ESPN: Live Sports & Scores

So far, this app has been great, but there are a few things that make me rate less than a 5 or 4. I primarily use this app for baseball, as football season hasn't started. I just installed this app it to see if it was better that other baseball viewing apps I own. So far, the interface is great and well designed, but the app is SLOW! It takes a long time to start up, and it has a hard time with simple actions in general such as clicking on the details or score of a game. So far, I have had no problem with the live TV viewing aspect of it, but it should be noted that I haven't used it much as I am at home with my TV. The main thing that annoys me the most is that when I click on a player up at bat in the app, it brings me to a glitched version of the app’s website. You are unable to scroll, and have to use a drop down menu to continue on to the stats. Then when you finally get the stats, there is barely anything! In other apps, I can click on the player an instantly get an in-app page of TONS of stats, just like it should be! ESPN, fix this please!

I have been using this app for a few years now, hoping that it would improve, but it continues to disappoint. The app offers you the chance to select “favorites,” as in teams and sports you want to follow, but the app continues to prioritize other sports over your favorites in the home page layout. I have to scroll through baseball and football scores regularly to get to the basketball or soccer content I am looking for that the app allegedly knows is my preference, even after removing baseball and football from the defaults favorite setting. On top of that, the home page layout makes very little sense content-wise, with news stories relevant to my favorites often buried under countless uninteresting and irrelevant stories for other sports. It is so bad that I get notifications of certain news stories relevant to my favorites to my phone, but when I go to read them in the app later, I can’t even find them. The ESPN app has actively made my sports engagement experience worse because of how difficult it is to follow my favorite teams. One would be better off with a collection of individual apps for each league or team rather than an app like this that utterly fails at streamlining all the content together. This app could be so much better, but it continues to be a disappointment and a frustration.

I honestly have difficulty deciding which is worse, the ESPN app or the website, as far as being able to view live games. Typically, I have to log in and out 5-10 times and independently log in to my cable provider 5-10 times each time I want to stream live games or replays. It’s quite amazing how many times you can be told that your cable subscription does not cover the live stream only to find out, on the 10th attempt, that it does. Considering it’s listed as one of the supported cable subscriptions, I’m guessing the 10th time is accurate. I have considered the possibility that it’s related to my cable provider, but since I experience the same issues with my ESPN+ subscription without going through my cable provider, I’m guessing it’s not. Of note, ESPN+ won’t be renewed. I remember watching ESPN when I was young and have continued to do so as I approach middle age, but the difficulty in accessing programming with more modern technology is quite frustrating and makes me want to find another avenue to watch my football, baseball, etc. Disney, if you’re reading this, you could really help improve the quality by fixing some of these issues before a mass exodus of subscribers who watch on mobile devices or their computers.

ESPN website implies that you are able to watch games on this app. Only after downloading the app, creating a login, allowing ESPN to access your location, entering your favorite sports, teams and leagues, and signing in again via your TV provider login do they inform you that you can’t watch because of their petty disagreements with more than half of the cable companies. They also offer you the helpful tip to be their agent and demand that your TV provider capitulate to their demands. Their decision to not offer these games in any form to any subscriber other than via full TV subscription packages is a transparent scheme to extort more than a fair price from the TV providers. The ACC and it’s member schools are complicit in this scam, are doing a disservice to their fans, and do not deserve their support. I recommend that in addition to writing your TV provider to ask them to add the ACC network, also write to ESPN and ask for a-la-carte access, for the games to be included in an ESPN+ subscription, and for them to make efforts to resolve their disagreement with the cable providers. Also write the ACC head office and the member institutions. Finally, feel free to steal the content on the Internet streams or by sharing logins. It’s what Jesus would have done.

I use the app for updates on scores mainly. The content in terms of writing, is often old, and without substance that would differentiate from merely the score. Redundancy seems to be the theme with ESPN. Let’s just write and speak the same things over and over regardless of the audience be it on an app or television. I miss Peter Gammons and his writing, but I will compliment Buster Olney for his piece on the Red Sox. ESPN needs more of that, and less of the redundancy. Return to the daily writing of yesteryear! Do some actually research and writing! There’re stories out there, and one of them is the return of “heat, cheese, hard-ball” through a proliferation of hard throwing relievers and starting pitching that has brought baseball back full circle. Spinning is still statistically important, but good old country hardball has returned! Here it is, hit it if you can is what every fan wants to see! Nathan Eavoldi showed the world that, of the many players in today’s game who have had Tommy John Surgery, a return to, and in some cases, new found power pitching is possible. So, country hardball, and Hope should be the theme to talk about in much more depth. Seek out minor leaguers, follow them as well, and shed light on what’s the biggest development in baseball today.