Sports fans have been waiting for this moment since Apple Sports launched in February 2024. The app finally adds customizable widgets, cutting out the open, refresh, scroll routine that has frustrated users for months. Not a tiny patch. A real shift in how we glance at live scores on our devices. Sports fans have been desperate for Apple to add widgets since day one, and now they are here across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The timing lands as the sports app market alone is worth $3.6 billion, with the average sports fan spending 50 minutes daily on sports apps. Late entry, sure, but with clear upside.
What makes these widgets actually useful?
Here is where Apple’s approach gets interesting. The new widgets let you build and customize breakouts for your home screen so you can see your team’s latest score or the next match without opening the app. Every widget updates with live scores, showcases a live game (if one’s on) and hurls you right into the Apple Sports app when tapped for deeper stats, lineups, and play by play. The whole thing shifts tracking from the "open and hunt" workflow to a passive, always-on glance. Look, tap, done.
Customization fits how fans actually follow sports. Widgets can be built in two different ways: by team or by league. My Teams highlights the clubs you care about across supported sports, while My Leagues shows all teams, scores, and upcoming matches in one place. You can have multiple widgets active on one device, so mixing both views is easy.
The sizing is deliberate. Widgets are available in two sizes, medium and large, each showing live scores, results, and upcoming fixtures. The medium tile fits up to six fixtures, the large fits 16. That suits casual followers who want a quick pulse, and the obsessives who track entire leagues. Each widget style focuses on a live game, if there is one, so the most urgent info sits up front.
Beyond widgets: Live Activities get smarter
Widgets are not the only headline. Apple Sports can now preset a Live Activity before it happens. Pick an upcoming match earlier in the day and it appears when games begin. This fixes the old pain point where you had to set them up during a game. Now you can schedule up to six days in advance.
The bigger story is consolidation. Apple Sports finally gains its own Live Activities support while the TV app loses it in iOS 18, which funnels tracking into the dedicated app. With iOS 18 and watchOS 11, scores will also be visible on Apple Watch thanks to the Smart Stack.
This is the classic Apple move, pull features into one place and extend them from your phone to your wrist. It leans on platform integration to build stickiness that rivals struggle to match.
How Apple stacks up against the competition
Let’s be honest, Apple is not first to this party. Rivals like ESPN, Yahoo Sports and The Athletic have provided widgets and powerful alerting for years. Apple’s angle is polish, consistent typography, careful battery use, and privacy defaults that feel native to your device. Details matter, especially when 52% of users find app widgets valuable for quick information access.
Here is the tradeoff. ESPN and Yahoo Sports go deeper with stats, social, and fantasy tools. Apple keeps it tight and platform native. Widgets that work with iOS instead of fighting it. Smooth animations, reliable updates, and a look that belongs on the home screen rather than feeling bolted on.
Apple is betting that execution quality and ecosystem fit can offset missing depth. Will casual fans switch for a cleaner, faster glance, or will diehards stick to their stat-heavy homes? My hunch, many will run both for a while and see which one they tap first.
What’s still missing and where Apple goes next
There are gaps. There isn’t a dedicated CarPlay widget in this release, and Apple has not announced new Apple Watch specific complications for Apple Sports. The update doesn’t bring these widgets to CarPlay either, a miss for fans on the move.
The focus is clearly global reach. The app has been released in eight more countries in Europe, including Austria, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, with support for additional leagues like Ligue 2, Segunda División, Serie B, Primeira Liga, and 2. Bundesliga. That reads like market building before platform extras.
Zooming out, Apple is stitching together a broader sports ecosystem. It already emphasized live sports with Apple TV through MLS Season Pass and Friday Night Baseball, not to mention game recaps and analysis within Apple News in multiple regions. Research shows that effective widgets contribute to increased visibility of the app, which drives regular interactions and reinforces utility. Exactly what you want while competing in a crowded market.
The bottom line: widgets that actually matter
If you live and die by the score, Apple Sports’ new widgets and schedulable Live Activities turn your device into an at a glance buddy on game day. The update requires iOS 17.2 and later, which includes iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, plus an update to the Apple Sports app itself. This is not just catch up, it is Apple leaning on platform strengths to deliver a seamless, native feel.
The real test is market share. With app retention rates averaging just 25% on Day 1 and dropping to 4% after 30 days, the widgets and Live Activities aim at the right problem, keeping fans engaged through passive, always visible touchpoints instead of constant app launches.
PRO TIP: To get started with the new widgets, long press on your iPhone or iPad home screen, tap Edit and then Add Widget, and look for Apple Sports in the list. You’ll want to make sure you have the latest version of the app installed first.
For now, Apple Sports finally feels complete, a product that leans into Apple’s strengths rather than chasing feature checklists. The widgets work as advertised, Live Activities fit neatly across devices, and the experience is polished in that unmistakable Apple way. Whether that is enough to pull fans from ESPN or Yahoo Sports comes down to how much you value ecosystem integration over raw depth. As a foundation for Apple’s sports content push, it is a smart one.
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