Report
Price Android Bleacher Report Free, with in-app purchases
iOS Bleacher Report Free, with in-app purchases
Mozillion rating
Why install?Curated content from a range of sources
Why avoid it?Slight US bias
While BR does partner with some sports to provide original content, it mostly displays an aggregated feed of material from other sources. Choose your sports and interests, and you get a curated feed, blending breaking news and the latest results with more seasoned analysis. Other feeds show ‘hot’ content, again filtered against your interests, and news alerts relating to any teams you follow. As with the BBC Sport app, BR lets you mute notifications containing scores and spoilers, in theory preventing it from ruining your evening’s TV catch up.
This app’s available feeds include fantasy league-specific content and even gaming news – though there doesn’t seem to be any esports coverage. The other downsides are that Bleacher Report’s news feeds can be a bit patchy – for example, reporting F1 race results, but barely covering pre-season testing. There’s also a US bias in some areas, for example, in the fixtures page which shows NBA, NFL and other US leagues rather than, say, Premiership Rugby.
Overall this is a good app for getting a range of content from multiple sources. It’s also a good way to see stories you might otherwise miss by relying to heavily on your own list of media outlets.
Premier League
Price Android Premier League Free
iOS Premier League Free
Mozillion rating
Why install?Essential app for Premier League fans…
Why avoid it? …and nobody but Premier League fans
Official apps are often terrible, but not so the official Premier League app. It’s free, comprehensive, and full of useful articles and information. Install it, select the team or teams you follow, then get a tailored feed covering fixtures, results, broadcast schedules – and almost anything else you could want.
The Premier League app is a great way to stay on top of what’s happening in the world’s most watched league, but it’s also the perfect companion for fantasy football fans. It doubles as the app for the league’s own official fantasy game, so you can manage your team directly alongside real match and player information.
Separately, the Stats page shows you who’s scored the most goals, committed most fouls, played the most minutes, or excelled against other key metrics. You can even find and compare individual player stats from this or former seasons.
If you follow the Premier League, or a Premiership team, this app is utterly invaluable. However, its tight focus means it’s next to useless for anyone else.
Sky Go
Mozillion rating
Why install?A good way to watch Sky Sports content
Why avoid it?You’ll need a Sky subscription
As one of the UK’s biggest sports broadcasters, Sky Sports offers extensive coverage of events including football, cricket, golf and Formula 1. Happily, the Sky Go app lets you watch this content live from your mobile.
To start with the bad news, this app is essentially useless without a Sky Sports subscription, which starts at around £40-60 per month. Also, you can’t use it to watch Now TV content, even though that service is also owned by Sky.
That’s a significant cost hurdle, but if you’re already a Sky Sports subscriber, the Sky Go app is the perfect way to get premium video content on your mobile. You can watch sports live, but also use the app to watch and catch up on all the content covered by your subscription. It’s not for everyone, but for Sky subscribers this app is the best way to watch live sport on your mobile.
Twitter
Mozillion rating
Why install?Find and follow clubs, stars and tipsters
Why avoid it?Too easy to fall down the rabbit hole
Have we gone quite mad? Twitter clearly isn’t a sports app, so why does it make our list? The truth is that thousands of teams, players, managers, journalists, broadcasters and fans are on the platform, all sharing news, opinions, clips and other content. The result? It’s one of the best sports apps, provided you know where to look.
Depending on your interests, the best place to start is probably to follow the official account of the league or competitions you’re interested in, possibly along with their governing body – for example FIFA. Add in your teams and favourite athletes, then any journalists or publications that focus on the sport. Look for fan organisations, too.
Whatever your sport, it takes time to tweak your Twitter feed. You’ll uncover new people to follow from others who share your interests. You’ll probably unfollow others as they veer off topic or share one too many unsubstantiated rumour. Twitter doesn’t curate content, or make it easy to filter out spoilers – though you can mute accounts or block key phrases temporarily.
Twitter isn’t the best place for verified news and deep analysis, but it’s often the place where you’ll see the first rumours of a transfer or other major news. Invest the time filtering out the dross and it’s a useful way to get breaking news and connect with the people who make your sport tick. The other thing to remember is that it’s a service, rather than just an app – if you don’t like the official Twitter app, try using alternatives such as Twitterific or Plume.