Las Vegas Weekly

March 19, 2009 · 1:50 PM

New iPhone app means you’ll never cheer alone

By Steve Silver

FanFinder Mobile allows iPhone users to search nearby sports bars by their team affiliation, so you won't be the lone voice chanting "Yankees suck!" during the Blue Jays game.

Andy Williams had it all wrong; March Madness is truly the most wonderful time of the year.

Whether you are a college basketball fan or not, it's hard to ignore the insanity surrounding the NCAA tournament. For a few weeks everyone becomes a sports gambler, filling out bracket after bracket based on hard stats or which team's mascot would win in a fight.

Some sports fans cheer relentlessly for their alma mater while others, like myself, just watch the games for the whole "One Shining Moment" Cinderella upset special.

In Las Vegas it is pretty easy to find any game at anytime of the day thanks to our abundance of sports books, but what if you don't want to cram into a smoky sports book to watch your favorite team with strangers? What if you want to watch a team such as Duke alongside other Blue Devil faithful without worrying about UNC fans harassing you?

The creative minds at SportsFanLive.com have you covered with a new iPhone application called FanFinder Mobile which was set to launch this Thursday morning.

Basically, this free app uses GPS to figure out where in the world you are. All you have to do is pick your favorite team and it will show you a map of the closest sports bar that caters to that specific team.

Once you find a bar you like, FanFinder uses Googlemaps technology to give you directions, so you won't miss the opening tip-off. When you find a bar that suits your needs, you can send out all of that bar's information to your friends via email.

"This is something you could only find through word of mouth before," said SportsFanLive.com founder and CEO David Katz.

Katz and his crew have spent more than half a year accumulating specific sports bar listings for every team in the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA as well as NCAA football and basketball.

Luckily for us sports fans, this app is free thanks to a full sponsorship by Panasonic. Katz believes his is the only iPhone sports application to launch with a complete sponsorship.

"It's always more fun to watch a game at your 'home bar,' and now you can find that place much more easily," Katz said.

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