by Craig Buck

Created on: February 26, 2012   Last Updated: February 27, 2012

With a large number of sporting apps on the Android market, choosing one which is right for you could prove a difficult task. If you are a fan of one sport in particular, then you could opt for a dedicated app, however if you follow a number of sports, an integrated app such as ESPN Score Centre offers a good alternative solution.

ESPN Score Centre allows the tracking of the most popular sports on either side of the Atlantic. For lovers of American Sports, you can easily track your favorite American football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey teams and tournaments. Due to the in-depth nature of the app, these sports are not restricted to the elite leagues, allowing you to track minor teams and tournaments too. If you are a fan of a non-American sport then the app will also let you track your favorite cricket, football or rugby team.

On loading the app for the first time, you are invited to select you favorite team or teams. This is easily accomplished by drilling down the menu system until you find your desired team. You can perform this task as many times as is necessary. Potentially, your favorite team list could include several teams from one or many of the sports on offer. Once your teams have been selected, you will now be able to track a multitude of information such as their previous and next fixtures in great detail. Previous fixtures will break down all game stats to give a full analysis of the teams performance. Analysis of the next fixture is also as impressive. As well as giving stats on the top performers for each side, results of the previous meetings of the teams is also displayed. Whilst this information cannot be drilled into further via the app, clicking on the preview button will take you to the relevant section of the ESPN website where more information can be obtained. 

For future events, alarms can be set to alert you when an in-game event occurs. Alerts can be set for the start and end of the game as well as when either team scores. This is a nice feature as it means that you do not have to have the app open constantly in order to keep up to date with your team.

As well as keeping up to date with in game events, ESPN Score Centre also allows quick access to the latest news stories about your team. These links will open up outside of the app. All news stories come from the ESPN website so you can be confident that the app is not going to take you to any site you are not aware of.

ESPN Score Centre requires Android 2.1 or above and will take up 1.4 Mb of your smartphone's free storage. The app cannot be installed to an external SD card so it is important to ensure you have enough disk space free before commencing the download.  The app is free to download making it well worth a look, even if you decide it doesn't meet your needs after use.

ESPN Score Centre looks set to become one of the most popular Android apps of the year. With over 10 million downloads in the last 30 days, Android owners appear to agree.

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