SportsPicker
Want to show that you know your stuff about the upcoming NFL season, or possibly on one of the other major sports ranging from NBA, MLB to MLS and EUFA Championship soccer to your Facebook friends?
Well the SportsPicker Challenge, developed by OHK Labs might just be the app that you have been looking for as it not only covers those sports but also others such as NCAA basketball and football among others.
Everybody has friends that like to brag about how well they pick winners in sporting contests but a little digging often shows that they tend to do so without taking the odds into consideration, something that would have made the task considerably harder. And that is one feature that sets the app apart from others.
Users select the sport that you want to follow and make predictions about how a week’s slate of games is going to turn out, using the odds that have been established for that event. The apps scoring system takes the odds into account so that a victory by the favored team earns 100 points, and underdog team wins earn between 125 and 200 points, depending on the odds of winning.
The importance of the points is due to the apps challenge periods that feature prizes. The nice thing about the prizes is that they are real ones and not a cyber award that only is usable on the app. The company is offering gift cards from a variety of companies including Amazon, Sports Authority, Best Buy and others.
In addition, for the opening week of the NFL (which starts tonight) three fans will win an EA Sports Madden 13 for picking the most winners in the opening week of the season. The OHK has said that it plans to have approximately $10,000 in prizes. Users do not have to participate in sponsored events. They can get friends to join and compete with them via your own challenges.
There s no cost to play and fans have two options; they can play on Facebook or via their iPhone using a free app available at Apple’s iTunes store. It has just emerged from beta testing in time for the start of Football.
There are a growing number of apps that do some of what SportsPicker Challenge does, but as far as I know none use the odds as part of the equation. There are plenty of apps that allow for bragging rights and even some that have prizes, but as far as I have seen the prizes are mostly cyber ones- points for contests and to get extra privileges. This is the one of first that has real world prizes, something I think that fans can appreciate as much as bragging rights.
There are single sports ones that provide prizes including the cool $1 million that the NFL is now offering but that is a fantasy league and so really a horse of a different color. PickMoto is also a one sports play, at least currently.
