This week, fans of the Washington Wizards and Capitals who stream their games on the Monumental Sports app were given new features to play, in an effort to enhance their broadcast experience.

What’s called “Play Anywhere” is available to fans who might watch the games through the Monumental Sports app on their phones or tablets, and it gives serious sports fans more control over certain aspects of a game that before was always in the hands of the broadcast crew doing the game.

“One of them is going to provide you real-time data analytics on what’s happening during the actual game itself,” said Zach Leonsis, president of new media and enterprises at Monumental Sports. “Another one is going to give you box scores and more player specific data. And then lastly, there’s an opt-in experience, if you’re interested in placing a bet in real time on what’s happening during the game. If you’re not interested in betting, you can still enjoy the interactivity with the data, or you can play along with some trivia, just for fun.”

It’s a far cry from the days when you had to watch for a score crawl on the bottom of the screen or hope the play-by-play announcers would clue you into trends or scoring leaders.

“When you watch linear television, there’s a producer who’s directing a show and saying, implicitly, ‘this is what we’re going to show you on your broadcast experience,’” Leonsis said. “And when you watch digitally, you know just based on the function of a touch screen on your iPhone or your Android device, you should be able to interact with your experience. You should be able to choose your own adventure.”

The in-game analytics, which dominates so much sports discussion now, doesn’t include the really advanced data. Instead, it’s more like how much time a player’s shift on the ice has been yet.

“One of the most interesting things and compelling things to me as a fan about this service is, there are a lot of things I want to know, or occur to me to know throughout a game,” said Chris Thorman, SVP of digital media with Monumental. “Whether I want to check this player’s stats, who’s the leader in this division, different things like that. Either, I’m kind of popping off of a different app or going to a webpage. This is really bringing a lot of that on screen.”

There’s also a belief it could bring more fans of the Capitals and Wizards together in ways that you usually only see on sports message boards.

Currently, the only other U.S. sports network that offers a similar experience is the one that televises the games of the NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights. No other NBA team offers this opt-in experience.

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