It has never been a better time—or a worse time—to be a sports fan, according to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services.
“It’s never been a better time, because, let’s face it, every sport in the world is available in some fashion or another to watch—that wasn’t the case not that many years back,” Cue said on stage at the Autosport Business Exchange NYC conference on Wednesday.
“The problem though, is we all know we can all watch everything, but it’s very hard to find. You have to sign up for 1,200 subscriptions around them.”
“And if you’re traveling, you’re screwed,” he continued. “It’s not a great experience for customers.”
“If we want people to watch games, and we want all of sports to grow, some of these things need to be fixed,” he said.
“But that doesn’t mean that a league or a sport could[n’t] demand its partners to work together, for example, to provide a better experience,” Cue said.
Even when sports are locked into media-rights deals, there needs to be a focus on the user experience of watching the stream, Cue said. He claimed Apple has superior quality to other streaming services because it doesn’t compress its picture and has cameras installed at unique angles, including having an iPhone secured to a foul pole at a Major League ballpark.
Apple did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
“Let’s put the sports fan front and center,” Cue said. “That’s the customer, that’s the fan. That’s who we’re trying to address.”
