Jason SnellJust posted on Six Colors: Apple Sports: A free iPhone app to get you the score, fast
https://sixcolors.com/post/2024/02/apple-sports-a-free-iphone-app-to-get-you-the-score-fast/
My first observation upon loading the app is that while it supports many European leagues, it doesn't support the Champions League, so it's telling me Arsenal is idle until Saturday when it actually plays today. Hmm.
If you ever wanted to know what kind of stranglehold the NFL has over American sports, I've already received four comments from people about how a scores app doesn't show NFL scores, less than two weeks after the NFL season finished and six months before it begins.
As my story says: NFL and NCAAF will be there, they're just not there now because their seasons just ended. There are no scores.
Still, if I were Eddy Cue I'd have told my team to let people add their NFL teams now so those fans could happily stare at the black void for six months…
Chris@jsnell Notifications is the one thing it appears to be missing over the app I currently use to do this. But then I wonder whether if reliable Live Activities might make those redundant
Kevin Patrick Doyle 🍅🥫@jsnell just sitting on their couches, waiting patiently
Vince Knight (He/Him)@jsnell A bit of a niche of course but a bit disappointing to not see any rugby tournaments there. The rugby six nations is happening at the moment and it's a pity they're not there.
I realise this could be replaced with any other [sport that does not have a certain threshold of international market share]...
Steve James@quirogaart Exactly my disappointed and rugby-shaped thoughts!
QuirogaArt
Mike Hoffman@jsnell And here I thought it was the EU demanding that there is only one Football.
Don Whiteside@jsnell I couldn’t care less about the NFL but I think that would be the better choice anyway. I don’t want to go through multiple setup rounds on stuff that doesn’t change often. Let me put in all my sports interests and let the damned computer worry about what is and isn’t timely.
The Devil’s Advocate@jsnell that’s kind of the point. I’ve never seen a sports app that wouldn’t let you sign up for notifications of a team in the off season. Apple has a high bar to climb here because people expect features to be there and this isn’t the only one. Clearly readers aren’t reading, which is par for the course for the internet, but we shouldn’t have to read an article to find that out.
@deviladv okay but that's not my problem as the writer of the article, that's Apple's problem
Matthew Cave ⚾@jsnell I get your point, but even if I don’t get scores NOW, I’m setting up the app NOW. I don’t want to continually have to check to see if they have added my league/team/sport.
Peter Christensen@jsnell I honestly don’t get the point of this if you can’t follow leagues/sports that are not in the mainstream, which already have great coverage. There’s no WPHL (huge hype here in Canada) or minor league hockey. Can’t follow EFL teams (Wrexham!). Big fat Meh from this sports fan. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@petergarner the point is that they're starting with the mainstream where the largest group of fans are
Craig Grannell@jsnell I’m awaiting people wondering why they can’t follow Wrexham AFC in the app! :D
d0mth0ma5@craiggrannell @jsnell to be fair there is no good reason that that couldn’t be there. Depth of leagues is a huge part of European sports.
@d0mth0ma5 @jsnell Indeed. Most people I know into footie who’ve looked at the app aren’t terribly impressed. And making the betting odds so prominent feels weird.
I assume Apple can build on this fairly rapidly, but who knows where it’s headed, and who it’s for? Right now, this feels like an app primarily for folks in the US. Well, apart from Wrexham fans, obvs.
@craiggrannell or more likely Richmond FC!
Scott Wright 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️@jsnell that is some next level hubris, expecting people to read the article before commenting.
(I’m not sure how to properly indicate irony, but if I did I would so indicate)
(I’m not sure how to properly indicate irony, but if I did I would so indicate)
wqoq@jsnell Was going to say the same thing about CFL, which I have set up in Apple News already, but then I realized NFL isn’t even listed, so I put two and two together. Still would be nice to see it to verify syncing is working, but I guess it doesn’t work that way. Oh well, gotta wait til June then. Thanks for posting about it!
