While a lot of the excitement surrounding the September 26, 2025, recreation between the Boston Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers was that the house staff secured a postseason spot, it additionally marked a major step ahead in how the sport was broadcast and a significant first for the sport and Apple.
Apple has been a associate with MLB since 2022, when Friday Night Baseball kicked off on Apple TV+, and on this night time, its iPhones have been lastly referred to as off the bench. Just every week after the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max formally launched, the Apple TV+ manufacturing crew labored with MLB and Fenway Park to deploy 4 of those units to boost the printed – all within the quest to offer new methods to seize a ballgame and make viewers at house really feel as immersed as these within the stands at Fenway.
TechSwitch got exclusive access to see these four iPhones – one 17 Pro Max and three 17 Pros – up close at Fenway Park before the umpire yelled “play ball.” I also toured the production truck and spoke with Royce Dickerson, Executive Producer of Live Sports at Apple TV.
Much of the appeal of using the iPhone 17 Pro’s main camera array – which includes a 48-megapixel wide, 48-megapixel ultra-wide, and 48-megapixel telephoto – is that it can capture the game at the same standard as a professional camera. But thanks to the iPhone’s overall dimensions and weight, it can also be deployed in places that traditional broadcast cameras simply can’t fit.
“TV cameras are inherently large with big lenses, and they take up a lot of real estate,” explained Dickerson. Glancing up at the right-field foul pole at Fenway Park – it’s affectionately known as the “Pesky Pole” – I spotted a familiar shade of Cosmic Orange. There was an iPhone 17 Pro, held in place with two clamps, streaming a live view from the foul pole.
Another iPhone was tucked inside the Green Monster with a custom filter – it sat right between a slit between “ball” and “strike” – as well as a third one that roamed with an operator on a Ronin gimbal, and one last one in a rig on a tripod along the first baseline.
Image 1 of 2
Dickerson summed it up this way: “It’s about getting into new places for customers to see an angle of a game that they might not have seen before, and being able to see a story told about a game in a different way.”
We saw this in action inside one of the two production trucks Apple TV+ uses to produce each Friday Night Baseball game. There, an array of screens displayed live feeds from the various cameras – including the four iPhones and the traditional broadcast cameras – while the director and team called the shots, deciding which camera to cut to at the right moment.
The iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max units weren’t running custom, Apple-only software. Instead, they used standard accessories – like tripods and filters – along with a widely available app from the App Store, Blackmagic Camera. Footage was then ingested both through a direct fiber connection or via RF (radio frequency) into the manufacturing truck. In different phrases, these consumer-level iPhones have been built-in straight into skilled broadcast workflows, with results, banners, and shading added in actual time.
There was a devoted iPad – what seemed to be the bigger iPad Air or iPad Pro – that had all 4 views from the iPhones in a grid. Here, the operator within the truck might remotely management the iPhones, zooming in from the ultra-wide all the best way to most digital zoom. For occasion, with the foul pole iPhone, the iPhone 17 Pro was set to a couple photographs, together with a large, tight, and additional tight for up-close photographs on the plate.
Considering that the iPhone was up excessive on a foul pole, there’s no method a standard digital camera or its operator might be up there. In this case, Apple TV+ arrange a direct fiber line that ran down the pole, via the seats, and into the bullpen to ship an almost latency-free stream on to the manufacturing truck. There, the iPad operator might alter the shading in actual time, in addition to the view, with simply microseconds of wait time. He rapidly shuffled via them for me, and in the course of the recreation, he was taking route from the director.
It’s a really spectacular feat, and one which apparently labored and not using a hitch in its first official use. Those watching the sport at house – or myself on a TV close by Fenway Park with the Apple TV app streaming the sport – wouldn’t discover a significant distinction within the high quality. Apple TV+ showcased the iPhones at first of the printed, after which, when it took a shot from one of many telephones, it merely used a “Shot on iPhone” bug within the high proper nook. Pretty, distraction-free, and to Dickerson’s credit score, it places the concentrate on the sport itself.
“If the moment calls for the shot from the monster, we’ll go to it. If it’s down Pesky Pole, we’ll go to it. There’s no rhyme or reason for why they would call on a specific camera unless it’s going to further the story of the game that night,” famous Dickerson.
