In this age of immediacy, instant information is the expectation. With seemingly everyone holding a cell phone in their hand, people want to know what's going on – now!
That mindset has filtered to the high school ranks, where fans want to not only follow their own team, but their rivals, in real-time, especially come playoff time. With that, live scoring has become the next focal point for many state governing bodies across the country.
While MaxPreps has provided live-scoring options for football and basketball with its Qwixcore platform since 2010, it has largely been fans who have provided updates as they sat in the stands. This past winter, though, the Nebraska School Activities Association and the New Mexico Activities Association each organized to provide live scoring for every game during their boys and girls state basketball tournaments.
To accomplish the effort, each association enlisted trusted tournament volunteers at various venues to provide periodic scoring updates – usually on their phones - to their assigned games. In all, Nebraska live-scored 80 games, while New Mexico did 84 games.
Each association promoted the live scoring through their social media accounts and association web sites, and the up-to-date scores also were available on MaxPreps. The results were nothing short of spectacular and provided a glimpse of the impact of live scores.
After all online views were tallied, the NMAA had more than 15,000 people who followed the live scores, while Nebraska had approximately 18,600 people following the live scores.
New Mexico first experimented with the MaxPreps live-scoring platform during the football season, and "At first, the response was not overwhelming, however, once more and more fans saw that other schools were using it, it quickly spread," NMAA Sports Information Director Tyler Dunkel said.
Because of the success of its concerted approach during the state basketball tournament, Dunkel said live scoring will be priority for the NMAA next school year.
"In the near future, the NMAA plans to have a rolling scoreboard on its website with score updates. We will continue to push live scoring to our member schools and New Mexico High School fans."
The NSAA has live-scored several of its championship finals in recent years, but this was the first time it had done so for each state basketball game.
"Using live scoring (Qwixcore) provided the NSAA with nothing but positive feedback from our fans, teams, media and championship staff," NSAA Technology Specialist Jeff Stauss said. "It allowed our staff and volunteers to have up-to-the minute information from all four championship sites. From a function standpoint, our "Qwixscorers" picked up the process in no time and were comfortable using all the features of the program, including individual scoring, individual fouls and timeouts."
The NSAA initiative also allowed the governing body to be the source of scores in what often is a competitive environment to distribute timely information, while providing a benefit to its high school community as a whole.
"For the Nebraska media covering the NSAA Basketball Championships, it provided them with a LIVE scoreboard for the entire tournament, enabling them to include information in their broadcasts and articles that previously they may not have had access to," Stauss said.
"In the future, the NSAA will definitely look at utilizing Qwixcore for other NSAA Championship events."
