Are You Watching This?

So, maybe you’re kind of a sports fan. Or maybe the word “fanatic” just doesn't quite capture how much you love sports. Maybe you don’t like missing really awesome games that you could be watching instead of, say, cleaning the lint trap in your dryer. But how do you know when you’re missing such a game? You can’t be scanning sports listings all day, scouring the internet for information about your favorite teams or players. You’ve got a life to live, after all. Man, it’s tough to be you.

Well, local guy/sports fan/self-professed geek Mark Phillip had the same problem, and he solved it when he created areyouwatchingthis.com (RUWT?). Essentially, it’s a website designed to keep people from missing amazing sports games as they happen, whether it’s college football, hockey, Mexican soccer, tennis, women’s basketball, or whatever you’re into. You can also rate games, sound off in the bleachers, get text messages or e-mails letting you know what to watch, and more.

After the jump, Mark talks to us about the site that’s just perfect for the sports fan/interweb geek in all of us.

So, this sounds like a pretty cool idea. How did you come up with it?
I got the idea for RUWT? early last year. On the surface it's most like a digg.com for sporting events, but the inspiration came from slickdeals.net, a site where people post good deals on stuff like MP3 players or laptops. I loved the whole notion of people being able to vote thumbs up or thumbs down on a story, and that there was a big community of people that loved searching for a great deal so they could share it with everyone on the site.

So I thought, why not let people hunt for the great game on TV? I'm a big sports nut, and I hate missing great games, especially when I’m sitting at home doing something lame when I could've just turned on the TV if I’d known about it.

Don't other sports sites allow you to do this?
Not really.

Oh.
Sites like ESPN will tell you what's on their network, but they never want to mention their rivals, like FOX Sports or NBC. [Other] TV sites don't focus on sports, so they can't be bothered with real-time scores.

I think there are two pieces that make RUWT? really different from other sports sites. First, I’ve taken a normal TV guide and a normal sports scoreboard and mashed them together, so you can scan through the grid and see exactly who is playing in which game and what the score is right away. The second piece is an engine that can automatically grade a game based on how exciting it is. It can pick out things like a pitcher with a no-hitter, a game going into overtime, or a ranked team getting upset and automatically score them. So even if no one is watching your alma mater on TV, if it goes into triple overtime, we'll let you know about it.

When you put those two parts together, you get a super simple way to find out what games are on, but using the color coding from the rated games, it lets you pick out right away what you should be watching.

So simple, yet so brilliant.
Well, thanks.

Who are you hoping will be attracted to RUWT?
At the core, I think, is the "connected" sports fan. Anyone who loves sports and is comfortable with the internet and/or getting text messages is really who I'm going after. However, it also works for people who are just so-so about sports. I created flash widgets so people can put a little box on MySpace, Bebo, etc., and I launched a toolbar for anyone who uses Firefox (or any other Mozilla browser), so they can have a scoreboard ticker and receive alerts based on their TV listings no matter where they are on the web. I'm hoping to increase the number of places where people can run into a "Hey, something cool is happening on channel 28!" message. For the so-so fans not looking for sports, running into one of those might be enough of a nudge for them to grab the remote control.

A really good test is how a person feels about ESPN Classic. I've tried to explain to many a girlfriend that even though I know how the game is going to end, it's still fun to watch. And it's even more fun to watch it live.

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