Apple Sports 4+

This is an excellent app, free from the intrusive ads seen on ESPN’s app. It’s simple, straight forward, and allows the users to select which sports, leagues (if applicable), and teams they want to follow for regular score updates. For this to be a successful app and to further enhance the user experience, Apple should consider adding the following two features:
1. Broadcast information
The ability to know what network the game is being broadcast on would allow users to know if they can watch the game in their area while keeping track of other scores of happening simultaneously.
2. Full season schedules
Currently, this app only shows the upcoming games for the current week and not the entire schedule for that sport. It would be very beneficial to to provide the user the ability to view the entire schedule for each sport’s current and upcoming season (if upcoming season is available). For example, ESPN’s app offers a week-by-week breakdown of the college football schedule with for the entire season, allowing users to see who’s playing in any given week. Having access to the full schedule would definitely increase the amount of users wanting to use this app.

I’ve been using this app everyday to regularly keep up with my favorite teams and leagues. Initially I realized that there was leagues missing from the app. For instance at the time I started using it I was unable to follow teams or games from the NFL. Now I can follow the NFL but other leagues and associations are still missing notably the UEFA champions league or UFC and MMA. With the teams and info that is available , the app works really well in organizing it in a modern interface allowing to choose to have the home page be organized by the teams or leagues you follow. I do wish that the upcoming games tab is easier to see your teams schedule. If you follow more than one team and you attempt to look at their upcoming schedule it will stack the games kind of like how they stack notifications in notifications center. If you don’t click on the team you wouldn’t realize that your other team necessarily played that day. The app displays odds for betting and what not but they don’t actually show what networks or apps to go to to watch these games . You would have to go to the Apple TV app to then see what networks are hosting the game. I also would like to see them just incorporated into the sports app directly.

Apple Sports is pretty darn good. Right around the time the NBA Playoffs kicked in this became my goto app for keeping up with games. It’s certainly a better experience than ad-ridden alternatives. Everything is uncluttered and to the point.

There is obviously room for improvement though. For one, there are times when the “upcoming” section is fairly inaccurate. For example, the NBA semi-finals are just about to start but it’s showing wins and losses for a series that hasn’t even started as 4-2, instead of 0-0, as if already complete. Or it will show game dates or matches that are inaccurate. Hopefully these issues are just growing pangs.

Also, while this isn’t really a criticism but rather a wish. I’d like to see deeper team and player stats. Game stats are great, that’s what we’re here for, but it seems like the next logical step would be to provide stats for at least the season for individual players and teams. Right now you can see game stats, play-by-plays and even betting odds but we can’t click a player’s name in the “Box Scores” to see how this game compares to their season averages or game to game? Or even a team’s season stats? Seems odd to have to leave the app to go find that info elsewhere. Early days though.