Apple is planning on adding live sports to Apple TV+

Apple seems to be planning on adding sports to Apple TV+ thanks to a recent appointment.

We've known for a while that Apple has been interested in sport - it has a small team working on managing the sports events that appear in the Apple TV app and on Apple TV, taking a similar curated approach that it has with Apple Music. 

The work of that team is shown in this Sports Illustrated article from early last year, where Apple exec Eddy Cue is quoted as saying that he hadn't thought a lot about challenging Amazon and others for live sport.

"That’s not to say we would never do sports, because who the heck knows," he said at the time. Indeed, a Wall Street Journal report from December suggested it was exploring how to acquire rights.

According to Recode, Apple has poached Amazon's sports content lead James DeLorenzo to head up its sports content. Amazon has been working to boost its portfolio of sports content in recent times including the ATP Tour and US Open tennis plus some Premier League football. 

Peter Kafka said that DeLorenzo went to Amazon in 2016 to run sports there, though his LinkedIn profile says he's senior vice president at Amazon's Audible in addition to head of sports at Amazon Video. 

DeLorenzo has a background in sports rights and partnerships including with the NHL, NBA and NASCAR. 

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