This year, the SuperSport team were awarded the Best iOS App for Consumers, after also having been shortlisted in the Best Android and Most Innovative App categories, while the DStv apps were shortlisted in the Best Android and iOS categories.
The features you can experience in the SuperSport app have grown tremendously in the space of 12 months. Apart from a stunning new user interface, users are now able to watch matches live on your device, and receive real-time updates like match start, score updates, and results via push notifications.
From a coding perspective, the various apps, historically created as separate tablet and smartphone builds, have been recreated as universal apps so that the teams maintain a single codebase. For the user, once you install SuperSport on your tablet, you can enjoy it automatically on your smartphone and vice versa.
The immedia and DStv teams claim Best iOS App for Consumers at the MTN Business App of the Year Awards 2014
Iterated and improved by DStv Digital Media and immedia over the space of five years, SuperSport has evolved from being just an app – it’s a product that requires different types of deep skills to get right. Working towards the current incarnation of the SuperSport product gave the team an opportunity to demonstrate and deepen our API (or Application Programming Interface) skills.
Says Bevan Andriés, Technical Director at the immedia ecosystem: “Central to the development of version 3 of the SuperSport app was creating a complex but robust API. To deliver a quality experience, the API would need to pull multiple feeds from different sources in dozens of formats, and immediately push messages to thousands of devices. Version 3 was less about the app and more about the backend services – the work that often goes unnoticed by our user.”
“With an ambitious sprint to get push notifications created and reliable by the World Cup (probably the most viewed event in the sporting calendar!), we learned that the work doesn’t end once the app is submitted,” shares Bevan. “The building and maintenance of a strong umbilical behind the app that keeps it performing should not be overlooked, and is a skill-set we as app creators need to be cultivating.”
Some of the teams from immedia & DStv Digital Media with our app cakes
First held in 2012, the MTN App of the Year Awards celebrates South Africa’s technical talent by showcasing locally-developed applications that make a positive and lasting impact on consumers.
Together with its partner companies in the immedia ecosystem, immedia represents a new breed of development agency emerging out of the post-PC space that present a holistic solution to organisations and, in doing so, create globally-relevant careers within local communities, spanning all sectors and fields.
Find out more about SuperSport for iPhone, iPad and Android or learn about DStv for iPhone, Android and Windows, the winner of 2013’s Best iOS app for Consumers.