Apple is becoming increasingly interested in the sports business. After TV deals with US baseball leagues and local top football, the iPhone manufacturer has now released a free new app just for this topic. Apple Sports is intended to provide fans with statistics and all sorts of data including game comments – probably also to promote their own content offerings in the area. “We built Apple Sports to give sports fans what they want – an app that offers incredibly fast access to game results and statistics,” said the company’s head of services, Eddy Cue.
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Currently only in three markets
However, Apple limits availability. Apple Sports is initially only available in the US, Canada and the UK. However, it is also possible to access the application with an App Store account from these countries – but the question is whether you want to do that just for that reason. However, the available data is quite interesting.
During the season, information from the NBA, NCAA (basketball) and NHL (ice hockey) is available, and football includes MLS, LaLiga, Liga MX, Ligue 1, Serie A, Premier League and even the Bundesliga. At the start of each season, Apple plans to add more loungers, including MLB, NFL, NCAAF, NWSL and WNBA. So Apple covers baseball, basketball, football, ice hockey and soccer – including college and women’s sports.
Deep integration with other apps
According to Apple, Apple Sports is intended to provide viewers a simple and quick way to stay up to date on the teams and leagues that interest them. There are customizable scoreboards, upcoming games, play-by-play info, team stats and lineup details. The group also wants to offer live betting odds, but the latter can be turned off in the settings.
The new app is deeply integrated with the TV app, so you can switch straight to existing live games (which usually cost money). A comparison is also made with favorites from the TV app and Apple News (the latter only available in English-speaking countries). Apple Sports is currently not available in a version adapted to the iPad, and unfortunately the app does not run on the Mac either.
Apple is also planning new MLS rights it holds “Immersives” for the Vision Pro: These are intended to deliver the “best scenes” from the 2023 MLS Cup playoffs in 8K 3D with a 180-degree field of view and spatial audio.
(bsc)