Sometimes you just need a quick update of the latest sports scores on your iPhone, and widgets are the best way to do that. Widgets simply sit on the home screen of your iPhone or iPad and display regularly updated information that you can quickly use without having to open the applications. There are plenty of great sports widgets for iPhone if you know where to look beyond the first-party offerings from teams, leagues, and even broadcast networks. Here are the applications that I consider to be the best. These applications support as many sports and leagues as possible while providing useful, easy-to-read widgets.
Sports Alerts
Photo credit: Justin Pot
Sports Alerts may be the most comprehensive sports widget available today. You can add widgets for dozens of different sports leagues around the world. The selection includes America's major professional and collegiate sports, as well as soccer leagues from around the world (including the NWSL, which I had difficulty finding in other applications).
The app offers two main widgets on the home screen – one shows you today's results for a specific league and another focuses on a specific team. You can add as many of these widgets to your home screen as you want, meaning you could theoretically add multiple leagues to get an overview. If you add too many apps, things can start to look confusing pretty quickly, but that's more than made up for by the information density and timeliness of these widgets. If you want to monitor an entire league without having to open a real app, this is the widget for you. There are also some PGA-specific widgets for golf fans.
Photo credit: Justin Pot
This is the only application I've found that offers support for live activity appearing on the iPhone's lock screen before you even unlock it. This adds additional details beyond the score, such as: E.g. who's turn it is in an MLB game or who scored the last goal in an NHL competition. This is, in my opinion, the best way to keep up with a game without actually watching it, and even better, live activity shows up even in standby mode and, on certain phones, even in the dynamic island at the top of the display .
Sofa score
Photo credit: Justin Pot
Sofascore offers two main widgets: a small one that shows you the score for the current game, and a medium one that shows both the last game and the current and/or upcoming game. Admittedly, there isn't a lot of widget variety – it lacks the ability to display the results of an entire league. But where Sofascore falls short in the widget category, it makes up for it in the sheer number of leagues it supports. Of course, in addition to every NCAA league you can think of, I also easily found the four major American organizations. However, you can go much further. I have darts – darts! – found in this app. From what I understand, this app can provide you with a widget to follow your favorite team and/or athlete if there is a sport.
Great fan
Photo credit: Justin Pot
Superfan offers a variety of highly customizable widgets that impress in terms of design. The problem: The free version only offers a simple widget that shows the current score of current games or the time and broadcast information of the current game. I like being able to see what channel a game is on – none of the other apps I tested offered this in a widget – and for that reason I think some people even superfan the free version of other apps will be preferred.
Superfan offers more to people who are willing to pay. There are customizable widgets that show the results of multiple games and even the league standings. There's also live event support, so you can see the score on the lock screen or in the dynamic island. The problem, and it's a big one, is that the price is $2.99 per month – just under $36 per year. This is harder to cope with than a one-off purchase price.
Apple TV has (some) built-in support for live events
I've talked a little about Live Events, which allows you to see live sports scores on the iPhone's lock screen and on the dynamic island. You don't necessarily need an app to use this feature. This is provided by the Apple TV app, which comes pre-installed on your iPhone and iPad. Simply open the application and scroll down until you see the following Live sportsand open that. Find the game you want to watch, tap it, and then tap Follow live Button.
Photo credit: Justin Pot
This feature doesn't currently work for many leagues – it's limited to the NBA, MLB, MLS and some European soccer games. And turning it on is a bit annoying. You will need to repeat these steps every time you want to watch a game live. Still, it's nice not to have to install anything. Hopefully they'll add more leagues soon.
Comments are closed.