Sports fans always seem to have dozens of apps dedicated to specific areas of sports that they are interested in. Apps that provide baseball broadcasts or NFL draft information are two examples and now Beyond the Box is seeking to break into that field as a sports news aggregator.
One of the knocks that some of the news services have is that they provide old news, unless you are hooked into the latest twitter feed you might be reading something that is outdated and now not relevant.
The app, designed for iPad and iPad Mini tablets promises to bring together real time, up to date news from 1,000 media sources. It also taps into 2,000 players to provide not just news but also commentary, analysis, insights, rumors, video and photos of sports figures and events.
The app enables fans to customize it according to their tastes allowing them to select teams or players to follow. It presents the news and other information in a timeline format that enables you to get either the most up to date information or pick a point at which you want to start tracing a select piece of information.
Beyond the Box is also being positioned as a perfect second screen for fans that are already watching an event and are looking for additional information, commentary or images regarding that event, or possibly on one that they are not/cannot view at the same time. It also has a Facebook, blog and twitter presence.
As the company notes it is trying to be a one stop shop for fans, but there are a number of others that also seek to provide the same type of service, from other fresh startups such as Recapp to some of the more established players in the broadcast market such as ESPN and Turner Networks’ Bleacher Report. Then of course there are specialty apps that seek to provide news for a specific sport such as Bantr for soccer.
The Beyond the Box app is from Murphy Ave. Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif. and has its roots in a program out of Stanford University called StartX Accelerator program that is designed to help new startups by exposing them to successful startup founders and an educational program that will help them succeed.
