Even if you are not a hardcore fan of basketball it’s hard to turn your head away from March Madness—it is a complete package of excitement, fun and drama. With 68 teams playing for men’s basketball title and 64 for women’s title, it’s difficult to follow all the latest news and the progress of your favorite teams.
Fortunately, there are some useful apps by which you can keep track of everything from watching the games to automation of your bracket picks—thanks to your smartphone. Here are our 7 best app picks for following March Madness.
1. NCAA March Madness Live
Platforms & Price: iOS, Android, Amazon Fire, Microsoft | Free.
This is the tournament’s official app and an absolute must-have. Besides showing you every game live, the app allows you to pick a bracket. If you somehow miss any part of the game you can always back track and watch highlights. For those who want to run parallel with the excitement while at work or in the car this app has a live radio broadcast feature as well.
2. ESPN Tournament Bracket Challenge
Platforms & Price: iOS, Android | Free.
If you prefer strict bracket building, this no-frills app makes things easier for you. The chance of winning 10,000 bucks and a trip to Hawaii also sweetens the deal and makes the app more popular. If your chosen bracket makes it to the final four you’ll be entered in the contest. Not bad!
3. CBS Sports
Platforms & Price: iOS, Android |Free.
CBS is national another broadcaster covering the excitement. In addition to covering every game, the app lets you listen to the broadcast on CBS Radio. The CBS app allows you to pick a bracket while including scores, stats and news.
4. Thuuz Sports
Platforms & Price: iOS, Android | Free.
If you are in a conundrum which matches to watch especially in the first round when many teams play at the same time, Thuuz is the app for you. This app rates games on a 100-point scale via a smart algorithm that gives you a heads up when a game is worth watching. Thuuz narrows down your watch list and makes sure you see all the best games that are happening at any given time.
5. The Score:
Platforms & Price: iOS, Android | Free.
The Score covers all sports but during March Madness it serves up special pages for brackets. The Score gives you the luxury of personalizing the entire experience so that you can stay on top of everything that matters. In addition, the app keeps an eye on the big upsets and when an underdog is about to knock off a giant it will send you a push notification. So you never miss the nail-biting moments.
6. Yahoo Fantasy Sports:
Platforms & Price: iOS, Android | Free.
Yahoo Fantasy Sports is a great app to follow the excitement with its own offering of $25,000 prize money for the user (only for men’s tournament) who picks the best bracket. With this app you can manage your bracket and arrange tournament groups for your friends and colleagues.
7. IFTTT
Platforms & Price: iOS, Android | Free.
Not a sports-specific app, IFTTT is extremely handy in simplifying all your tasks and allowing you to create triggered messages and actions. For instance, you can program IFTTT to send you an email when any article about your team gets published on ESPN. Or you could set notifications before every match of your favorite team to remind you to trash talk with friends on social media. IFTTT can basically do anything you want it to do by just setting up the “recipe”: if this, then that (e.g. if my team appears in breaking news then tweet to my followers).
