The 2014 World Cup is in full swing and the hopes and dreams of many nations lay in the results in Brazil. There is a lot more at play in this year’s event, though, as the biggest sporting event in the world is officially hosted in the “social age”.
It is no coincidence that many predict this World Cup will be the most social sporting event ever. And while it is great to talk smack with your friends about who will or won’t win the matches, it is also a bit of a curse and a time consuming one at that. With so many social media outlets, a serious fan can be overwhelmed trying to keep up with the conversation amongst so many apps.
At any given time a sports fan could be trading group texts with their friends, updating their Twitter account with news from the games while trying to monitor their friends’ Facebook posts about all the day’s action. And this doesn’t even include watching the games themselves or following the action online. It can be exhausting!
Luckily, GameOn is trying to change all that.
GameOn is a just-launched social sports app whose goal is to connect fans with their friends during favorite live sporting events. Right now the focus is the World Cup, but it can work for other sporting events as well.
GameOn was started by technology and design people who love sports. Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Nathan Simmons, told SportTechie:
“Our goal is to create the only application you need in your hand while the game is on. We believe sports are social, fast and mobile. People want to watch games with their friends. People want to be able to communicate and digest fast and even though the game takes place in a stadium, fans are everywhere.”
It is these guiding principles that inspired and built the GameOn app. Simmons had tried almost every sports app available and though many were great, he felt that they failed to deliver the full experience he desired as a sports fan.
He also found that while many social networks provided great benefits, none were properly enabled to provide sports fans with the ability to do what they do best — talk trash to their tight circle of friends!
Simmons felt the popular social networks and chat applications either lacked the intimacy or the context-specific environment necessary for a rich fan experience. GameOn was developed to make it easy to pick a game, choose friends to watch with, and start conversing with custom designed animated stickers and real-time game updates.
The goal was to create an app that would combine real-time scores and game information with speedy and fun social interaction for a rich, yet refined, user experience.
As a result, with GameOn you can simultaneously keep track of the game and monitor what your friends are saying about it. There is no more jumping between various apps and being distracted during your favorite sporting event, as all your needs as a sports fan are in one place. Simmons’ team has also built a platform that can easily integrate new features, such as photo and video sharing but they are careful to ensure that any new features won’t impact the speed of the experience or the ability of our users to express themselves quickly.
GameOn launched in the iOS store last week. They hope fans will use it to enjoy the World Cup and, in the coming months, they plan to roll out many additional sports, including MLB, NCAA Football, NFL, NBA, and NASCAR.
They also just announced a new partnership with former US National Soccer team member, Cobi Jones, who is joining their team as an advisor.
Jones commented on their partnership:
“GameOn is a one of a kind app that really lets the fans have that intimate feeling of trash talking with their friends even if they are miles away in different stadiums or from their couch. I couldn’t be more excited to use GameOn while I’m watching the World Cup. I’ll be traveling a lot over the next month but GameOn let’s me be a fan of the beautiful game and connect with my friends during each match from the first minute through overtime.”
The GameOn app is available here and their official website is here.