The iPhone 17 Pro is about to make live TV history, with a catch
The iPhone 17 Pro is about to make live TV history, with a catch
Publish Date: 2026-05-21 19:15:00
Source Domain: www.phonearena.com
This Saturday, if you tune into Major League Soccer on Apple TV, every shot you see will come from a phone. Not a truck full of studio cameras, just the iPhone 17 Pro.
What Apple just announced
Apple announced that Saturday’s LA Galaxy vs Houston Dynamo FC match (May 23) will be captured entirely with the iPhone 17 Pro. It says this is the first time an iPhone has handled an entire major live pro sports broadcast, rather than just a few highlight angles.The phones will cover team warmups, player introductions, in-net goal angles, and crowd reactions. The match streams live on Apple TV at 7:30 p.m. PT, and for the 2026 season you only need an Apple TV subscription to watch, since the separate MLS Season Pass is no longer required.
Apple TV MLS logo. | Image by Apple
Why this is more than a gimmick
The whole point is the small form factor. Apple says those tiny cameras can squeeze into spots a bulky broadcast rig never could, which is where the “dynamic new perspectives” pitch comes from.
What it says about the iPhone 17 Pro
The iPhone 17 Pro genuinely earned its spot here. Its ProRes RAW capture and a feature called GenLock, which syncs many cameras on one big production, are built for exactly this kind of work.
In our iPhone 17 Pro review we scored it 7.9 and called those video tools “ultra-niche,” aimed squarely at pros rather than regular folks. A televised soccer match is about as pro as it gets.
The part Apple would rather you skip
Here is where I have to be honest with you: this is not the first time Apple has run this play, and it will not be the last. It is genuinely impressive that a smartphone can pull this off, and I say that as someone who shoots my own video on a phone.
But let’s not kid ourselves about what “shot on iPhone” means at this scale. Each of those phones is bolted into thousands of…