For the director contained in the manufacturing truck, the 4 iPhone cameras are merely one other device. For occasion, the epic conclusion of a house run for the Red Sox to win was captured with all 4 iPhones: the foul pole catching the preliminary contact, the frenzy of the announcer, after which the roar and faces of the gang, to 1 within the Green Monster and first baseline getting him rounding the bases, to 1 being within the crowd getting that immersive celebratory shot.
It’s an ideal illustration of one thing Dickerson mentioned to me earlier than the sport – “Those telephones are being handled similar to another digital camera. It’s the facility of the cellphone, and the convenience with which it may be built-in into skilled techniques is superb. Everything that we’re working these cameras off of is customer-facing, so anyone at house can do the identical high quality of digital camera work that we’re doing right here on Friday Night Baseball.”
Image 1 of 2
With the setup on the primary baseline, it’s primarily an iPhone 17 Pro mounted on a stand, adopted by a tripod with a hub for energy and ingesting the footage. The iPhone 17 Pro within the Green Monster may need been essentially the most tricked out with an extra-wide lens on the entrance, nevertheless it’s largely there to get the shot, because it’s embedded barely behind the wall. The iPhone 17 Pro Max on the gimbal is used for stabilization, and the one on the pole is unadorned.
Perhaps one side of the expertise the place it isn’t working full throttle is that Apple TV+ broadcasts Friday Night Baseball at 1080p 60, fairly than the utmost 4K 60 that the iPhone 17 Pro can file at. On that, Dickerson famous, “We think it’s the best picture quality in sports right now. So we’re singularly focused on that and continuing to improve that.”
“There’s nothing stopping anybody else from doing it. We do think this is replicable across broadcasts, not just for us, but for any other broadcaster that wants to get in here, but Friday Night Baseball right now, it’s a cool first step for this,” defined Dickerson. Apple TV collaborated with particular person groups and Major League Baseball to make this occur, and the league authenticated every of the iPhones used for broadcasting.
Probably the most important shock to me after seeing the iPhone in a clamp or a rig up shut, after which seeing the manufacturing facet, is how the staff producing all of it actually does simply see it as a device. The digital camera high quality, as you’ll be able to learn extra about in TechSwitch’s full evaluation of the 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max, is up there with the most effective, and for the Friday Night Baseball crew, you actually get to see the artistic facet and the way these iPhones can flex.
The Blackmagic Camera app affords the flexibility for it to work in lockstep with the broader manufacturing and for fast ingestion, but in addition lets the operators – bodily there or remotely – soar to presets just like the 48MP important at 24mm or the 8x telephoto at 200mm, in addition to degree out white stability and publicity. These items streamed effectively earlier than the sport started – I obtained to the park at about 4 PM ET forward of a 7:05 PM begin, they usually have been working for hours earlier than – and supplied a reside shot all over the sport and even after it concluded.
The iPhone met the problem and, for the primary time, was used to broadcast the sport, which is a notable triumph for the Apple TV Sports staff and sure the iPhone staff at Apple as effectively. Thus far, Apple TV+ has solely introduced that the iPhone might be used for this particular match of Friday Night Baseball, however I did ask Royce if these could be deployed sooner or later:
“We are excited about the potential for the use of iPhones in the future, but right now, as I mentioned, we’re focused on tonight, but the future is bright for the iPhones.” That doesn’t affirm future use, however I’d make a reasonably protected guess that we see these once more. As to why, I’ll finish with this notice from Royce about one of many final pre-announce exams of the iPhone 17 Pro on September 12, 2025:
“I was sitting in the truck next to Steven Rodriguez, Apple’s Coordinating Producer for Live Sports, and noticed this amazing shot I thought was really cool. And it wasn’t until after the fact that somebody nudged me and said, Hey, that was the iPhone. And I just thought it was another great shot. I didn’t realize it.”
Follow TechSwitch on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our knowledgeable information, critiques, and opinion in your feeds. Make certain to click on the Follow button!
And in fact, you can too follow TechSwitch on TikTok for information, critiques, unboxings in video kind, and get common updates from us on WhatsApp too.