Best Apps to Have During March Madness

March Madness is officially here, with the First Four kicking off the action this week with a slate of games in Dayton, Ohio. The NCAA Tournament certainly lived up to the ‘madness’ part of its billing last night. 

Texas A&M Corpus Christi survived a late scare that saw Southeast Missouri State pull within one with 41 seconds to go. The Pittsburgh Panthers won their first tournament game since 2014, squeaking by the Mississippi State Bulldogs 60-59. It was low scoring, it was ugly, it came down to the buzzer in a game that was everything you want from March. The Panthers went up by one with 9.8 seconds to go, and the Bulldogs bricked a wide open three at the buzzer as Pitt held on to pull off the upset.

Both teams will have steeper hills to climb from here. A&M heads to Birmingham to face off against No. 1 seed Alabama; the Panthers will go to Greensboro to face No. 6 Iowa State. The First Four winners are listed at or around +2200 and +150, respectively, in their Round of 64 matchups at a host of Massachusetts area sportsbooks. Massachusetts Sports Betting Apps will have great bonuses throughout the NCAA March Madness tournament for you to take advantage of: odds can vary quite a bit between sportsbooks, so be sure to shop around to find the best possible deals, and the best chance of maximizing your winnings. 

With several games going on at any given moment during the first weekend of March Madness, it’s critical to be prepared for the chaos so that you can have the best viewing experience possible. Here’s a look at some of the apps you need to have in order to experience the NCAA Tournament to the fullest.

1. ESPN

First and foremost is the self-proclaimed (not without reason) worldwide leader in sports. Between the ‘home,’ ‘scores,’ ‘ESPN+’ and ‘more’ tabs on the app, it’s possible to keep an eye on up to four games at once. Even if you don’t have a subscription to watch games live, you can still see what’s happening in the games almost as it occurs with the app’s live updates, which show where shots were taken and whether or not they were made, in addition to showing which players tabulate various statistical events (rebounds, steals, assists, etc.) as they do so.

You can also listen to games live with the radio feature (be warned that that can be subject to blackouts and other market area restrictions) and the app also gives you a chance to keep an eye on your brackets too, assuming you made them using ESPN’s platform. 

ESPN has the added bonus of including all of those same features for the women’s NCAA Tournament (many of the other apps I’ll mention focus specifically on the men’s tournament), ensuring that you won’t miss a second of the action in either bracket.

2. NCAA March Madness Live

This is the official app of the men’s tournament itself. It includes almost all of the features ESPN does, and you’ll be getting the information from the horse’s mouth. It’s also a good idea to have a backup app ready if necessary: during one of the business months of the year for sports, these apps are handling more traffic than usual. Don’t get frozen out during a crucial moment in a game because of an app crashing. Have a contingency plan in place before the games start. 

3. Any Sportsbook App

No one knows how to forecast results like Vegas does, making sports betting apps a secret weapon in your quest to create the perfect bracket. Take a look at the betting lines for the Round of 64 before the games officially kick off (and again if you do any second chance brackets) to see if the sportsbooks are able to sniff out the upsets ahead of time.