Score check, highlights and the hour it kicks off
Following a team from somewhere the match is not shown breaks into three separate problems. Knowing when it starts in your time zone. Knowing the score while it happens, or deliberately not knowing it. And watching something afterwards, which depends entirely on who holds the rights where you are sitting rather than on which app you install. Score apps solve the first two well and free. The third is a rights question, and no app setting changes it.
Three problems, three kinds of app
| What you want | The kind of app | What it will not do |
|---|---|---|
| Kick off time in my time zone | Any fixtures app, with the time zone set | Guess correctly if the phone clock is manual |
| The score, minute by minute | A live score app | Show the match itself |
| Lineups, stats and heat maps | A data heavy score app | Be light on battery during a game |
| Watching the match live | The broadcaster who holds the rights here | Work the same when you travel |
| Highlights afterwards | The league or broadcaster channel | Appear immediately in every country |
| Not knowing the score until tonight | Notification settings, deliberately set | Protect you from group chats |
Advertisement
The apps worth having on match day
The broadest coverage of the lot, across football and a long list of other sports, with fast in play updates. The interface is dense because it is showing everything at once.
The one to open when you want more than the score: lineups, player ratings, shot maps and a running match statistic panel.
FotMob. The best balance of detail and readability for football, and its notification settings are the most precise here, down to a single team.
OneFootball. News and fixtures for a team you follow rather than a raw results feed, which suits people who check in once a day.
Long established, light and quick to read on a bad connection, which is exactly what a score app is for.
Covers several sports with a clean daily summary, and the pre match view with form and head to head is genuinely useful.
Forza Football. Smaller, deliberately opinionated, and strong on following a single club rather than a whole league.
The international build of the BBC sport app. Free written coverage across many sports; live video and audio depend on where you are.
Sky Sports news and scores. The written side is open to everyone, the video side needs a subscription that is tied to a country.
Strong on cycling, tennis, winter sport and athletics, which the football first apps cover thinly.
The widest North American coverage, and a reasonable second opinion on European football too.
The reference app for cricket scores and commentary, and quick enough to follow a whole session over mobile data.
Official NBA scores, schedules and highlight clips. What you can watch live inside it varies by country and subscription.
The official NFL app for fixtures, scores and highlights, with the same regional caveat about live video.
Formula 1 timing, and the only way to watch the gaps rather than the pictures. The live timing and video tiers are paid and vary by country.
Useful in a tournament for schedules across time zones and for competitions the domestic apps ignore.
A Spanish sports paper rather than a score app, and the reminder that following a league in its own language is often better reporting.
Subscription sport streaming, with rights that differ substantially between countries. Check what is actually in the catalogue where you live before paying.
Why the match is not shown here
Broadcast rights are sold country by country, so the same fixture can be free to air in one place, behind one subscription in another, and shown nowhere at all in a third. That is a contract, not a technical limitation, which is why no app fixes it and why an app promising every match for nothing is not what it claims to be.
The honest options are the broadcaster who holds the rights where you are, the league's own service if it sells one directly, a radio commentary, which is often free and travels far better than video, and highlights on the club or league channel afterwards.
- The broadcaster who actually shows your team's league
- A league pass, if you follow one competition closely
- Removing advertisements from a score app you open daily
- A radio subscription for commentary on away days
- A second score app that duplicates the first
- A streaming service bought for one fixture
- Any service that cannot say which matches it carries
- Statistics packs you will look at once
Watching later without learning the score first
- Turn off every score notification for that competition One app is easy to forget. Check all of them, including the news app that shows sport in its digest.
- Silence the group chats, not just the apps The score reaches most people through a friend rather than a notification.
- Turn off lock screen previews for the afternoon A muted notification still shows its text when the phone lights up on the table.
- Avoid the home screen widgets A fixtures widget updates whether you asked it to or not.
- Search the exact video, do not browse to it Thumbnails and suggested titles give scores away more reliably than anything else.
One score app configured properly, notifications set per team, and an honest answer about who holds the rights where you live. That covers match day.
Frequently asked questions
Which score app is the most accurate?
The large ones all take the same feeds and differ by seconds rather than facts. Pick on how readable it is and how precisely you can control notifications, because that is where they genuinely differ.
Why does an app show a match as unavailable in my country?
Rights are licensed per territory. The app is showing you what it is allowed to show where the connection appears to be, and that varies between countries and sometimes between seasons.
Do score apps drain the battery?
A live match view with constant updates does, because the screen stays on and the data keeps flowing. Notifications alone cost very little, so use those for a match you are not watching.
How do I follow a team in a different time zone?
Let the phone set its own clock, add the fixtures to a calendar if the app offers it, and set a reminder an hour ahead rather than at kick off, which gives time to find somewhere to watch.
Read next
Nothing has infected your phone. Something you installed has permission, and the fix is a list in settings.
A phone will happily run a keyboard, a mouse and a memory stick. It will not power a desktop hard drive.
Hard and fast are different things. Almost every game confuses them, and these do not.
