Extending Apple Sports with Team Schedules and Results

Overview

Apple Sports is built for speed: open it, see the score, close it. That focus is its strength, but it stops at today. Fans who want to know when their team plays next, or how the last five games went, have to leave for ESPN or a league app. This concept adds a team page with upcoming games and recent results, without giving up the quick, glanceable feel that makes the app worth keeping.

Problem

The app answers “what’s happening right now?” very well, and almost nothing else. Following a team means remembering game times yourself or bouncing between apps, so many fans stop opening Apple Sports at all once a game ends. The challenge was to add a sense of time to the app, past and future, while keeping every screen as light as the scoreboard it already is.

Research

I interviewed eight sports fans who follow between one and four teams, and asked each of them to walk through how they had checked on their team that week. I also mapped how ESPN, theScore, and the official league apps present schedules, noting what each one shows first and how many taps it takes to reach the next game.

Every fan checked the score on the day of a game, but most checked the schedule only a few times a week, usually to plan around it: when to leave work, whether to book a bar, or if a game clashed with something else.

Key Insights

Fans think about the next game, not the whole season. A full calendar was rarely what they wanted; the next one or two games, with the time in their own time zone and where to watch, covered nearly every need. Results worked the same way: a team’s last five games told the story better than a standings table, and a simple win or loss mark was enough to see the trend at a glance.

Design Process

I started with paper sketches of three directions: a scrolling season calendar, a card for each game, and a single team page split into “Next” and “Recent.” Quick tests with five fans favored the team page, since it answered both questions on one screen without any filters or tabs to learn.

From there I built the screens in Figma using Apple’s own type, spacing, and colors, so the new pages would feel native rather than bolted on. I kept the team page reachable from any score tile with a single tap, and added a widget that shows the next game on the Home Screen.

Final Design

Tapping a team opens a page with its next game pinned at the top, showing the opponent, time, and broadcast. Below it, the last five results read as a row of wins and losses, and each game opens to the same box score fans already know. The rest of the season sits in a compact list further down for anyone who wants it, out of the way for everyone else.

Reflection

The hardest part was deciding what to leave out. Standings, player stats, and news all came up in interviews, and each would have made the page heavier. Holding the line on “next game and recent results” kept the concept true to the app. If I took it further, I would test the Home Screen widget over a full week of games and look at how fans following several teams switch between them.