Sports Apps Development: 10 Unavoidable Features to Consider
Sports connects people. It helps us to develop a “sportsman spirit.” Some people enjoy playing sports, and some people enjoy watching sports.
Since the inception of the sports industry, hardcore sports fans are worshiping it like a God. Sports apps have been a boon to sports lovers, sportspersons, and spectators.
Sports apps help these sports lovers to connect to their favorite game anytime from anywhere. Moreover, it also connects them with other like-minded sports lovers.
Sports App Market: Statistics and Facts
If you’re still not sure whether you should go with sports apps development or not, then here are a few statistics that’ll make you rethink your decision.
The North American sports market is booming every year with a different growth rate. According to Statista, it is expected to touch $80.3 billion in 2022.
Moreover, according to Hexa Research, Sports software market is expected to reach over $10 billion by 2024. Also, it has been a growing market ever since its inception.
By this time you must have figured out that if you want to expand your business in the sports industry, you require software. It can be a website or a mobile app or both.
With proper business planning, strategy, and management, you can achieve high profits with sports apps development.
Before you start building your sports app, you must be aware of the features that are mandatory to make your sports app go viral. Read further to know the features that’ll make your app withstand in the cutthroat competition.
Want all these features in your sports app? Hire our sports apps development experts now.
10 Unavoidable Features to Consider for Sports Apps Development
1) User Account
This feature is very crucial for delivering a personalized user experience. The user account will enable a user to customize the app based on his/her preference and interests.
For example, a user can add his/her favorite sports team or sportsperson. Moreover, if you decide to put in-app purchases, this is the place where users could manage their payment and banking information.
2) Payment Gateway
If you’re thinking to launch a free app, then one of the ways you can earn from the app would be through in-app purchases.
And to implement in-app purchases, you need to plan your sports apps development accordingly and add a secure payment gateway to the app.
If you want, you can create your payment gateway to alleviate your brand. However, it is recommended that you use default payment gateways to avoid any anomalies in the payments.
3) Ticket Sales
A die-hard sports fan would never want to miss a game that he/she is following and it is in his/her town as well. So, now that you’ve integrated a secure payment gateway to the app, you can include a ticket booking feature without any hesitation.
You can also include the ticket price tracking facility if you don’t want to include ticket booking in your app. You can create a feature where users can compare the prices of tickets from different vendors like vividseats, seatgeek, tickpick, and more.
4) Brand Store
Sports teams often make profits by selling their branded merchandise such as T-Shirts, Jerseys, Caps, and more. So, if you are a sports team owner and you wish to build an app to promote your team, then you should think of creating an in-app store.
Even though you don’t own a sports team, you can always partner with other sports teams to sell their merchandise on your platform. You can do partnership on multiple terms and conditions.
For example, either you can partner based on profit sharing, or you can simply ask for some extra transactional amount.
5) Offline Mode
Although the app has a majority of online features, you must keep a few features that are even accessible offline. It will increase the convenience of the users.
6) Social Media Integration
In the age of social media, if you want to create an impact and increase engagement, you must integrate social media platforms while doing sports apps development.
This feature will help users to put their viewpoints about their favorite sports team or person on various social media platforms. For example, if you integrate Twitter into the app, a user can directly send tweets or retweet one of the news using the app itself.
Moreover, integrating social media will also help you on-board your users faster. Now, instead of filling login forms, a user can log in through a single click.
7) Sports Person/Sports Team Catalog
It is one of the most crucial features of the app. Since you’re building an app for sports fans, you don’t want your users to miss any new updates from their favorite sports person.
8) News Feed
News Feed is a great way to engage users. A true sports fan would never miss the news. If you want to increase your engagement further, then you can also send push notifications whenever any interesting news is uploaded.
Apart from the news, you can also share the scoreboard of the matches and games that interests users. If you’re planning to develop an app for specific teams, then including a match-day center is a good idea.
For users who like to follow tournaments, you must include an information hub , while planning for sports apps development that would contain all the necessary information such as score, highlights, and more.
9) Calendar
Integrating popular calendar apps like Google’s or Apple’s can help users to notify about upcoming matches or tournaments. It will help them to plan their free time and book tickets accordingly.
10) Live Streaming
Now that you’ve included all the necessary features starting from sports news to book tickets, providing a live streaming feature in the app will be the icing on the cake.
Moreover, you can allow users to record and watch the game offline. Including this feature will make this app the one-stop destination for everything related to sports.
Conclusion
Sports applications are changing the sports industry from inside out. If you want to know more about how much time does it take to build an app like Cricbuzz, or how much does it cost to build an app like Onefootball or ESPN, then contact our sports apps development experts.
General FAQs for Sports Apps Development
1) What is the importance of a sports app?
Sports apps help sports fans to catch up with the world of sports, which includes, live streaming of an app, covering the day-to-day lives of sportspersons, forum/community, and more.
2) What are the best free sports apps?
Some of the best free sports apps on Playstore and Appstore are YipTV, Uktvnow, La Liga TV, FlashScore, CBS Sports, LiveScore, SuperSport, ESPN, and more.
3) What is the best streaming service for sports?
Some fantastic apps to stream sports live Hulu, fuboTV, ESPN+, Sony PlayStation Vue, Amazon Prime Video, CBS All Access, Sling TV, YouTube TV, and more.
4) What are the different types of sports apps?
There are mainly two types of sports apps: aggregated apps and dedicated apps. ESPN, TheScore, THUUZ, and CBS Sports are the example of aggregated apps, whereas, FC Barcelona and Manchester United are examples of dedicated apps.
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