- Apple continues to fill its Sports tracking app with new sports
- Tennis is the latest entry
- Apple is also adding more customization and granularity
Apple just hit a smashing overhand, adding Tennis to its iPhone-only Sports app just in time for the sport’s biggest competition: Wimbledon.
After launching in 2024 with the NBA, NHL, MLS, NCAA basketball, and NCAA football, Apple Sports quickly added the MLB and has since expanded to include the NFL, racing, and other leagues. Tennis, though, was a notable gap.
The sport arrives today and is now part of the free app, which is available in the US, UK, and Canada. As with other sports, game coverage will include live point-by-point coverage but not play-by-play. So don’t expect line calls in the coverage.
One of the reasons people like me like Apple Sports is that it lives up to its real-time promise, offering, in baseball, for instance, almost instant updates about runners and the score. Tennis is, perhaps, an even faster-moving game.
In a release about the update, Apple is promising, “live scores delivered incredibly fast.” We’ll see.
Apple Sports will, though, let fans track all matches that occur after the qualifiers. So it won’t be just the top match at any given time, Apple Sports will cover all Wimbledon matches. The Tennis coverage will offer custom Sports Cards backgrounds for each match, featuring the grass or clay used in each tournament’s courts (Wimbledon uses grass).
Tennis will also benefit from some other app-wide updates, including a refined home screen that now lets you customize the organization by league.
That’ll come in handy even if you’re not a tennis fan, too. Speaking of which, I’m especially excited about the small update coming to MLB coverage in Live Activities, which will now display the active pitcher and batter details below the score.
This has been a notable gap in Sports’ baseball coverage. It’s one of the chief reasons that, while I love Sports Live Activities, which can even appear on your lock screen, I’ve often had to switch to the MLB.com page for details about who’s at bat.
Tennis elbowed
With two weeks (June 30 to July 13) and dozens of matches, Wimbledon will provide a rich test for the Sports platform. You can’t follow individual players, which may make the whole affair feel a little chaotic. Hopefully, Sports will eventually let you do that so you can quickly switch to a match for your “favorite” player.
Sports is still keeping the focus tight on actual league sports events and not yet covering things such as the upcoming MLB All-Star Game (July 15) or the NBA draft (June 25). In a way, this helps keep the app clean and efficient, but it also means that Sports is missing out on key moments in each sports league experience.
Additionally, while Apple Sports is available on the iPhone and visible as Live Activities on Apple Watch, there is no word on plans to bring it to the iPad…yet.
Are you a sports fan or, more specifically, a Wimbledon fan? Let us know what you think of this latest update and why you do or don’t use the app in your comments below.
