MUMBAI: With the commencement of much awaited FIFA World Cup 2018, various companies and start-ups are bringing innovative apps to enhance the experience of the football enthusiasts. Companies are offering unique services like live streaming of the match, live match prediction, social feed, chat forums, etc in order to engage fans during the live matches.
The following apps help fans to stay tuned with their favourite team during the series and in turn bringing fans and sports closer.
1. Sony Liv: The OTT platform of FIFA World Cup 2018 host broadcaster in the subcontinent Sony Pictures Network India (SPN) is pulling all stops to take viewer engagement to never before experienced levels.
There is the #MeriDoosriCountry zone which allows fans to choose their favourite teams (2-3 at the maximum). During live matches, fans will get the opportunity to participate in a predictor game, in which they can battle alongside other viewers or even friends by predicting the right scores at certain junctures of the game, which players would score goals and so on.
Additionally, with its ‘Match Centre’, LIV will focus on supplementing telecast with data such as live scores, player positions, team information, match stats and commentary.
For more content, Sony has the added advantage of leveraging their partnership with ESPN, one of the global broadcasters of the World Cup.
For the first time, SPN will also be having a studio dedicated for Hindi programming, which would feature commentary and analysis of the matches. Sony has also added Tamil and Telugu live feeds to the English, Hindi, Bengali and Malayalam making for a 6-language offering.
Speaking of real time, while live matches will be behind a pay-wall, non-paying subscribers can access ad-supported telecast with a 5-minute delay.
LIV will also offer matches on partner platforms such as Xiaomi’s MI Phones and MI TV, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, CTV and JIO feature phones.
2. Official FIFA App – This is the official app of FIFA which provides fans with all the information and updates of the live match. The app is available on both Android and iOS to allow users to share the complete schedule of the match with the details of participating teams, live scores, and minute to minute description of the match, etc.
3. Rooter – Rooter is the world’s first sports social gaming platform that connects sports fans and engages them during live sports matches. Rooter offers unique Live match prediction game, Live Fantasy Game and Sports Social Feed across 8 sports and enables a live chat forum where fans interact during live matches with fastest live scores and commentary. The company has geared up for FIFA world cup as well in order to provide a seamless mix of gaming, conversations, and Live scores during the series.
4. One Football – One football app keeps the fans updated with all the latest happenings around the world cup. It provides all the information to their fans to remain top of the game like live score, news, highlights, stats, etc. The app also helps users to make the personalised content based on their favourite team and player.
5. Airtel TV App – Bharti Airtel has rolled out an updated Airtel TV app, to enable users to watch live broadcasts of the upcoming football tournament. The app will help users to stay tuned in regional languages in addition to Hindi and English. The app will also provide fans to with exclusive behind the scenes snippets and match reviews and previews, etc.
6. Jio TV App – Jio TV by Reliance will live stream all FIFA World Cup 2018 matches starting from June 14 for free. You need to be on the Jio network, to be able to live stream FIFA World Cup 2018 matches as the JioTV app is exclusive to Jio users.