Dale Gardner@jsnell Full disclosure — I also didn’t really read the article, but my assumption was the app would be more like the Stocks app, where you’d follow a team and get news. I followed a few of my baseball favorites — on seeing the void, I quickly figured out it’s just scores. Which is fine, but sort of seems like a missed opportunity. Perhaps they’re reserving the sporting news for the News+ app (which is its own little dumpster fire, but that’s another thread).
@drgardner that feature is already in the News app, actually. And syncs. This stuff is spread across News, TV, and Sports. Yeah it's a lot.
Leon Cowle@jsnell I would've been complaint number 5 then (directed at Apple, not you), until I got to your 2nd last paragraph, which was written just for me (and at least 4 others, it seems). :)
Nick Foster@jsnell my first observation is that it doesn’t support the NFL?? Is that just because their season just ended?
Kunzerrc@nickfoster @jsnell yeah, it says they’ll add support for NFL by the time the new season starts
@nickfoster as my story says, NFL scores will be in there by the time NFL scores exist which by my count is in six months?
@jsnell my bad, I missed that in the story. That’s on me!
Jason Nassi@jsnell My first observation was the lack of NFL (which you mentioned in your story). But second observation… iPhone app, but not a iPad app.
Matt Alexander@jsnell I downloaded and poked around for a moment. You really have to dig to see league standings, team-specific information, etc. In this form, I could see this being useful for multi-sport users to an extent, but, for football (soccer), I think I'll be sticking with a paid subscription to FotMob. Covers all leagues. Very quick. All the dynamic island/live activity niceties. Etc.
Lee Garrett@jsnell Being an ardent Tottenham supporter, and your bitter rival, this doesn't impact me at all as we aren't in the Champions League so I think the app is great. This season anyway……
Walt Mankowski
Don Cruse@jsnell Siri has always been great about telling me when a game is on (and even what channel it’s on, which is what I usually ask). So it’s a little surprising that an Apple-branded Sports app seems to be using a less complete database? Here’s Siri:
Jonathan Reed@jsnell Yeah, pretty limited with competitions. No leagues below the top tier in football, no cup games and no sports other than football outside of the US (no rugby? Cricket? Surely they’re popular enough?) and also very lacking with women’s sport. Only two. And only US.
A shame since the app is quite nice and quick to use.
A shame since the app is quite nice and quick to use.
@jonathanreed I guess if you're Apple your choices are -
launch a 1.0 the day MLS starts so you can get it out there, and then add later
not launch for a while longer as you add data sources
I get it but… this is just the start and they've committed to adding
@jsnell Fair enough. I guess it’s more from the perspective of a US user currently, even though it’s also available in the UK. Time will tell.
What’s your thoughts on the prominence of the betting in each game? I find it kind of gross but someone told me it’s often an important data point for sentiment in the game? Maybe that’s a more US thing too?
@jonathanreed betting is a huge component of sports these days, I'm just glad they let you turn it off. Wish that setting was more prominent.
@jsnell Oh! I didn’t know that. Very sneakily tucked away in the settings app.
Simon 🌻@jonathanreed @jsnell Yeah, no EFL at the minute.
Calum@jsnell And despite the UK being one of the launch countries, it doesn’t have even the top Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish leagues in it.
CasualRoses@jsnell first thing I noticed was how easy it is to change what teams you care about - I got the pop up in Apple TV years ago and never figured out how to change.
Thanks for the write up and post
Liam Gandelsman 
@jsnell the app is certainly better than loading the bloated ESPN app to get scores quickly (at least for US sports), but for soccer I’ll stick to FotMob.
Ravi 
@jsnell Obviously just a cultural difference, but it’s interest how you refer to Arsenal as it and the Champions League as a League 😊
@ravi league is in the name!
Sean@jsnell I wonder if they will eventually cover the EFL?
The best football score app i've found and have used for a number of years is FotMob