AppleInsider Staff
With the teams for NCAA March Madness now set to take the court, a new ACC Sports channel, representing one of the top basketball conferences in the country, has launched on the Apple TV.
The new ACC Sports icon appeared on users' Apple TV home screens Monday morning, offering game highlights and feature programming. ACC Sports is the latest content option to launch on the Apple TV, as Apple has been continuously adding new channels to its streaming set-top box.
As of Monday, featured content on the ACC Sports app includes game highlights, "Inside: The ACC," and "ACC Now." The application features access to "Campus Insiders," a digital college sports network, as well as the ability to view "Most Recent" content, and a "Search" pane.
Content can also be viewed based on schools in the conference, while a list of "Must See Moments" from the ACC are also available through the application.
The ACC has said that throughout March Madness, host Jeff Fischel and former ACC basketball greats Drew Barry and JR Reid will follow the conference's teams as they advance through the tournament. Content will include game previews, analysis, and a "Road to Texas" feature series.
"We are pleased to announce this partnership that will allow our fans access to the ACC Digital Network on their Apple TV," ACC Commissioner John Swofford said. "We have seen terrific success in fans enjoying the ACC Digital Network, and bringing this content to Apple TV is an exciting next step."
With so many new content additions now available on Apple TV, Apple has taken steps to make it easier for users to hide unwanted channels from the device. Starting with the version 6.1 software update earlier this month, Apple made it so that users could quickly hide icons from the Apple TV home screen using their remote.
Users must simply hold the select button, which will cause the icons on the screen to jiggle. Once it's been activated, users can press the play/pause button on their remote to bring up a menu that allows users to hide the icon. After a channel has been hidden, users can reactivate it through the Settings application.
Other recent additions to Apple TV include the WWE Network, TV4, and Red Bull TV. As content options have grown, so have Apple TV sales, topping $1 billion last year, making it Apple's fastest growing product.
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5 Comments
What brilliant timing to bring this to Apple TV at the end of the regular season and conference tournament.
What brilliant timing to bring this to Apple TV at the end of the regular season and conference tournament.
I doubt that the ACC had any ability to get their Basketball games streamed on this channel. My guess is they want to they want to get this up for gauging their target market penetration of AppleTV/iOS users, and push out [inter]national exposure of their non-revenue sports (those where exclusive distribution isn't in the current contract). NCAAs are a great start, in that the ACC has no contracts in conflict (NCAA 'owns' the tournament rights), so setting up their 'highlight/discussion' channel on AppleTV gets them direct access to the eyeballs.
It will be a few years before FB and BBall are streaming live... however, this is the first step. Worst case scenario... this is a leverage tactic to get more revenue from their cable/ESPN/network/FoxSportsSouth/etc partners (spend a couple million to get 20-30Million... good leverage). Best case... they develop a working model that provides a transition to live streaming and playback.
I wasn't expecting to see any games on the channel, just highlight reels and talking heads and feel-good student-athlete bio pieces. But they could have been doing that all season long with plenty of highlights for all fifteen teams. Instead, the season is over for ten of the teams, and it is winding down for the five teams that are in the NCAA tournament.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaawn
Now that the formula 1 season has started can we expect this to be added soon? This is definitely content I would be willing to pay for. Also whatever happened to the CW coming to Apple TV? And why doesn't Apple just buy Aereo to get some useful content or do you think they're just waiting for the Supreme Court to make their ruling first?