Apple is partnering with Spectrum SportsNet to stream choose Los Angeles Lakers video games on to the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional throughout the 2025-2026 basketball season. The video games can be filmed within the Apple Immersive video format, the identical VR-friendly filming fashion the corporate used to seize the Metallica live performance movie it launched earlier this 12 months.
Past providing you with a purpose to blow the mud off your $3,500 Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional, watching the video games in-headset will showcase “views inconceivable to seize in conventional broadcasts,” Apple claims. Stay video games can be restricted to headset house owners dwelling within the Lakers’ regional broadcast territory (Southern California, Hawaii and components of southern Nevada) and can seemingly require a subscription to view, however Apple says the total replays and highlights may even be accessible in “choose nations and areas from each the SportsNet and NBA apps.” There is not any schedule of video games obtainable but, however Apple and Spectrum say they will announce their ultimate plans this fall, with the primary video games streaming early 2026.
Whereas the final consensus on the Imaginative and prescient Professional is that it makes for an important media consumption machine, sports activities programming that takes benefit of its distinctive options has been largely lacking. Apple makes it simple to observe issues like Friday Evening Baseball and Main League Soccer, however the NBA is the one mainstream sports activities league attempting to supply an expertise that is particular to the Imaginative and prescient Professional. Past taking part in stay video games, the NBA visionOS app can show real-time participant stats, stream a number of video games without delay in multiview and present you a tabletop view of video games, full with a 3D court docket and tiny gamers.
Now that Apple is reportedly prioritizing sensible glasses over a lighter and cheaper model of the Imaginative and prescient Professional, one of the best factor the corporate can do is provide current house owners with new issues to observe. Not everybody loves the Lakers, but when it opens the door to extra stay sports activities sooner or later, that is solely a superb factor.
