The app is used in a stand, one hand, no signal.
Fans use club apps in a queue, in sunlight, on one bar of signal. Our mobile app design for sports starts there, backed by a benchmark of 27 leading sports apps we rerun every four weeks.
Clubs, leagues, and rights holders · Prague and Dubai
Why sports organizations bring us in for mobile
Your app has to work against one bar of signal and a crowd.
We test flows standing up, on cellular, with one thumb. The offline path is part of the first design pass.
What we design in a sports app
From the apps we benchmark and the fan research we publish.
- 01 Matchday home Live score, timeline, lineups, and what to do next, arranged for a glance.
- 02 Ticket wallet and entry Purchase, transfer, resale, offline pass, gate scanning, and fixture changes.
- 03 Live and streaming Time to picture, quality, catch-up, spoiler control, and second-screen behavior.
- 04 Fantasy and prediction Fast entry, deadline pressure, leaderboards, and the return visit they create.
- 05 Membership and loyalty Tiers, points, renewals, and the benefits fans can actually find.
- 06 Retail and merchandise Kit launches, size selection, in-venue collection, and the half-time window.
- 07 Notifications Goal, lineup, kick-off, travel, sale. What earns a push and what gets muted.
- 08 Multi-language and travel Overseas fans, away days, currencies, and time zones.
Designed around real matchday behavior
Three conditions we design the app for, from our benchmark of 27 leading sports apps.
One hand, in a crowd
In a stand the phone is held in one hand, often above shoulder height, in noise and sunlight. Every action that matters during a match sits inside the thumb arc, and nothing important hides behind a long press.
The network gives out at the gate
Twenty thousand people arrive in the same twenty minutes and the cell tower gives up. Tickets have to render from the device, entry has to work offline, and the app has to say plainly which parts are stale rather than spinning.
The season is the release calendar
A kit launch, a derby, and a cup draw are all fixed dates, and none of them is a good week to ship a risky build. We plan releases around the fixture list and keep the sponsor-facing surfaces changeable without a redesign.
From idea to launch
Planned around the season calendar, not around our sprints.
Benchmark
Your app against the 27 we already track, plus whatever your fans actually use.
Matchday research
We watch fans use the app where it is used: at home, on the way, and in the stand.
Flows
Entry, live, half time, and post match, designed one-handed and tested on cellular.
Interface and system
Components that survive a kit launch and a sponsor change without a redesign.
Ship into the calendar
Releases planned around fixtures, so nothing risky lands the week of a derby.
The app looks great! Thank you very much for all your hard work and your patience!!
Sergio Sanchez Lead Mobile Developer, Ultralytics
Read the full review
Join hundreds of teams. And counting.
See what this would look like on your product.
Send the product and the deadline. You get a reply within 24 hours with the closest cases, a timeline and an estimate.
Questions?
Have you designed a live sports app?
Yes. We work on the official World Rally Championship app, and Formula 1 and the NBA are in our client marquee. Our sport practice page covers work with leading EU and UK football clubs. Some club work is under NDA, so on a call we tell you what we can name and show you the designs.
How do you design for the traffic spike around kick-off?
We decide what the screen must answer in that window, cut everything else below the fold, and design degraded states for slow networks. That prioritization is a design decision, and it comes first. Caching, queues, and feature flags for high-load moments we plan with your engineering team.
Can you improve an app we already have?
Yes, and it is the usual starting point. We benchmark your app against the 27 we track and interview the fan segments that matter. You get a ranked list where each item names the flow, the expected effect, and the effort. You choose how much of it to do.
Do you work with our ticketing or streaming provider?
Yes. We design the fan-facing layer inside your provider’s constraints and are explicit about which improvements need a provider change. That distinction saves arguments later.
Do you design for both iOS and Android?
Yes, as one system with two platform layers. Navigation, wallet behavior, and notification handling differ enough that designing one and mirroring it produces an app that feels wrong on the other. We design the shared logic once and the platform specifics separately.
How do you know whether the app got better?
We agree the numbers before the work starts — time to get through a gate, ticket transfer completion, time to picture on a stream, notification opt-out rate — and read them after release. If one did not move, we say so.
Tell us what you are shipping.
Send the product and the deadline. You get a reply within 24 hours with the closest cases, a timeline and an estimate.
Last updated
