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Standard Mobile Device Breaks Broadcast Barrier

Nov 3, 2025 | Sport

Our Take

In an August 2010 meeting on Sand Hill Road, tech investor Roger McNamee pulled out his iPhone 4 to demonstrate to the Attention Span founding team just how far ahead of the competition MLB was. The league had been setting the pace in digital sports since 2002, when it streamed the first live pro sports event (Yankees-Rangers). Though it sold its streaming division, BAMTech, to Disney in 2017, Major League Baseball is still finding ways to reach firsts before its slower-footed rival leagues.

Source Summary

In 2015’s Future of Sports 1.0 report, we predicted that sports fans would end up watching more game action captured on mobile devices than on traditional broadcast cameras. Last month Major League Baseball stole a cell signal from its fans and used four iPhone Pro 17s in a live Friday Night Baseball broadcast from the Boston’s playoff-clinching 4-3 win over the Tigers at Fenway Park.

After two weeks of in-stadium testing, the Apple TV+ production team stashed two of the iPhones in places bulky broadcast rigs can’t go: clamped high on a foul pole and peeking out from inside the Green Monster scoreboard. In the production booth, producers used the Blackmagic Camera app (available for download on the Apple App Store) to splice iPhone footage into the broadcast.

READ MORE: Those phones are being treated just like any other camera’ – Inside Apple’s first Friday Night Baseball broadcast shot on iPhone 17 Pro

[Techradar]

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