- Apple Sports added brackets to the NCAA Basketball Tournament
- They are a great visual tracking system for March Madness
- You cannot fill them in advance
Apple Sports has joined March Madness with a new tool to help you stay on track.
Sure, the number of people interested in college sports may be small, but those numbers are deceiving when you consider the seemingly universal appeal of what is known as “The Big Dance.”
If only one in ten Americans follow college sports, the number of fans increases dramatically when asked how many are in March Madness pools. The tournament starts on March 19 and runs through April 6.
The article continues below
These pools, which track the brackets for 64 men’s college basketball teams (and another 64 in the women’s tournament), play out over several rounds until ultimately only two teams remain. They run friendly, chance-based competitions across the country.
The NCAA Tournaments draw avid college basketball fans and casual observers like me who filled out a bracket based on whether I had ever heard the college team’s name.
If you fill out a bracket on paper like I did, it can be difficult to keep track of all the game results; more than a dozen games can be played in a day. Doing it digitally is best, and if you follow sporting events like the March Madness tournament, Apple Sports just made it a little easier.
When I spoke with Apple’s Eddy Cue back in 2024 about the launch of Apple Sports and features he wanted to add, March Madness was at the top of his list. “You have this issue of bracketing and understanding that, and it’s not just a simple display of a score and stuff. We have ideas of what to do.”
Coverage of the matches followed soon after, but without any way to visualize all 190 matches in the men’s and women’s tournaments. Now, though, that’s changed, with full-bracket views that let you track every game and watch your teams progress through the rounds—from the Sweet 16 to the Elite Eight, Final Four, and even the championship game.
Of course, it will also help you see how your bracket broke.
Those in pools pick teams to win at each stage, and if a team you’ve picked to go far or all the way loses early, your bracket is effectively broken and you lose the pool (which may or may not include wins).
I can select a game, track it and even see odds for that game. What’s missing is any way to build your own console in the Sports app and then compare it to actual tournament results. I also wish I could zoom out and see the bracket in its entirety. Instead, you can only swipe left to view each round.
Still, it’s a nice and long-desired addition to Apple’s Sports app that will help support my once-a-year fleeting three-week interest in college basketball.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on YouTube and TikTok for news, reviews, video unboxings, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
