Roger Fingas
Yahoo on Friday relased a new app for the Apple TV, Yahoo Sports, giving owners of the set-top another centralized option for watching sports videos, including some live streams.
The app includes content from the MLB, NHL, NBA, PGA, and various international soccer leagues, as well as some original coverage and analysis by Yahoo. When viewers launch the app, they begin by picking their favorite teams, which generates a playlist of highlights and news stories.
Users should have access to any of Yahoo's live game streams, such as the MLB Free Game of the Day.
The company is promising expanded content and features for the app as time goes on, though it hasn't teased what that might include.
The popularity of sports can make them important not just to the success of devices like the Apple TV, but to services catering to "cord cutters" who want to ditch cable and satellite packages. Accordingly, companies with a vested interest in those packages have been slow to allow live sports on mobile and set-top platforms. ESPN, for example, will only allow live streaming via authentication with a separate provider, and doesn't even have a tvOS streaming app.
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Andrew O'Hara
4 Comments
ATV4 only?
Can't wait to delete it!
Most of these apps on Apple TV are total junk. FXNOW makes you watch a preroll ad with every little 30 second clip you play. They also yanked most of the FX shows off the platform. Other big issues are having to enter a cable subscription login to authenticate the app. This only lasts a week or two at best, then you have to activate it again. If you have cable, it's not going to be worth the trouble to watch programs on Apple Tv. Will have to check if Yahoo is going to follow in these footsteps of overuse of ads just so you can watch a tiny clip?
The best find so far for cable cutters is CBSN, which is a 24 hour news network that CBS made just for streaming boxes like Apple TV. It's actually better than CNN which you have to have a cable login (every week or so) with. "Cable channels need to get onto Apple TV.!
Other good news is that RT.com finally has an Apple TV app - FREE!