NCAA March Madness app will support Live Activities, CarPlay, and more this year

Ahead of March Madness kicking off in just a few days are a handful of features coming to the NCAA’s March Madness iPhone app. Most notably, the NCAA March Madness Live app will support Apple’s new Live Activities feature this year…

March Madness 2023 streaming, apps, and more

Live Activities in the March Madness app will allow you to see live game scores right on your iPhone’s Lock Screen or in the iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island. To start a Live Activity, you’ll need to manually open the March Madness app and tap on a game. These new features were announced in a press release today.

NCAA March Madness Live will greet users with an upgraded Home Screen built for better content discoverability of live streams, articles and more creating a seamless experience for users both new and old. For the first time, users will also be able to take advantage of Apple’s Live Activities feature in iOS 16.1+, that when enabled will provide interactive notifications and faster access to live games directly from the lock screen on their mobile devices.

Additionally, the March Madness app will support streaming live game audio through CarPlay this year. This means that you’ll be able to start audio playback for a game just by using March Madness app via the CarPlay interface.

Nearly 98% of new cars are equipped with both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in the U.S. For the first time, NCAA March Madness Live will have a robust product integration into these services with live game audio powered by Westwood One national feeds to keep fans who are on-the-go, in-the-know.

On the web, the NCAA March Madness website is adding the ability to stream up to four games at the same time. On Apple TV and other connected TV devices, you’ll only be able to stream two games simultaneously. There will, however, be picture-in-picture support across iPhone, iPad, and the web.

The NCAA says that all games will stream in 1080p quality with 5.1 surround sound. According to Engadget, there have been some enhancements to the video player for “improved performance across a swathe of devices, including older ones.”

Finally, as for actually watching the March Madness games this year, the NCAA has clarified a few things. First, you’ll be able to stream any game that airs on CBS itself for free through Paramount+. In fact, you won’t even need to make an account to watch those games.

On the flip side, you’ll need a Paramount+ subscription to watch games that are broadcast on TBS, TNT, and truTV.

You can download the NCAA March Madness Live app from the App Store today. The first games kick off on March 14.

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