10 best sports news apps for Android

The Athletic is a genuinely interesting mix of old school and new school. It has no pop-ups, no ads, and hardly any fluff. However, it’s also a subscription service like a newspaper. It features in-depth coverage of a bunch of teams from a bunch of sports. They boast coverage of 28 sports markets right now and we expect that to grow. There are some gaps in coverage, but it’s because the company is fairly new. The layout is simple without any distractions and we like that. This is a great option if they cover the teams, sports, and markets you care about.

ESPN is one of the biggest sports news apps in North America. It features coverage of all of the biggest sports, including the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, coolege sports, WNBA, and more. It also features a streaming service with live games and commentary for $4.99 per month. Other features include scores, schedules, highlights, trade news, and more. That’s more than most apps offer. ESPN does have issues. It’s highly opinionated and that makes some of their coverage quite bad. The app has a fair amount of advertisements as well. Otherwise, the app and company aren’t bad.

Feedly is a great option for minimalists. It doesn’t follow any blogs in particular. Instead, you choose the sports blogs you want to follow. The app keeps track of the articles you read, integrates with a bunch of other apps like Facebook and Twitter, and it also lets you track keywords. It shows you want you want and basically nothing else. The app is also free with no ads and no in-app purchases.

The Google Search app is actually a fairly comprehensive app. It offers a lot of functionality, including Google Now, Google Assistant, and the venerable Google Search. It makes it really easy to find scores, news, updates, and other stuff on the web with a simple voice or text search. Google Search has special formatting for many sports searches, like a box score, a quick news tab, and more. It’s not as comprehensive in terms of sports news as some other apps on this list. However, it’s probably the best bet for a casual sports fan.

theScore had one of the first good sports news apps on mobile. Some competitors caught up, but theScore is still decent. It features scores from most popular sports, including NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, college sports, WNBA, some international soccer (European football) leagues, PGA Golf, and more. The UI is fairly clean and the coverage is usually competent. It also shows scores, schedules, trades, and other big news. They usually do a minor re-design for major sporting events and we like their dedication to the craft. The app is free. Their redesign is a little polarizing with their existing fans. However, it should even out over the next few months.

SofaScore is a huge sports news app. It covers many sports around the world, including Europen and American football, hockey, tennis, Motorsport, rugby, volleyball, cycling, polo, and a bunch of other sports. You can find scores for some pick up game of stick-ball from 40 years ago. We’re kidding, but the app does have a ton of scores available. Its focus solely on scores keeps the app lightweight, despite all of the information available. It even has Android Wear (Wear OS) support. This one is good.

Thuuz Sports is not as popular as other sports news apps. However, it’s been consistently good for a long time. It features sports scores and schedules. It ranks games by their excitement. For instance, it notifies users if a pitcher is seven innings into a perfect game. The app covers the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, college football and basketball, tennis, cricket, rugby, and golf. That should be enough for most North American sports fans. The app is free with ad support.

Yahoo Sports is right up there with ESPN as the most popular sports news sources on the Internet. It covers all of the main North American sports along with many others. The app includes live game streaming for select sports. Additionally, it covers trades, updates, breaking news, rumors, scores, and schedules. The app is a little bit bloated. Plus, Yahoo suffers from the same level of opinion-over-fact style of column writing as ESPN. However, when push comes to shove, the app gets it down. It’s also free with ad support.

Most sports leagues have official apps. Those apps usually carry perks that third party sports news apps don’t. For instance, most North American sports league apps let you watch live games with a yearly subscription. Additionally, they usually have decent news writing, schedules, scores, and the ability to follow individual teams. The live game subscriptions vary greatly between sports. However, most of them are fairly expensive for yearly subscriptions. They are definitely good places to start, though.

Live TV apps are growing quickly. As it turns out, they’re also excellent sports news apps. Most of them include local news and local sports networks in their base packages. That gives you cheap(er) access to things like local pre-game and post-game shows about your local teams. Plus, most of them have ESPN access for a small additional fee for sports news on your phone or TV. There are about a half a dozen of these services and they all vary greatly. We have our list of the best ones linked up just below the video and the video is our comparison of the five best ones. Enjoy!