The app is designed so that if you have to miss a match for some reason or another you can stay up to date on what is happening. "Say you can't make your sons rugby game because of work and someone scores ten minutes into the first half," explained Portale. "When that happens your phone is going to go off and it will have a brief description of what happened. You can then go into the match page for that match to see more. Every time something happens you'll get a push notification."
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Everything is customized for your wants. Users will be allowed to follow five teams and then set the type of push notifications they will received. So for this weekend at the NYC 7s you can follow Tiger Rugby, the Empire or Northeast ODA teams, or Schuylkill River in the men's premier division or any number of teams at the tournament.
How the app works is that a team administrator can go in during the match and note when an event happens. If a try is scored they can put in who scored the try and in what minute. They can also put in a brief description. The same for conversions, penalties, substitutions, and misconduct. Fans that are following that match can then go in and see the match as well as chat in real time with other fans. "If someone downloads a video of someone scoring into the chat area you can watch it," according to Portale. The scores page will also have a customized ESPN-like scoreboard.
Real-time plans to give out the app to free to teams around the country but for now is concentrating in the Northeast, beginning with the NYC 7s. The app is only available on Apple products at the moment but is set for an android release very shortly. In time the app will be released to the entire country.
"We originally built it for officials. We made it as intuitive, simple, and fast as we could. But then we realized that the officials aren't ready for this right now," not Portale. Instead, Portale and the others behind the app realized it would be more suited to teams looking for an easy way to spread information. Those wishing to use the app can find it in the Apple app store and download it for free. A tutorial on how to use the app once you've downloaded it is available on the Real-time Sports homepage.
Potentially the app has the capability to change the way we receive information about matches. Take for instance the Women's College All-Americans on their tour of France at the moment. The U.S.A. Rugby Twitter account isn't doing a blow-by-blow account of the match but if they were given the app then a designated player on the sideline could go in and update the game in real time. It could also change the way some of the top club and college teams share their information. It's still early but if the early tests are any indication this could be the next big thing in rugby social media.