What This App Is Trying to Be
Olympics: Live Sports & News is the official IOC companion app for following the Olympic and Paralympic Games, plus qualifying events leading up to them. It combines schedules, results, live streams of qualifiers, news articles, and podcasts into one place, with the ability to follow specific sports, teams, and athletes for a customized feed. It’s aimed at anyone who wants a single hub for Olympic content rather than jumping between broadcaster sites and social media.
Where It Actually Delivers
When it works, users genuinely like it. One reviewer called it ‘frickin amazing’ for letting them search past climbing events, pull up replays, and cast them to a TV, saying the app finally worked the way they’d hoped for years. Another praised the schedule tools specifically, noting you can filter by medal events, specific sports, or a specific country, which makes it much easier to keep track of a packed Games calendar without wading through every event. The ability to follow favorite athletes and sports for a tailored feed is a real strength when the underlying data is accurate.
Spoilers and Missing Settings
The most common substantive complaint is that the schedule shows results of completed events right alongside upcoming ones, with no easy way to hide them. One reviewer called this the ‘biggest issue,’ explaining they wanted to view the schedule without having outcomes spoiled before they could watch a replay. Notably, another review says this can be fixed via the ‘Filters’ option in the schedule to hide results, suggesting the setting exists but isn’t obvious or consistently surfaced to everyone, which is its own usability problem.
Reliability Issues That Lock People Out
A recurring and more serious problem is the app simply failing to load. Multiple reviewers describe a ‘connection is lost’ error that persists through repeated uninstalls, reinstalls, and phone restarts, effectively locking them out of the app entirely despite the developer claiming fixes were shipped. Others report the schedule vanishing entirely in dark mode, though in at least one case this was resolved within 24 hours after being reported. There’s also a complaint about being logged in yet still hitting a paywall-style prompt after a few paragraphs of an article, asking to sign up again with membership credentials.
An App That Tries to Do Too Much
One heavily-upvoted review sums up a broader design complaint: the app tries to do everything – news, podcasts, streaming, schedules, results – and as a result makes it harder to do the one basic thing most people want, which is finding your sport, checking the schedule, and getting results once they’re final. For a simpler use case, that scattergun approach can feel like friction rather than convenience.
Who Should Download This
If you want deep, multi-sport Olympic coverage with filterable schedules, athlete-following, and replay casting to your TV, this app can genuinely deliver that experience when it’s running well. But go in aware that connection errors, inconsistent dark mode behavior, and spoiler-heavy schedules have frustrated a meaningful chunk of users. It’s worth downloading ahead of the Games, but don’t be surprised if you need to dig into the Filters menu or troubleshoot a login hiccup or two.
