How to Build a Sports News Mobile App

So many sports news outlets are having great success publishing content through mobile apps on iOS and Android.

It’s no surprise. Fans consume a lot of content and are hungry for round the clock coverage of their favorite teams, players and sports. What better way to give them what they want than through powerful native apps sitting right in their pockets?

Apps give a much more intimate place for loyal readers to feel at home, and are a much more convenient way for them to enjoy breaking news than navigating through a mobile browser. On top of that, you have a highly effective channel to reach them through push notifications - so you can notify fans whenever you want to draw them into newly published content.

In this guide, we'll take a look at a few major sports news publishers who are having great success with their native apps. Then we'll show you the best way to go about sports app development, and build your own sports app, even if you've never built a mobile app before.

Top Sports App Examples

There are no shortage of high-quality, successful sports apps on the market today. For your inspiration, here are a few:

1) The Athletic

The Athletic is a subscription-based sports news publisher. They publish ad-free national and local sports content in 47 North American cities and the UK, and also cover national stories from top professional and college sports. As well as a host of podcasts, newsletters and articles - their native apps are a key part of their offer to subscribers.

They hit over 500,000 paying subscribers earlier this year, and are pushing forwards to their goal of 1 million by the end of the year.Their native apps are helping them toward this goal, as they are a high-value part of the package for subscribers.

Their app has also received this "Editors' Choice" badge on the Apple App Store:

2) Bleacher Report

Bleacher Report is another successful sports news outlet that has invested in a strong presence on the App Stores.

Bleacher Report is believed to generate $600,000 per month from their mobile apps, with a total of 70k monthly downloads across their 5 apps (3 for iOS, 2 Android apps).

3) CBS Sports

We could honestly put the apps from all major sports outlets here (e.g. ESPN, Yahoo Sports App). But the CBS Sports App is consistently one of the highest quality sports apps out there.

It scores 4.7/5 in its reviews on the App Store, and is a key part of their publishing strategy, offering a great way for sports fans to get the latest sports news, scores, and even watch live/on-demand video of sports events.

4) LigaBlatt

LIGABlatt is a popular German and Turkish news site covering all things football. Starting out as a sports news website, they decided the next step was to build a presence on the App Stores.

Building sports news apps boosted their traffic by 30%, and they got glowing reviews from their readers who were happy to get a more convenient mobile option than the website.

5) Sports Mockery

Sports Mockery is a popular sports news site that helps Chicago sports fans to stay up to date with their favorite teams.They started to get a lot of feedback from readers asking if they had an app, and realized that they were leaving revenue on the table.

The apps have brought in some impressive results for Sports Mockery. They got over 30,000 downloads and were able to create an entirely new revenue stream through in-app ads. The apps also helped them to reach new readers and made their most loyal fans happy.

Should I Build a Sports News App?

If you've got a sports news website, or you're considering launching one, mobile apps should be at the center of your business plan.

Why?

First, because more people go online on their mobile devices than on desktop today. The power and convenience of smartphones today means it's just so much easier to pull up a website on your phone, than to fire up the laptop or PC to do the same thing.

The share of mobile vs desktop users is likely even more heavily skewed towards desktop for the type of people who access sports apps, since sports news is usually something you look at on the go.

And while mobile websites these days are far more usable than in the past, they don't compare to the user experience of mobile apps.

The superior mobile UX is the reason we spend 90% of our mobile time using apps, over mobile websites.

If you can provide a more satisfying experience to your mobile users, they'll spend more time with you, leading to higher ad revenue and more loyal readers. Apps also give you a great way to build retention - when someone downloads your app, they're far more likely to return and consume more content than if they need to type the URL every time.

Today, there's no reason not to have an app if you're a publisher, particularly with how easy it is to build one (as we'll see in a moment).

Launching your own app is a great way to connect with sports fans who want to access news, scores and more on the go. Building a sports app is a must, over simply relying on your mobile website, and will help you get more engagement, more retention, and far higher ad revenue and/or subscribers as a result.

How to Build a Sports News App

Apps used to be very expensive and time consuming to build, taking many months and tens of thousands of dollars. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case.

Sports apps like LigaBlatt and Sports Mockery were built in a matter of weeks, using MobiLoud. This is by far the best way for any aspiring sports app publisher to go live and start reaching sports enthusiasts on their mobile devices.

MobiLoud, our tech-enabled service, allows anyone to launch an app, virtually indistinguishable from the native apps from huge brands like ESPN, Yahoo, CBS Sports and more.

You don't need to know how to code, or spend hundreds of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of your app for developers (for the initial build, and ongoing maintenance).

It's almost too good to be true. We'll explain more below.

Want to launch your own mobile app now? Get in touch with us and set up a demo to see how the process works, and how we can help you turn your website into Android and iOS apps.

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How MobiLoud Works

MobiLoud turns your existing website into a hybrid mobile app. The app shows a live view of your web content (through a technology called webviews), allowing you to publish, update and manage content in your app directly from the website.

That means your app is essentially your mobile website, just packaged within a mobile app UI. Yet to the average observer, it will look just like a professionally-made native app.

This approach is so much better than coding a sports app from scratch. Not only is it much quicker and easier to launch (most of the work is already done, assuming you have a working website), it makes it far easier to publish new content to your app, since you can do so with web content management systems, like WordPress or Squarespace.

You can manage web, Android and iOS all from one place. This is the way to go for all app publishers today.

Building Your Sports News App: Step-by-Step

Here's a walk through the process of building a sports app with MobiLoud.

• First, build and optimize your website for mobile. This is going to make up 95% of your mobile app, so make sure you get the mobile UX perfect.
• Kick things off with a demo call with one of our app experts. We'll discuss what you want out of your app, and how we can help make it happen.
• We do all the work under the hood to bring your app to life. You don't need to do anything at this step - just wait. We do all the small touches to make your app feel legit, such as logins/splash screens, mobile tabs and navigation.
• When the first version is ready, you can test and give feedback.
• Finally, we'll compile and launch the final version of your sports app. We also handle the app store submission process, assuring you that your app will be able to reach Google Play and iOS App Store users without issue.

It doesn't stop there, by the way. Our team will be on hand for updates, maintenance, and any changes you want to make to your app after the initial launch. This comes much cheaper than

All in all, MobiLoud is superior to any other sports app development solutions on the market. Even if you have the ability to code and build an app yourself, MobiLoud allows you to do it so much quicker, letting you focus your efforts on growth, marketing, sales, or simply allowing you to sit back and relax.

Final Thoughts

There's a huge market for apps in the sports industry today.

The best sports apps, like those we discussed earlier, are bringing in hundreds of thousands in revenue per month, and will only continue to grow as more people become mobile-first.

You don't necessarily need to compete with ESPN or Bleacher Report. Some of the best sports apps niche down. This could mean launching an app targeted to a specific region (like Sports Mockery and LigaBlatt do), or specific interests, such as fantasy sports apps or a sports betting app.

Whatever kind of sports app you want to build, MobiLoud is the best and easiest sports mobile app development tool available. It'll help you go live in the app stores in a matter of weeks, with a platform that's easy to maintain, even without developers on staff.

Don't delay any longer - finally launch that app you've been dreaming of.

‍Get in touch and speak to one of our app experts today.