Background
Apple originally released their Sports app back in February of 2024 after it had been rumored a bit, but there was no real enthusiasm behind it. Safe to say this app came out to a rather…confused audience. Nobody was really sure why the app was created; it kinda took some stuff out of the News and TV apps, but also not really. A ton of different sports content is still separated out into the News app with no link in the Sports app to get to it. On the other hand, there’s a link out to the TV app if you decide you want to watch the game. It seemed like it was doing something but not enough.
People also were confused by the fact that there were a lot of major sports that weren’t supported in the app (namely Baseball, Football, and some Women’s sports like soccer and basketball). It’s be important to note that these sports weren’t in season, and they have all been added over time as the seasons have started.
The overall idea behind the app was super simple: you have a list of games that happened yesterday, a list that’s happening today, and a list of upcoming games (for the week ahead). The premise is you can choose to follow a team or a league and all of the games will populate these lists for your viewing pleasure. When you click into this list, the app will show more data like simple betting odds, play-by-plays, some game stats, and league standings. It’s honestly super basic, but it works well.
What’s New
Well…not much. Football has now been added, which is nice as we start to get into that season. It adds support for both NCAA Football and the NFL so you can follow your favorite college teams as well as your favorite pro teams. On top of that it also looks like there might be some tweaks to the designs of the Live Activities to make them a little nicer. Additionally (as I just now realized), the Live Activities seem to be handled by the Sports app now, they were previously only handled by the TV app if I’m understanding correctly.
My Takes
Apple’s been getting into a rhythm of releasing super basic apps and then abandoning them (I’m looking at you, Clips). The Journal app has seen some nice updates, but it’s still not available on iPad or Mac, which is frustrating. Journal was also ignored from the time it launched basically right up to WWDC which concerned some people who were eager to use the app when it was announced. The Sports app has kinda been the same way, it largely hasn’t been talked about since it was released, which really isn’t a good look. Granted, there are other apps that Apple seemingly ignores like the Books and News apps (which are seeing a round of layoffs from Apple) and they seem to be fine (they’re not, they’ve also been neglected for a while) so maybe it’ll work out for the Sports app (I’m not hopeful). Overall Apple really needs to commit to these apps if they’re going to make them. If they don’t put in the effort they aren’t going to get the adoption rates that they need to keep going and the app gets shut down, which I wouldn’t want.
Apple also really dropped the ball on the Olympics, it would have been great to be in there too. I don’t know what happened there.
Overall I actually really like this app and I want to see it do well. I don’t know if you can tell from this post, but I would not consider myself a “sports person,” but I do like to follow sports. This app really made it easy for me to keep tabs on my local teams without actually having to actively search for the information I needed. It helped me keep up with scores and standings and, combined with some corruption from my friends, I find myself regularly discussing sports with them and the people around me.
I don’t know if there’s much I would really do differently, however. Honestly I think it makes sense to keep most of the news content in the News app, but I would also probably do what Apple does with the Stocks and now Weather apps and throw a few different articles into the Sports app as well wherever relevant. I don’t see the app being a replacement for the Sports tab in the News app like some people think it should be since there really isn’t a precedent for that in either Stocks or Weather. They could go down the minefield that is sports betting since they have some of the odds in the app already, but I highly doubt Apple would deal with betting directly in their own apps. The odds that they put up aren’t really useful for much more than seeing who people think will win, so they would really have to beef up that part of the app if they were serious about betting. Ultimately I don’t think it’s supposed to really be that exciting of an app. It does what it’s supposed to do, and it does it rather well. It looks good and gets the job done, and that’s all I can really ask for.
What do you all think of the app? Are you glad it’s actually getting some attention? Do you think that it should be more integrated with the News app? Let me know on Mastodon or on Threads.
