Found code hints secret Apple plan for sports entertainment

Ted Lasso scores

Apple is building a ‘SportsKit’ framework for iOS and tvOS, reports 9to5Mac. Little is known of what it will bring, but it seems to relate to the ability to receive real-time updates of sports matches.

Apple and sports entertainment

Apple has been showing interest in sport for some time. It has spoken with various sporting leagues in an attempt to bring sporting events to its platforms and last year hired the head of Amazon’s sports division. While we have no idea how well any of these efforts have gone, it does now seem that the company is laying the foundations for something more.

What little we know concerning SportsKit tells us it integrates with the Apple TV app, Siir and home screen widgets. Unlike HomeKit or HealthKit, Sportskit is a private API. 9to5Mac speculates this reflects the deals required to share this kind of data. Some sports bodies charge other entities to carry in-match scores.

How might it work?

Dave Mark has an idea of how this may work in practise:

“I can imagine a customizable dashboard, tracking all my favorite teams, with live scores and links to channels carrying the games, maybe even supporting picture-in-picture so I could flip between the tracked games and keep the scores and highlights on the screen,” he writes.

I do think this isn’t quite as profound a deployment as I’d hoped for. While scores are nice, I’ve always felt there would be much more value in developing more interactivity for sport. A football player might wear an Apple Watch enabling fans to monitor some key signs, or SportsKit might alert a user when their favorite player achieves something noteworthy.

What has Apple said?

Apple never discusses unreleased products. However, it does sometimes speak in broader strokes on a topic of interest, and years later the significance of those words falls into place.

Could we see the same this time?

Back in 2019, Apple’s services chief, Eddy Cue, talked a little on the topic. He talked about making key sporting moments more discoverable, and the need for highly personalized services to help you find what you most want to watch.

At that time, Apple had a dozen employees tracking sports from the Sports Ball Room. These are the editors who already send notifications of events. Cue also wanted to surface classic unseen sports moments and seemed really focused on celebrating those moments.

It seems possible SportsKit could relate to this.

Is this a new services opportunity?

If indeed that is the case, might Apple have a wider services vision for how it will deploy this?

While Apple News delivers news and reportage, Apple Sports+ could perhaps add classic and current video along with news, sport, and additional resources to connect sporting fans with sports teams and people. That’s a bit of a leap, of course, but it fits within the remit of what Cue seemed to be discussing then. And in an earlier interview in 2018, Cue shared a desire to augment sports content with interactive elements, notifications and games stats. Interesting stuff.

We’ll wait and see what transpires.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.