Exclusive: ‘Those phones are being treated just like any other camera’ – Inside Apple’s first Friday Night Baseball broadcast shot on iPhone 17 Pro
While much of the buzz surrounding the September 26, 2025, game between the Boston Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers was that the home team secured a postseason spot, it also marked a significant step forward in how the game was broadcast and a major first for the game and Apple.
Apple has been a partner with MLB since 2022, when Friday Night Baseball kicked off on Apple TV+, and on this night, its iPhones were finally called off the bench. Just a week after the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max officially launched, the Apple TV+ production crew worked with MLB and Fenway Park to deploy four of these devices to enhance the broadcast – all in the quest to provide new ways to capture a ballgame and make viewers at home feel as immersed as those in the stands at Fenway.
TechRadar got exclusive access to see these four iPhones – one 17 Pro Max and three 17 Pros – up close at Fenway Park before the umpire yelled “play ball.” I also toured the production truck and spoke with Royce Dickerson, Executive Producer of Live Sports at Apple TV.
Much of the appeal of using the iPhone 17 Pro’s main camera array – which includes a 48-megapixel wide, 48-megapixel ultra-wide, and 48-megapixel telephoto – is that it can capture the game at the same standard as a professional camera. But thanks to the iPhone’s overall dimensions and weight, it can also be deployed in places that traditional broadcast cameras simply can’t fit.
“TV cameras are inherently large with big lenses, and they take up a lot of real estate,” explained Dickerson. Glancing up at the right-field foul pole at Fenway Park – it’s affectionately known as the “Pesky Pole” – I spotted a familiar shade of Cosmic Orange. There was an iPhone 17 Pro, held in place with two clamps, streaming a live view from the foul pole.
Another iPhone was tucked inside the Green Monster with a custom filter – it sat right between a slit between “ball” and “strike” – as well as a third one that roamed with an operator on a Ronin gimbal, and one last one in a rig on a tripod along the first baseline.
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Dickerson summed it up this way: “It’s about getting into new places for customers to see an angle of a game that they might not have seen before, and being able to see a story told about a game in a different way.”
We saw this in action inside one of the two production trucks Apple TV+ uses to produce each Friday Night Baseball game. There, an array of screens displayed live feeds from the various cameras – including the four iPhones and the traditional broadcast cameras – while the director and team called the shots, deciding which camera to cut to at the right moment.
The iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max units weren’t running custom, Apple-only software. Instead, they used standard accessories – like tripods and filters – along with a widely available app from the App Store, Blackmagic Camera. Footage was then ingested either via a direct fiber connection or through RF (radio frequency) into the production truck. In other words, these consumer-level iPhones were integrated directly into professional broadcast workflows, with effects, banners, and shading added in real time.
There was a dedicated iPad – what appeared to be the larger iPad Air or iPad Pro – that had all four views from the iPhones in a grid. Here, the operator in the truck could remotely control the iPhones, zooming in from the ultra-wide all the way to maximum digital zoom. For instance, with the foul pole iPhone, the iPhone 17 Pro was set to a few shots, including a wide, tight, and extra tight for up-close shots at the plate.
Considering that the iPhone was up high on a foul pole, there’s no way a traditional camera or its operator could be up there. In this case, Apple TV+ set up a direct fiber line that ran down the pole, through the seats, and into the bullpen to send a nearly latency-free stream directly to the production truck. There, the iPad operator could adjust the shading in real time, as well as the view, with just microseconds of wait time. He quickly shuffled through them for me, and during the game, he was taking direction from the director.
It’s a truly impressive feat, and one that apparently worked without a hitch in its first official use. Those watching the game at home – or myself on a TV nearby Fenway Park with the Apple TV app streaming the game – wouldn’t notice a major difference in the quality. Apple TV+ showcased the iPhones at the beginning of the broadcast, and then, when it took a shot from one of the phones, it simply used a “Shot on iPhone” bug in the top right corner. Pretty, distraction-free, and to Dickerson’s credit, it puts the focus on the game itself.
