Originally published at: Apple Launches iPhone Sports App - TidBITS
Apple has released a free Apple Sports app for the iPhone with schedules, scores, and standings for a handful of professional and college sports. It’s only available the in US, UK, and Canada, and shows betting odds by default.
Too bad the sports coverage is limited to a handful of sports. There are many other sports that deserve coverage and for which fans will not find the new app useful.
Excellent! Hopefully, they’ll continue to develop it and add more sports as they do.
Wait! No NFL? That seems a major omission – or is it just because the season is over?
Right in the App Store listing it says, “Additional leagues will become available soon, including MLB, NFL, NCAAF, NWSL, and WNBA for their upcoming seasons.”
Personally I have a few different sports apps that I use for different reasons. TheScore has the best layout of scores in many leagues; SportsAlerts is best for up-to-the-minute notification alerts when scores change and periods start and end, and the best Apple Watch app for checking scores; BBC Sports is even better for Premier League score, card, and substitution alerts. I’ll check this one out just to see if it does any of those things better.
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Launched in the UK with only Premiership football, what a joke.
It needs all 4 football leagues, rugby and cricket as a minimum to be useful.
It pulled in 1 out of a dozen teams from apple news+ because of the limited scope.
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There are no notifications yet of items like changes in score, changes in personnel, start and end of games, etc., so it won’t replace other apps that do that for me.
The lack of support for Champion’s League, Europa League and Europa Conference League, FA Cup, and the League Cup, in addition to no support for lower leagues than the Premiership, means that “upcoming” for a team like Liverpool or Chelsea, playing Sunday in the League Cup final, is incomplete, plus no listing for yesterday’s Porto v Arsenal match, if you had Arsenal listed as a favorite.
The score view is fine, but NHL games they don’t have the normal box score of scoring plays and penalties by period, and instead have a dense play-by-play view that shows way too much info. The same goes for the game view of a football/soccer game - no quick list of goals, substitutions, and cards, though a dense reverse-sorted play-by-play.
So I think it’s a good start, but it has a way to go.
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They have place holders for the NWSL, the WNBA, and MLB in the app, but nothing for the NFL.
My guess is that Apple is probably negotiating a deal with the NFL as well as deals with other sports leagues in the US and abroad. And my guess is that cutting some deals could really help Vision Pro sales among sports fans. It could be really profitable for Apple as well as for the teams.
There’s an interesting article here:
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When I watch an SF Giants game, I always time-shift so that I can skip the ads. So this isn’t useful to me. Personally, the score isn’t why I’m interested in watching games anyway. I like watching the plays and listening to the Giants’ announcers, who are some of the best in the business.
Actually there are more than 4 leagues in the UK as all 4 nations have leagues - as well as playing on the international stage as discrete countries. Same applies to Rugby, hockey et al.
England is not the UK.
f
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It seems to be leaving notifications to Apple News.
Apple News has no notifications for scores or activity in live games.
I didn’t say it was complete in News either. But incomplete is different than “no notifications” at all.
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I am receiving notifications for teams that I have marked as favorites.
Since there are no notifications, I completely forgot about Cornell’s basketball games on Friday and Saturday, but when I remembered today and went to see what the scores were, I realized that if you don’t check the Sports app at least every other day, it’s worthless for sports scores since it shows only games that happened today and yesterday. That feels unnecessarily limiting.
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I tried to download it from apps store but it wants assistive touch open but then what do I do?
Unless something has changed since yesterday, I am not.
Settings / Sports - there isn’t even an option for Notifications. There is no notification or alert setting within the app. And honestly I don’t even get notifications for my favorite teams in the news app.
Are you sure that it’s coming from the Sports app and not from the TV app? I know that the TV app gives notifications when televised sporting events are about to start (not helpful for Adam’s interest in Cornell’s basketball team if the game is not televised), but not scoring plays, not when the next quarter or period is about to start after halftime/intermission, not pitching changes, not penalties and power plays in hockey, not substitutions in soccer/football. These are the notifications that I now get from other apps, so this app cannot replace those apps.
The app looks to have not been tested on many devices–these screen shots of a score, and a box score, are from my iPhone 13 Pro.
Ellipses? Box scores with players’ names initials, and the starting players’ not having their FG attempts quantified?
What an embarrassment.
I think the app is essentially a controller for the Apple TV app to serve gamblers. It launches quickly, and live games have a button to click to start streaming and see if your wager came through.
There are a lot of good apps out there for those seeking useful and legible information.
When I first read Apple is launching a sports app I thought it’s going to be the Apple version of Strava or MapMyRide with connectivity to heart rate monitors, cycling computer etc.
Something that has to do with fitness… with me, as a user, being involved in sports activity.
Alas… turns out this app is for the kind of sports couch potatoes play.
Enjoy. Not for me. As far as I’m concerned this is a waste of Apple developers’ time which could have been used to develop something more useful.
I’ll keep using 3rd party apps for what I consider sport to be, and leave this sorry app for the gamblers and die-hard fans.
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Because, we do not have enough sports in our lives? 