In 2011, inspired by Colm McMullan's Stats Zone (a football analytics app), I started working at a mobile app for rugby fans. It was my first time on mobile since the J2ME era, and I learned Android and iOS coding from scratch.
The idea was simple: I signed a contract with OptaSports, providers of real-time data from Rugby World Cup and Six Nations matches, and I created real-time visualization of that data directly in an app. Some of the features were a direct translation of Colm's app from football to rugby (for example, showing the location of kicks became the location of passes, etc), but I also added a way to draw a full animation of a game in real-time.
The app was picked up by The Guardian, the Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, it was used on the ITV Wales blog, and got coverage on Italian TV. Success, eh? But I sold a grand total of 140 apps.
Luckily, Opta had been very generous because they want to invest in rugby, so I didn't lose a lot of money.
A year later, I decided to try the free app route with ads and without using Opta data, and generated all the updates myself, without the visualization stuff but by simply sending text updates during the games. The app got 15,000 downloads, and thousands of concurrent users. I got slightly more excited, but after 6 weeks of usage I netted £100 in ad revenue.
I stopped and accepted that time required vs benefit achieved wasn't good. All in all, it might have been that PR wasn't really my thing, compounded by the fact that rugby has a smaller fanbase than football. With Opta, we even tried approaching several potential media partners, but we never got anywhere.
However, it was fun.
It got me a few contracts as developer and as trainer on mobile development, and it solidified my credentials as an all-round data expert (I used it in my most recent successful job application), so although it didn't directly made me any money I'm happy about it.
The idea was simple: I signed a contract with OptaSports, providers of real-time data from Rugby World Cup and Six Nations matches, and I created real-time visualization of that data directly in an app. Some of the features were a direct translation of Colm's app from football to rugby (for example, showing the location of kicks became the location of passes, etc), but I also added a way to draw a full animation of a game in real-time.
The app was picked up by The Guardian, the Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, it was used on the ITV Wales blog, and got coverage on Italian TV. Success, eh? But I sold a grand total of 140 apps. Luckily, Opta had been very generous because they want to invest in rugby, so I didn't lose a lot of money. A year later, I decided to try the free app route with ads and without using Opta data, and generated all the updates myself, without the visualization stuff but by simply sending text updates during the games. The app got 15,000 downloads, and thousands of concurrent users. I got slightly more excited, but after 6 weeks of usage I netted £100 in ad revenue.
I stopped and accepted that time required vs benefit achieved wasn't good. All in all, it might have been that PR wasn't really my thing, compounded by the fact that rugby has a smaller fanbase than football. With Opta, we even tried approaching several potential media partners, but we never got anywhere.
However, it was fun.
It got me a few contracts as developer and as trainer on mobile development, and it solidified my credentials as an all-round data expert (I used it in my most recent successful job application), so although it didn't directly made me any money I'm happy about it.
If you're curious of what it looked like, I still maintain its webpage at http://liverugbyapp.puntofisso.net/