“If the moment calls for the shot from the monster, we’ll go to it. If it’s down Pesky Pole, we’ll go to it. There’s no rhyme or reason for why they would call on a specific camera unless it’s going to further the story of the game that night,” noted Dickerson.
For the director inside the production truck, the four iPhone cameras are simply another tool. For instance, the epic conclusion of a home run for the Red Sox to win was captured with all four iPhones: the foul pole catching the initial contact, the rush of the announcer, and then the roar and faces of the crowd, to one in the Green Monster and first baseline getting him rounding the bases, to one being in the crowd getting that immersive celebratory shot.
It’s a perfect representation of something Dickerson said to me before the game – “Those phones are being treated just like any other camera. It’s the power of the phone, and the ease with which it can be integrated into professional systems is amazing. Everything that we’re running these cameras off of is customer-facing, so anybody at home can do the same quality of camera work that we’re doing here on Friday Night Baseball.”
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With the setup on the first baseline, it’s essentially an iPhone 17 Pro mounted on a stand, followed by a tripod with a hub for power and ingesting the footage. The iPhone 17 Pro in the Green Monster might have been the most tricked out with an extra-wide lens on the front, but it’s mostly there to get the shot, as it’s embedded slightly behind the wall. The iPhone 17 Pro Max on the gimbal is used for stabilization, and the one on the pole is unadorned.
Perhaps one aspect of the experience where it is not running full throttle is that Apple TV+ broadcasts Friday Night Baseball at 1080p 60, rather than the maximum 4K 60 that the iPhone 17 Pro can record at. On that, Dickerson noted, “We think it’s the best picture quality in sports right now. So we’re singularly focused on that and continuing to improve that.”
“There’s nothing stopping anybody else from doing it. We do think this is replicable across broadcasts, not just for us, but for any other broadcaster that wants to get in here, but Friday Night Baseball right now, it’s a cool first step for this,” explained Dickerson. Apple TV collaborated with individual teams and Major League Baseball to make this happen, and the league authenticated each of the iPhones used for broadcasting.
Probably the biggest surprise to me after seeing the iPhone in a clamp or a rig up close, and then seeing the production side, is how the team producing it all really does just see it as a tool. The camera quality, as you can read more about in TechRadar’s full review of the 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max, is up there with the best, and for the Friday Night Baseball crew, you really get to see the creative side and how these iPhones can flex.
The Blackmagic Camera app affords the ability for it to work in lockstep with the broader production and for quick ingestion, but also lets the operators – physically there or remotely – jump to presets like the 48MP main at 24mm or the 8x telephoto at 200mm, as well as level out white balance and exposure. These units streamed well before the game began – I got to the park at about 4 PM ET ahead of a 7:05 PM start, and they were running for hours before – and offered a live shot all the way through the game and even after it concluded.
The iPhone met the challenge and, for the first time, was used to broadcast the game, which is a notable triumph for the Apple TV Sports team and likely the iPhone team at Apple as well. Thus far, Apple TV+ has only announced that the iPhone will be used for this specific match of Friday Night Baseball, but I did ask Royce if these would be deployed in the future:
“We are excited about the potential for the use of iPhones in the future, but right now, as I mentioned, we’re focused on tonight, but the future is bright for the iPhones.” That doesn’t confirm future use, but I’d make a pretty safe bet that we see these again. As to why, I’ll end with this note from Royce about one of the last pre-announce tests of the iPhone 17 Pro on September 12, 2025:
“I was sitting in the truck next to Steven Rodriguez, Apple’s Coordinating Producer for Live Sports, and noticed this amazing shot I thought was really cool. And it wasn’t until after the fact that somebody nudged me and said, Hey, that was the iPhone. And I just thought it was another great shot. I didn’t realize it.”
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