A Way to Stay Connected with the Game – Fox Sports Florida Game Connect

Fox Sports Florida invited two blog groups to have a Game Connect Night at Marlins Park on August 29th, 2012. Marlins Nation and Marlins Baseball was there to live the suite life while using their Game Connect on fox Sports.

Overall it was every Marlins Fans dream to be invited to a suite to watch a game while using Game Connect. If you haven’t heard of Game Connect it is a must try for every baseball fan! If you haven’t tried it here is the link and follow along with me while explaining everything! (http://gameconnect.foxsportsflorida.com/mlb/marlins)

As you can see this isn’t like any other way to follow baseball such as MLB at Bat. Fox Sports has built a whole new way to watch the game and see everything from stats, pitch count, balls to strikes ratio, and even twitter is on here. With Game Connect you will not miss a thing it is best used when watching the game and having Game Connect open on a computer or IPad.

This platform is very easy to use. At the top you will see the pitching matchup and their season info. Before and during the game it has stats that you can find for each batter and it will show their average righties vs lefties. Personally my favorite part of this platform which makes it like no other is having twitter right there instead of having to juggle from page to page. All you do is go to game talk and sign in and you are all set to tweet throughout the game. On twitter Tuesday this is a great way to ask the broadcast questions as well that feature is at the top just under the pitching matchup (Before game) or the player at bat and pitcher (During the Game).

Another fun thing Fox Sports has is the pitch count. Yes, other apps and pages do have this such as Game day but Fox Sports has taken it to a whole new level. They have pitchers average pitch thrown for the season for example: Jacob Turner average was 76 pitches then next to that it will show how many pitches he has remaining. Along with that you will see a gas gauge and wonder why on earth is that there? This will start at full and throughout the night it will slowly move to empty depending on the pitches and when the pitcher runs out of fuel the gauge cracks.

If you scroll down there is a section called “Most Talked About” here you will find which players are most popular in the social world. For instance it will show the Nationals most popular and then the Marlins players. Throughout the platform you will notice that it is color coded for the team Nationals was red and Marlins were orange. This made it easier to notice each team than everything being in one color.

During the game there weren’t many issues at all with Game Connect at times it did lag mainly between innings. It had showed Bernadina Pitching (he is a left fielder) and then Heath Bell Batting (We all know that wouldn’t happen!) This happens with all second screen apps and websites. It doesn’t ruin the experience or anything and fixed itself without having to hit refresh. It did refresh itself after the first pitch and you had all the correct info

The couple things I would have liked to see is during the game it showed the stats for the season for the pitcher still instead I thought it would be beneficial to have the stats for this game right at the top for instance how many strike outs, balls, runs, earned runs, HRs, along with innings pitched. Instead you had to hit the link that says “Game Stats” and scroll to the bottom you would see the Pitchers area. Which it is easily accessed but would benefit being right on the front page. Another thing was the play by play it is great the one thing that would be good for fans that actually keep a scorecard would be to have the pitch count for that player to know what happened and at what count. Example: John Buck grounds out 1-1. That was actually a question I was asked and using Game Connect I couldn’t tell you which pitch it was that he grounded out.

Overall, Game Connect is a great second screen experience and after going through it and experiencing it I have started using it while watching games. It has a few things to work on but every second screen does. Remember it will not replace the game but it will make you have a better experience of the game and social buzz. Hopefully in the near future there is an actual App on an iPhone or android so it is easily accessed by phones.

Go Try Game Connect for the next game you watch a game!