Speedway App

[Kieran22222]

I am thinking of creating an app for British speedway as a project in my own time. I have some ideas of what could be included, but any suggestions for features/functionality would be appreciated.

[Youhave2minutes]

Just now, Kieran22222 said:

I am thinking of creating an app for British speedway as a project in my own time. I have some ideas of what could be included, but any suggestions for features/functionality would be appreciated.

Well thought of,I wish you luck in proceeding.

[IainB]

3 hours ago, Kieran22222 said:

I am thinking of creating an app for British speedway as a project in my own time. I have some ideas of what could be included, but any suggestions for features/functionality would be appreciated.

Depends who your target audience is? Is it going to be a rehash of club websites with match scores and reports and a fill your own scorecard feature or are you thinking something more interactive aimed at a younger audience?

[Kieran22222]

It is going to be a news/scores app to make is easier to follow meetings live, check results, tables, etc as there isn't really anything like that at the moment. The Polish League have one (the app is just called Ekstraliga I believe) which would be a good indication of what I am aiming for. Also the Premier League football one as well as Fotmob are other good references.

[IainB]

2 minutes ago, Kieran22222 said:

It is going to be a news/scores app to make is easier to follow meetings live, check results, tables, etc as there isn't really anything like that at the moment. The Polish League have one (the app is just called Ekstraliga I believe) which would be a good indication of what I am aiming for. Also the Premier League football one as well as Fotmob are other good references.

BSN pretty much do that at the moment

[Kieran22222]

I didn't think they had a mobile app, I thought they just had a website?

[Lawsie6]

26 minutes ago, Kieran22222 said:

It is going to be a news/scores app to make is easier to follow meetings live, check results, tables, etc as there isn't really anything like that at the moment. The Polish League have one (the app is just called Ekstraliga I believe) which would be a good indication of what I am aiming for. Also the Premier League football one as well as Fotmob are other good references.

Sounds like a great idea, good luck with it! Would be great to be able to go onto it in the evening and look through the results, heat results and overall rider points etc. I'll be downloading for sure 👍

[IainB]

59 minutes ago, Kieran22222 said:

I didn't think they had a mobile app, I thought they just had a website?

I don't know how they've done it but you can save the link to their website and it saves it as an app with app like behaviour rather than it acting like a website. I think their results come pretty much from the ref officiating at the match.

If you were going to do something similar you've got to think what your data source is and the overhead needed to keep everything updated. People will soon drop it if it isn't up to date. Speedway Updates pretty much has this covered although even they take some of their results from the BSN site. I'm not trying to pish on your parade but unless you have a tie up to somebody like the excellent https://www.gbspeedway.com/ it could easily eat into your time for something that is already available from other sources.

Imo you'd be better off trying to develop something that hasn't already been done. It may take some expertise though, I'm not sure what your app development skills are.

 

[SteveLyric2]

43 minutes ago, Lawsie6 said:

Sounds like a great idea, good luck with it! Would be great to be able to go onto it in the evening and look through the results, heat results and overall rider points etc. I'll be downloading for sure 👍

Speedway updates proboards does that.

[Kieran22222]

Again these examples you are mentioning are websites, that have their drawbacks. Speedway updates is struggling for people to provide the relevant updates and BSN is a website no matter how you dress it up and only provides meeting updates, no tables, rider history. The website layouts are no very accessible and require you to know where to look. @IainB You mentioned "Speedway Updates pretty much has this covered although even they take some of their results from the BSN site", is this someone just manually copying the results from BSN, or is it done automatically?

[IainB]

1 minute ago, Kieran22222 said:

@IainB You mentioned "Speedway Updates pretty much has this covered although even they take some of their results from the BSN site", is this someone just manually copying the results from BSN, or is it done automatically?

I don't know for sure but I get the impression the whole thing is manual... even people texting results to somebody who then updates the website.

[Kieran22222]

Thats how I thought it worked. Through doing some research I know BSN have a direct feed to the referees built into their website so was trying to get them to allow me to use that, but not had any luck so far, but with proof of concept I am hoping I can maybe pitch something a bit more concrete to them. I am also not worried about wasting time as I am using it to improve my skills for my career as I work as a software developer, so doing something like this will help in that regard

 

[IainB]

3 minutes ago, Kieran22222 said:

Thats how I thought it worked. Through doing some research I know BSN have a direct feed to the referees built into their website so was trying to get them to allow me to use that, but not had any luck so far, but with proof of concept I am hoping I can maybe pitch something a bit more concrete to them. I am also not worried about wasting time as I am using it to improve my skills for my career as I work as a software developer, so doing something like this will help in that regard

 

Imo, fwiw, you'd be better off aiming something at a younger audience, the old farts that generally make up the Speedway community will be difficult to prize away from their tried and trusted websites.

I'm a software developer, pretty much retired now and more data orientated but if I were looking to improve my skills I'd be looking at trying to develop something more interactive than a re-hash of data that is already available.