The NCAA has announced that in light of the growing coronavirus outbreaks in the United States, it will hold the March Madness games, but that they'll be played without any fans in the stadium. The games will include the necessary staff, as well as some family members of the players. Everyone else will have to catch the games through cable or streaming services.
fuboTV has announced an expansion of its sports offering that adds NHL Network and MLB Network into the mix, including the MLB Network Strike Zone. The networks are available as part of the live television coverage, giving subscribers access to more live games. As of this deal, fuboTV says that it now offers every professional sports league network available.
For years now, if you were looking to play an officially licensed NFL game, you were probably playing something published by Electronic Arts. That'll be changing in the future, as 2K has struck a deal with the NFL that will see it releasing multiple licensed football games in the future. 2K Games is no stranger to publishing sports games, but it's been quite some time since we've seen the company dive into the realm of pro football.
The NCAA has announced that its March Madness app, which enables basketball fans to watch their favorite games over the Internet, has released one of its best features for the Fire TV and Android TV platforms. With this new feature, fans can watch two different games at the same time, something that was previously limited to only the Apple TV version of the streaming app.
Following the extension it received late last month, YouTube TV has penned an official agreement with Sinclair Broadcast Group over the sports networks it owns. The new deal is bittersweet; while some regional sports networks will remain, others won't be sticking around, meaning some customers will lose out on the content they want.
As expected, the public sparring between OTT streaming service YouTube TV and Sinclair Broadcast Group has resulted in renewed talks that will prevent the loss of FOX Regional Sports Networks. The announcement was made by YouTube TV in a tweet on Friday, but there's a catch: the two companies haven't worked out a new deal. Rather, YouTube says that it got a temporary extension to prevent the loss of the channels.
In a series of tweets on Thursday, YouTube revealed that its YouTube TV service will lose FOX Regional Sports Networks, including the YES Network, due to a deal that fell through. The talks took place with Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns FOX Regional Sports; YouTube says it has been 'unable to reach an agreement' with the company, meaning it will only be able to offer these sports channels for a few more days.
A senior member of the International Olympics Committee spoke this week about the possibility that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics would be cancelled due to novel coronavirus (nCoV-2019). According to Olympics Committee member Dick Pound, there was a 3-month window in which the 2020 Tokyo, Japan-based sports event's fate would be decided. He apparently "did not sound alarmist", but did acknowledge a real possibility that the Tokyo Olympics for 2020 could be affected by nCoV-2019 in one way or another.
Music streaming service Spotify has announced the acquisition of The Ringer, a website that, among other things, offers a large selection of podcasts on sports, popular culture, and more. Spotify will get these podcasts as part of the deal, as well as The Ringer website and its entertainment and sports team. If everything goes according to plan, the deal will close in the first quarter of the year.
Stop panicking, football fans. Roku and Fox have worked out a new deal that brought the network's apps back to the streaming platform. This means you'll be able to download the Fox Sports and Fox NOW apps and use them to watch the Super Bowl tomorrow as you may have planned to do before the carriage dispute caused a blackout. Other apps remain an option for streaming the game as well.
The Apple Watch, thanks to its life-saving AFib detection, has taken the lion's share of attention when it comes to the smartwatch market. That practically leaves other wearable platforms, especially Wear OS by Google, to contend for the leftovers. That doesn't mean there's no room for massive improvement, especially when it comes to battery life. That's where Suunto makes it big boast that its latest sports-centric Suunto 7 can last you at least half a day even if you leave the GPS on.
Apple Arcade marks a new chapter in Apple's business, combining its newfound service-oriented character with its traditional software model. It also proved, at least on paper, that it's serious about gaming and not just on mobile but also on all its platforms. It has quite a number of titles exclusive to the subscription service but most of them are existing games. Injecting fresh blood into Apple Arcade, Bit Fry Games Studio announced a new Ultimate Rivals: The Rink game that is also the beginning of a new breed of sports games.