First Pitch
A lockout-aware MLB schedule companion that rebooks your calendar the moment dates shift, surfaces ticket drops, and tells you which games actually move your team's playoff needle.
MLB fans, especially Dodgers supporters, who plan around the 162-game calendar and travel to games
- Lockout-aware reschedule engine that re-syncs your calendar, tickets, and travel the second MLB confirms new dates
- Playoff-pathing score per game so fans see which matchups actually swing their team's postseason odds
- One-tap sync to Google/Apple calendars with TV and streaming channel assignments (Netflix opening night, Apple TV+, ESPN)
- Stadium-arrival helper with transit, gate-entry time, weather, and away-game travel notes
MLB just announced its earliest-ever March 24 Opening Day for 2027 on a single Netflix game, but the December labor-contract expiry makes a lockout more likely than not — fans need a schedule that adapts without losing their ticket reservations
MLB fans clearly engage deeply with mobile apps — official MLB At Bat has 871K ratings at 4.7 stars and is #10 in Sports, showing large installed base; however, this niche (Dodgers-only, lockout-aware calendar companion) carves out a thin slice of that audience.MLB App - App Store for iPhone ↗
The official MLB app already covers schedule viewing, ticket purchasing, live activities, and team customization — leaving only narrow whitespace for calendar rebooking, price-drop alerts, and playoff-implication math, all features MLB could trivially bolt on.MLB App - App Store for iPhone ↗
MLB fans do pay (MLB.TV ~$150/yr subs noted in app description), but converting them to a second subscription for a team-specific scheduling tool is a hard sell against the free, Editors' Choice official MLB app.MLB App - App Store for iPhone ↗
A lockout is a tail risk for the entire product category — if labor talks fail, the schedule disappears and so does the app's reason to exist; if talks succeed, schedule-shift handling is rarely needed and the tool loses most of its unique value beyond season one.
Calendar sync via Google/Apple APIs is well-trodden; ticket-price monitoring requires scraping or partner integrations with StubHub/SeatGeek (notoriously ToS-sensitive); playoff-odds calculation is a solved analytics problem.