Watching Sports in iTunes

Monday, February 07 2011

By: chrisb

Go Team!

The Super Bowl is arguably the most important US sporting event of the year.

iTunes has highlights of the game here.

Beyond the Super Bowl, the iTunes Store has a huge collection of sports programming, both TV shows for purchase and podcasts which are free.

Live streaming of sporting events isn't available; most of what you will find are game highlights and analysis.

To find TV sports programming:

Open iTunes.
Choose the iTunes Store from the left pane.
Across the top of the iTunes Store window is a black toolbar showing the different types of iTunes media. Hover over the TV shows listing. A downward arrow will appear to the right of the words TV Shows.
Click the downward arrow and choose Sports from the dropdown menu. You will see the different sports-related TV shows.
Click on a show and you will see the available episodes.
To watch an episode preview, hover over an episode title. To the left of the episode title a Play button will appear.
At this point you have three options to receive the TV episodes:
- Click the Buy Season Pass button. If you buy a Season Pass, all current episodes are downloaded immediately and new episodes are downloaded to your Mac as they are released.
- Click on the Buy button of an episode. That single episode will download to your Mac.
- Some episodes are available for a 24 hour rental.

Besides TV programming, there are over 6000 sports related podcasts available in the US iTunes Store, both audio and video. The selection of sports programming depends on which country's iTunes Store you are viewing.

To find and download sports-related podcasts, check out this tip.

In the US iTunes Store, TV Shows usually cost $1.99 or $2.99 per episode, with 24 hour rentals available for $0.99. Podcasts are free.