When it comes to producing and broadcasting a football match, the MLS and the American broadcasters have broken many taboos. After the live stream on TikTok or the Messi Cam, 90 minutes in which only Messi was seen live on social media, now Apple TV, the main producer of the top American championship, has launched another visionary initiative: filming a match without cameras, but only with the iPhone’s video camera. It was Apple itself that announced it, in a press release that appeared on the official site. On Saturday 23 May, it reads, «Apple will mark a new milestone in sports television production: for the first time in history, a major professional sporting event will be broadcast entirely using iPhone 17 Pro smartphones as the main cameras» reads the note.
The initiative, carried out in collaboration with Major League Soccer, will concern the match between LA Galaxy and Houston Dynamo, scheduled at the Dignity Health Sports Park and broadcast live, as said, on Apple TV. The match, which will be played during the last weekend of MLS before the break for the 2026 World Cup in North America, will be filmed entirely with iPhone 17 Pros positioned in various points of the stadium. The images will include the teams’ warm-up, the player presentations, offering new immersive perspectives conceived to bring the spectators even closer to the action of play.
According to Apple, the compact dimensions of the device allow innovative angles that are hard to obtain with traditional broadcast cameras, while at the same time maintaining professional video standards. The company, however, has not explained very well how to get around the problem of the wide angle, fundamental in a sporting event to understand the width of the pitch and inevitably limited in a smartphone. It is not the first use of the iPhone in the sporting sphere. Already in September 2025, Apple TV had experimented with the technology during a “Friday Night Baseball” match between Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers, using iPhone 17 Pros for some cinematic shots inside the stadium. That trial had obtained strong approval from the public, and even the recognition of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, which inserted one of the iPhones used into its own permanent collection. In the wake of the success obtained, Apple has progressively expanded the use of smartphones in sports productions, going as far as integrating them stably into the baseball and MLS broadcasts over the course of the 2026 season. The match between LA Galaxy and Houston Dynamo therefore represents a further step forward in the evolution of sports broadcast technologies and could open the way to a new production model for live events.