The post Arsenal release match day programme on the iPad appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.
]]>The traditional matchday programme has been a staple tradition in the football experience, and still today this is a key aspect of fan engagement. The managers pre-match comments allow a dialogue between manager and fan without media interference, match reports from the youth academy raise the profile of potential young superstars and player interviews provide some insight into the training, lifestyle and opinions of professional athletes.
With all this mind, Digital-Football.com has been fortunate enough to ask Ben Ladkin of the Arsenal Digital team a few questions about the development of the app and why football fans should take notice:
“We kicked off the project in earnest at the start of the year so it took 8 months to choose a development tool and then put in everything in place to launch the app.”
“The matchday programme is an iconic part of the matchday experience and we realised that it was something the vast majority of our fanbase was missing out on. So, leveraging the iPad’s potential to serve long form content and its scope for interactivity, we saw opportunities both to bring the matchday programme to fans around the world and also to enhance it for the iPad platform.”
“Rather than simply reproduce the matchday programme on iPad, we decided to make the most of the iPad’s functionality and have added various layers of interactivity – the digital version includes video, browsable photo galleries and a range of interactive graphics. We think this gives it a strong identity and provides added value to fans as it plays to the iPad’s strengths. Also it is available early – at midnight before an afternoon kick-off and midday before an evening kick off – so fans can start to enjoy match build-up well ahead of kick off.”
“We’ve had over 20,000 downloads so far and already we’ve seen good numbers of subscriptions following the first free issue. We will be promoting the subscriptions heavily before the next home game and hope to get a good regular audience who will look out for it on every home match.”
Our thanks goes to Ben for taking the time to answer our questions and provide us with some valuable insight from one of the world’s largest football teams.
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]]>The post MLS Matchday 2012 Mobile App Review appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.
]]>I downloaded the Matchday app for my iPhone and iPad over the weekend. All in all, I’m impressed with it. Here’s some screen shots and a brief review of the application.
First off, I love the look and feel of the app. It’s got a sleek, clean design and it’s very easy to navigate. Once you start the app, it takes you to a home screen which allows you select the club of your choice before moving to the club’s “homepage.”
The Scores page is very easy to read and makes it simple to find your desired match – click on the bar and you’ll be taken to the game center for the individual match where you can view stats, play-by-play and see video highlights.
Whether you’re viewing league news or team-specific news, it’s laid out in a newspaper style format similar to the popular Flipboard iPad app. You can read team news and updates on players, etc. The schedule button pops up a calendar format to find when the next game – clicking on that pops up a smaller window with time and television information.
On each team’s homepage, there’s a “Chants” tab which allows you the opportunity to hear a few of the fans’ most popular chants. Great idea!
With the number of television channels in the U.S. showing a variety of sports, the app also has a helpful “TV Info” page which shows which games are nationally televised each week and what channels are showing games.
One of my favorite features is the “Alerts” tool which allows you to select notifications on your device for breaking news as well as match notifications such as when the games start and end, goals, cards and substitutions.
There’s a lot of video content available for users in the Matchday app. Outside of the ability to watch live games with an MLS Live subscription, there’s a variety of free content to watch daily. The main video tab offers the ability to choose from a category of the league’s regular programming such as the MLS Review Show, Goal of the Week, Save of the Week and The Daily. If you select a club as one of your “favorites”, the video tab will sort by “Live” “Club-Specific” and “MLS Soccer.”
If you click within a specific game that’s already been played, you can view 15-20 bite-size highlights of the match – goals, saves, close shots, etc.
When you click on a team’s roster, it simply brings up a list of players with the number and position. Clicking on the name doesn’t take you anywhere or allow you get any information about the player. I’d like to see a bio with at least a headshot of the player and perhaps some career/season statistics.
Under the “Learn” tab, there’s an option to view a listing of all of the MLS stadiums. I think this is a great idea as it allows the league to showcase many of the newer venues that were built specifically for soccer and for MLS. However, the tab leaves a bit to be desired in the information department. While you can view the name of each team’s stadium with the year it opened, there’s not even a capacity number. There is one photo beside each venue, but most of them are just a shot of a crowd and doesn’t give you any clear picture of what the stadium looks like.
4/5 ★ ★ ★ ★
The post MLS Matchday 2012 Mobile App Review appeared first on Digital-Football.com - Football Social Media & Digital Sports news.
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