Apple’s Free Sports App Gains FA Community Shield Coverage, Expands to Mexico
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The Apple Sports app may be too fast sometimes, but it’s still one of the most frictionless ways to keep track of your favorite teams and league standings. This week, Apple is upping the game again for sports fans, with a version 3.1 update that adds FA Community Shield to the mix and brings the Sports app experience to Mexico.
This brings the number of supported regions to four, and marks a first for a non-English-speaking country. Previously, Apple Sports was limited to the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The Mexico launch comes in time for fans to pick up Apertura 2025, the first championship of this year’s Liga MX season. They’ll also be able to see how their local teams are progressing in the MLS Leagues Cup.
Meanwhile, the FA Community Shield is here for English football fans to follow the pre-season opener, where the Premier League champions will face off against the FA Cup winners. This year, Liverpool Football Club will challenge Crystal Palace at Wembley Stadium on August 10.
This latest update follows a substantial 3.0 release in June that redesigned the home screen to separate games by league and allow users to reorder the sections to keep their favorite leagues at the top. That update also brought support for tennis scores in time for Wimbledon and the Canadian Open. As with the addition of Formula 1 racing in April, the app was redesigned to deliver a premium tennis experience, which requires a different way of presenting scores compared to traditional team sports.
Version 3.1 also expands the box scores to display even more information, including new player statistics appropriate for each of the various leagues.
From its humble beginnings in February 2024, Apple Sports has expanded to become a powerhouse for fans of nearly every sport. It launched with coverage for MLB, MLS, NBA, NHL, men’s and women’s NCAA basketball, and Bundesliga, LaLiga, Liga MX, Ligue 1, Premier League, and Serie A soccer. Later updates added NCAAF, NWSL, and WNBA, and the NFL arrived in time for the 2024 fall season, alongside an update for iOS 18 that added direct support for live activities with play-by-play coverage.
Since then, it’s continued to add more sports and features, including the Champions League, Europa League, UEFA Women’s Champions League, and previously mentioned Formula 1 racing, NASCAR, and tennis. An April update introduced support for sharing live game cards in Apple Messages and other social media and messaging apps. In May, Apple added league standings and news to help you see “how your teams stack up at a glance.”
Apple also plans to bring sports scores to your dashboard with CarPlay improvements in iOS 26. It doesn’t appear to be the full-screen experience we saw hints of earlier this year; instead, the early iOS 26 betas now show live activities in the bottom-right panel of the Dashboard view (where Calendar and garage door widgets appear in iOS 18), which include the live activities for your favorite teams.
