Apple adds iPhones to Friday Night Baseball coverage

Imagine an orange phone at Dodger Stadium. (Apple TV+)

Surprise! Last Friday, Apple TV+’s Friday Night Baseball broadcast of the Giants and the Dodgers featured multiple shots taken on an iPhone 17 Pro. On the final Friday night of the season, the company will repeat the feat during tonight’s Tigers-Red Sox game (7 pm ET).

According to Apple, four iPhone 17 Pros will be positioned at Fenway Park — in the Green Monster, the home dugout, and roaming the stands. In contrast to the secrecy of last week, the Tigers-Red Sox game will feature a bug in the corner of the screen that shows off the shots that are coming from an iPhone.

Is it a self-promotional gimmick? Sure, but Apple is paying a lot of money for MLB rights. Also, it’s not as if the company hasn’t pushed its MLB telecasts in a bunch of different ways. The Friday Night Baseball broadcasts look great, and have featured loads of helmet and body cams, a cinematic depth-of-field camera, and even in-stadium drone shots. Apple has probably earned at least one night of iPhone Pro product integration.

Unfortunately, even though the iPhone is capable of shooting 4K video and beyond, the ones in Apple’s MLB broadcasts will be locked to 1080p at 60 frames per second, because stadium broadcast infrastructures just haven’t caught up with the 4K world. The iPhones will be running the Blackmagic Camera app, allowing iPads back in the production trailer to control exposure and white balance settings remotely. They’ll also be attached to the just-announced Blackmagic Camera Pro Dock, which integrates all the different connections needed to fit them into the production and make them just another broadcast camera.

Apple says that one advantage of using iPhones rather than traditional broadcast cameras is that they’re small enough to fit in places like the corners of dugouts and less intimidating for candid fan shots, since we’re all used to looking at smartphone cameras. (Maybe not on tripods attached to Blackmagic Camera Pro Docks, but it’s still a fairly small footprint.)

According to Apple, Major League Baseball even attached its little holographic “validation” stickers to the iPhones used in last Friday’s broadcast from Dodger Stadium, signifying that they were the first iPhones used to broadcast an MLB game. (Apple didn’t say, but I assume one of those phones will be sent to the Hall of Fame?)

This is the fourth year of Apple TV+’s Friday-night doubleheader. Some reports have suggested the partnership might be ending after this season, but the latest one I’ve seen suggests that Apple TV+ would be continuing on Friday nights. When all that gets resolved, we’ll see if this was a last hurrah or the start of something new.

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