One App for Every Match: How OTG Built Real-Time Conversation for Live Sport
A sports social platform anchored in football, where fans, players, clubs and the media covering the game share the same room while it’s happening.
The Challenge
A match generates a huge amount of conversation inside a short window.
Reactions to a goal, arguments about a card, updates on who got subbed off. Most of it lands in group chats, general feeds and comment sections under articles written after the final whistle, where a comment about a goal can sit next to a photo from three days earlier. OTG needed to give that conversation a home tied to the match itself, live, with clubs, players and media posting inside it with visible authority, all running at the speed of the match.
The Solution
Flywheel designed and built OTG as a sports social platform for iOS and Android.
Anchored in football, with American football, rugby and other sports running on the same structure. Every match opens its own Match Room, carrying the live score, the match events and the fan conversation in one continuous view. Profiles carry a role (Fan, Player, Media or Official Club) that sets the badge and a profile’s place in a room, and an Influence Score tracks engagement in the background.
Match Rooms that run live
A Match Room opens the moment a game kicks off, whether that’s a football match, an NFL game or a rugby fixture. The score updates as goals, cards and other events come through, and a comment feed underneath fills with reactions tied to that specific match in real time. Fans can filter a room down to goal alerts, their own team, or the full running conversation.
One feed, where premium posts carry more weight
Posting covers text, photos and video, with Like, Reply and Repost carrying a thread forward. Your Feed and For You sit at the centre, and Tags and Trending Topics jump straight to a subject. Premium posts can appear pinned or highlighted inside a Match Room, and an Official Club can broadcast to every follower or restrict a post to Core Fans only.
An Influence Score that runs off what fans already do
Liking, replying, reposting and posting all feed a running Influence Score. The calculation weighs the action against its context and who validated it, so a reply posted during a live goal inside a packed Match Room counts for more than the same reply on a quiet afternoon. Scores show on a leaderboard and each profile, decaying after a week of inactivity.
Verification that gives badges real weight
Players, Media accounts (broadcasters, influencers, podcasters and journalists) and Clubs apply for verification inside the app, uploading credentials for an OTG Admin to review before the role goes live. Once approved, the badge sits next to that name on every post and reply, in every Match Room, whatever the sport.
Notifications timed to the speed of the match
Social activity sends direct push to the device it concerns. Match events (kickoff, goals, red cards) broadcast through Firebase Cloud Messaging topics to everyone following that game, reaching a large audience within moments of the ball crossing the line. ULink.ly handles the deep links, so tapping a notification opens the Match Room it came from.
Two rounds to find match night
Round one explored three directions: a lime hex mark, a teal stadium ring, and a black italic wordmark. Round two refined the strongest two. The shipped identity keeps the italic OTG wordmark and sets it on a floodlit night palette with an electric violet accent, so the live score always reads first.
The half nobody sees
Behind the app sits a full admin panel: a verification queue for Players, Media and Clubs, reported posts, AI-moderated posts that are quarantined or rejected before they spread, banned users and API usage. It is what lets a verified badge mean something.
A visual identity built for match night
- Night#131315
- Violet#7D5DFE
- Surface#24292E
- Slate#676E76
- Chalk#EDEDEB
What we shipped for OTG (Only The Game).
OTG is live on iOS and Android, with Flywheel continuing alongside the OTG team through an active sprint cycle. The release covers the full match-day loop across football, American football, rugby and more: role-based onboarding, Match Rooms with live scores and events, posting across text and media, verification for Players, Media and Clubs, the Influence Score and leaderboard, and notifications built around live match speed.
Premium tiers, an affiliate program and deeper gamification sit on the roadmap next, each built to extend the Match Room and profile structure already live.
Booking Q1 2027 · 2 slots
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