Mobile App Critique (The Score)

 The Score

    This week we critiqued a mobile sports score, and betting application called The Score.  The score is a really nice, intuitive app with a pleasing black background with blue and yellow highlights, that allows you to check the news and scores of any sports (and I do mean any sports) you are following including the ability to highlight your favorite teams to avoid sorting through page after page to find the one game you want.  The Score has traditionally posted betting lines for each game but has now teamed up with an online betting platform called Barstool Sports where you can link your "The Score" account with Barstool Sports and bet right through The Score app without toggling between two different apps, while being able to keep an eye on the betting lines, stat lines, and scores without having to open a second app or webpage.

    There is a chat feature within each games page, allowing fans and bettors to talk about the game, talk about the betting lines, or just plain talk smack.  However, the chat feature I found to be the greatest downside to this wonderful app because while there were some having meaningful discourse on the games or betting, there were a greater number of trolls in the chat threads, often-times spamming the same rude statement over and over to make the chat unreadable, to those who would shout constant racial slurs just to get a reaction or disrupt the conversation.  A couple other issues with the app are the widget which can sometimes make other applications act up on your phone, and the calendar feature which synchs a chosen teams schedule with Google calendar but does not recognize that the app is already sending push notifications about the games and news and will send a duplicate notification forcing the user to dismiss two notifications instead of the one, not the end of the world but it is a bit obnoxious.

    All in all, The Score is a very well made and intuitive app that has to the minute updates on all thing's sports, including news, scores and betting information, as well as being a one stop shop for stat watching and sports betting.  The Score appears to make its revenue on unintrusive ad placements as well as a partnership with online betting platform Barstool Sports, which is good for them to make some money while keeping the user coming back by not bombarding you with constant 5-30 second ads that we can't wait for the magical "X" to appear.