In what has to qualify as one of the most low-key introductions of a major sports app, the NFL has quietly launched something called Thursday Night Football Xtra, an app meant to be a “second screen” feature for your mobile device while you watch the Thursday night games on the NFL Network channel. The new app is sponsored by State Farm; you find it by clicking on the small “Xtra” chevron in the middle of this page.
Just so there’s no confusion, the app does NOT allow for live mobile viewing of Thursday night games — for that you need a Verizon cell phone and the $5 per month premium version of the NFL Mobile app. The Xtra app, which went live last week and which we checked out this Thursday night, promises to provide live sideline reports, game info and trivia, and predict-the-play contests where registered users can win points, for what we are guessing is some prize-redemption package.
There’s a little bit of a trek to find the app, since if you are on an iOS platform you will find it inside the NFL ’12 app; Android users and Verizon users need to find a separate TNF Xtra app, but it was easy to find in the Play Store. Since there’s no official press release out yet we don’t have all the details, but it seems pretty straightforward, and is an attempt by the league to bring its own smack talk/fan games interactivity app to the table. However, the league’s app follows a whole bunch of independent entities that are already up and running, though to the NFL’s credit there is already a version for both Android and iOS. Many of the new apps from smaller operations are still iPhone-only, a problem for roughly half the world’s smartphone users.
In our limited test run — right now let me say some of the problems may be due to my personal device, a Verizon 4G LTE Samsung Stratosphere, which has been acting hinky lately, requiring Tier-2 service calls to Verizon if you know what I mean. When you open the app the main screen says something about “Stay Tuned” which if you only saw that screen you might think the thing isn’t connected; instead what it means is that you are between actions, which may be a predictive contest, a bit of trivia or info, or a sideline report from the game. From our limited interaction it seems like these things just pop up at random, which I guess is OK if you are simultaneously watching the game.
A swipe to the right pulls up a Facebook-powered comments page, which we could read, but weren’t able to log in to. A swipe to the left from the main screen brought up what looked like a Twitter login page, but after we entered our Twitter account info all we got was a white screen of death (see picture). The middle-screen interactive stuff looked like the best bet anyway, though it might help to know what we are winning points for. Also, when the app launched it asked which team I was a fan of, with no “neither” option for this Chicago Bears follower on the night that Baltimore played Cleveland.
We’ll give this one another run next Thursday — if you get a chance to check it out (apparently the tablet version has even more bells and whistles) let us know what you think. I am not sure how independent app developers feel about the league getting into the apps business — seems like it’s a little bit of a poach into the territory of folks who might help promote the league — but I guess it is also a signal that the NFL isn’t going to miss a chance to engage its audience. (Some screen pix below)
A picture of the Thursday Night Football Xtra app, showing a game info tidbit. Credit: MSR
The Xtra app showing a pretty standard Facebook comment stream. We couldn't log in.
A tweet from the field! "It's raining." Not great sideline reportage but hey. It's early.
What we got when we tried to log in via Twitter. The white screen of death! May be a problem with our phone and not the app. We need... wait for it... a REPLACEMENT PHONE
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