Apple Aims to Use Tennis to Showcase the Apple Sports App's Presence

Apple is adding a few new capabilities to the Apple Sports app that it hopes will convince you to actually download the thing. Its biggest item on the list of additions: tennis. For the first time, Apple Sports will now be able to track and relay tennis scores in real time. In Apple’s own words: “Tennis fans can access live scores for Grand Slam and 1000-level tournaments, and can track every point across all men’s and women’s singles matches, beginning with Wimbledon.”

No disrespect—I’m not a huge fan of tennis even though I’ve been to the U.S. Open before—but it’s a little too rich (literally dollar-wise) for my taste. That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people out there who are big tennis fans, though, so maybe a little dose of Wimbledon will go a long way. If tennis isn’t enough for you, Apple is also introducing some quality-of-life features, like the ability to choose which teams show first in the home section of the app. “Favorite teams always appear at the top, giving fans instant access to the scores and updates they care about the most,” says Apple in a statement. That’s not really a game-changer, but it’s better than having to sort through a bunch of games and leagues you don’t really care about just to confirm your precious Buffalo Bills are losing to the Chiefs in the AFC championship once again.

As usual, you’ll be able to track your scores—including the newly added tennis matches—through Live Activities if you so choose, which means you get real-time updates on your iPhone’s lock screen. There’s still no widget for Apple Sports yet, though, but Apple said in a briefing with press that it’s always thinking of new ways to spruce up the app and stopped short of ruling widgets out completely. If you’re reading this and wondering, what the hell is the Apple Sports app? Or maybe you knew about the app but have entirely forgotten its existence, I wouldn’t blame you. Apple Sports was introduced as a standalone app last year, and has somewhat silently chugged along since then, adding football scores and live activities last August.

To be honest, the purpose of an Apple Sports app kind of confuses me. I get that modern-day Apple is as much a software-as-a-service company as it is the maker of the iPhone, and funneling iPhone users towards streaming services like Apple TV+ could be a big win, but sports are often an unwieldy beast—or at least the ones that are worth streaming on your platform are, for example, the NFL. For now, Apple is relying on relatively minor leagues like the MLS and only some MLB games to convince sports fans to subscribe to Apple TV+, which ain’t nothing, but also aren’t exactly the most-watched sporting events in the U.S. If Apple Sports is going to fulfill its mission as a conduit to streaming sports, Apple has a lot of work cut out for it in the licensing department, and unfortunately Google and YouTube already seem to have the NFL in their corner. But hey, my tastes aside, I guess playing ball (tennis in this case) isn’t a bad start.