The Score’s March Madness plans

The sports app and news service introduces new mobile features and sponsors specifically for the NCAA tournament running March 18 to April 7.

The Score has unveiled its plans for coverage of this year’s NCAA March Madness. The sports app and news service is introducing new features specifically for the college basketball tournament.

Beyond the usual news, scores and stats, The Score will introduce an interactive bracket viewer and a feature called “Upset Tracker,” which will tell users when a lower seeded team is leading a game at halftime or with five minutes left. Users will also be able to customize their experience throughout the tournament, choosing to receive alerts for all games or just the teams and players they care about.

Justin Vandenberg, manager of digital sales for Canada, The Score, tells MiC that Subway Restaurants, Werner Ladder and Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) have signed on as sponsors of The Score’s coverage in the Canadian market.

OLG is buying display ads for NCAA content targeted at Ontario only that will appear to the Score’s desktop, smartphone and tablet users in Ontario.

Subway will activate as a presenting sponsor of the Score’s NCAA news coverage, with 25 to 30 news updates to be published per day around the tournament, according a spokesperson. The Score produces over 300 articles across all sports from their mobile-first news room.

Werner Ladder, the official ladder of the NCAA, has partnered to create custom news article content titled the “Werner Game to Watch,” with 17 custom pieces to be published over 17 game days of the tournament.

The audience for the tournament aligns with the app’s core demo, men 18 to 34, says Vandenberg. The latest usage report from The Score shows that the app has 4.8 million average monthly users globally.