Major League Baseball, America’s pastime, has seen a lot of change over the last 149 years, but now it’s being viewed through a new set of digital eyes – the iPhone 17 Pro – and delivered to millions of baseball fans watching Friday Night Baseball on Apple TV+.
For the first time, Apple and the MLB are officially bringing the new iPhone 17 Pro onto the ballfield to shoot the game and deliver the live feeds as part of Friday Night Baseball, which streams on one of the best streaming services, starting on September 26, at 6:30PM ET.
Four iPhone 17 Pros will be seated in Black Magic Phone docks and dotted around Red Sox Stadium for the Tigers vs Red Sox game. One will be inside the iconic Green Monster, two will be in the dugouts, and one will roam the stadium.
The Phones will all be running the Black Magic Camera app with exposure and white balance set by connected iPads. The cabling, which will bring power in and send a video out, will allow them to run continuously and deliver the feeds directly to the broadcast trucks.
It will only be four phones. Broadcasters have no plans to swap them out during commercial breaks. Instead, they’ll all stream continuously for the duration of he game, and the broadcast team will use them – inserting live shots from them – at any time during the broadcast.
The iPhone 17 Pro has three 48MP cameras, including a 4x optical zoom that goes up to a sensor-cropped 8x zoom. Apple TV+ and the MLB plan to use all of the lens capabilities of the iPhones, including 24MM, 48mm. 100mm, and 200mm equivalent (8x zoom).
This isn’t exactly the first time the iPhone 17 Pro has been shooting on the field., There was a trial run a week ago at Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw’s final regular-season game. That proof of concept gave Apple and the MLB the confidence to try it on its last Friday Night Baseball broadcast of the regular season on Apple TV+.
While the iPhone 17 Pro is more than capable of shooting up to 4k 120fps, the broadcast will be captured at 1080p 59.94fps to match the requirements of the broadcast trucks, which will receive the feed over a fiber-optic line.
I’m not surprised about the use of the iPhone 17 Pro in a professional scenario. After all, my own review found it to be one of the best smartphones on the market, and the photography is insanely good.
Aside from the potential quality of the iPhone 17 Pro videography, there is another obvious benefit to using a mobile phone in this scenario: size. Even in the rig, the iPhone 17 Pro is much smaller and lighter than a traditional broadcast camera. It can likely fit unobtrusively in spots where a broadcast camera probably won’t.
In truth, the use of four iPhone 17 Pro phones won’t change the game or its outcome, but it marks something of a milestone for Apple’s pocketable product. It’s one of the more public demonstrations of the iPhone 17 Pro’s ability to be seamlessly inserted into a broadcast production-level workflow. A live proof of concept that somehow goes beyond what we’ve seen Apple and other creators do with the iPhone. Most of that has been captured, produced, and then delivered as pre-recorded content. A live, fast-paced sports game is a different beast.
Apple and the MLB perhaps figured out the easy part. Let’s see if they can avoid choking at the plate on game day. And TechRadar will exclusively be checking out the iPhone 17 Pro’ in action at Fenway Park as they are used for the Friday Night Baseball game, so stay tuned for our reporting.
