The Bachelor Fantasy League updates in real time, right along with the action in the episode, allowing you to keep track of your score while you watch the show. (Screenshot for Apple App Store)
For many, “The Bachelor” is just as much a national phenomenon as football. And, with the Super Bowl over and done with, we’ve officially reached the height of Bachelor Season. And, just like there is Fantasy Football, there is a Bachelor Fantasy League. With a growing fanbase, Bachelor Nation needed something to concentrate our excitement on. While the official Bachelor Fantasy League is run by ABC and can be found online, there are multiple apps that offer the same service.
Monday night, before settling in for my weekly fix of “The Bachelor”, I downloaded one of these apps: The Bachelor Fantasy League by Onkore [free on the app store]. The app store describes it as an opportunity to prove how well you know “The Bachelor” by choosing “your team of Sweethearts and Trainwrecks” and predicting what will happen during the show. Essentially you enter tournaments by contributing some of your game-supplied “oKoins” to the pot and making your predictions for a series of questions that will be answered during the show. Each question is worth a certain number of points and whoever in the tournament has the most points at the end of the show wins the pot of oKoins that can be traded in for rewards, such as gift cards, merchandise or backstage VIP access. There’s also a feature where you can start your own tournament amongst friends.
I was very excited for this; I’d already basically been doing the same thing when I watched the show with friends- guessing how many girls would cry that night, etc- so this would just be an extension of that. The app was pretty easy to navigate, with four main menu options. At first, I didn’t understand what the different tournaments were and was wary about spending real money in app, but the game automatically provides you with 500 oKoins to start with. I invited a couple of my own friends to have our own tournament, which involved predicting the Party Animal of the episode, points being determined by their dancing/singing, appearing visibly drunk or getting a body part blurred out for nudity. The app provides you with a menu to scroll through the girls’ photos to choose your prediction, a feature which I found nice because, especially in the beginning of the season, it can be difficult to keep track of individual names. We also were asked to predict Trainwreck, Sweetheart, and Backstabber of the week.
The other questions were very episode-specific, referring to things that happened last week or that would be happening this week, such as Taylor’s talk with Nick or who would be the first to pick a fight with Corinne after Taylor left. Some questions appeared to be submitted by game players, but it was unclear if that was a feature available through the app or online somewhere. Again, each answer choice had a corresponding point value. If you picked the most dramatic choice (for example, more than one girl will go in a hot tub with Nick) and that event occurs, you get the highest point value, which is typically 500. The app updates in real time, right along with the action in the episode, allowing you to keep track of your score while you watch the show. There was a scoring feature, which put all the girls names in a column along the side and allowed you to see how they scored in each individual category. For the last episode, Danielle L, Alexis, Jaimi, Jasmine, and Whitney all tied for Trainwreck of the week with 800 points for both crying and being eliminated. It allowed you to essentially keep stats on all the going-ons of the episode.
While I lost the personal tournament I was involved in, I still really enjoyed the app. It was entertaining, to say the least, and funny. I also liked how updated it was. There were no old contestants on the list and everything went right along with the show. It’s definitely a fun way to get involved with the show, and there are the added incentives of prizes if you are serious about it. Not to mention that it’s a great way to get connected with other members of Bachelor Nation, including former contestants who host tournaments. It’s a great supplement to “The Bachelor” viewing experience, especially since we didn’t see the return of “After the Final Rose” on ABC this season. I’d definitely recommend it to other Bachelor fans. This type of game also opens up a whole world of possibility. Hopefully we see these Fantasy Leagues being applied to “The Bachelorette” and even “Bachelor in Paradise” in the near future!
Julia Mancini is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. She can be reached via email at Julia.mancini@uconn.edu.
