Apple has made its debut in the sports industry with the release of Apple Sports, the company’s first sports app.
Real-time score updates, key information, and live betting odds are provided by the free Apple Sports app for iPhone users.
Several leagues’ live data will be available to consumers upon debut, including the NBA, NHL, and MLS.
Over time, more leagues will be added, such as the MLB and NFL.
In anticipation of March Madness, the app is launching with real-time statistics for the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.
Apple senior vice president of services Eddy Cue, who oversaw the app’s development and was personally involved in its design, stated, “We created Apple Sports to give sports fans what they want—an app that delivers incredibly fast access to scores and stats.”
Apple TV+ is a streaming service that the company has recently partnered with several sports leagues, including the MLB and MLS, to stream games. A major competitor in the technology and streaming space, Amazon, will now only broadcast “Thursday Night Football” and one NFL game on Black Friday.
Apple Sports can notify users of the location of a game, but it won’t stream games directly within the app; instead, it will send users to the appropriate app to watch the action.
To grow a paying customer base for their streaming services, tech and media corporations are paying more attention to sports rights. According to Nielsen, the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl broke attendance records in recent months, while NBCUniversal’s exclusive Peacock broadcast of a wild card game resulted in the largest single day of streaming ever.
The app, which will launch without advertising, is Apple’s latest venture into the multibillion-dollar sports industry, where tech companies have recently entered to compete with established media companies that have long held lucrative broadcast rights.
Additionally, it poses a threat to the long-dominant mobile sports app market, which is dominated by ESPN and other companies’ advertising-supported apps.
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