MLB.com At Bat and NHL update iOS apps, are first to include iOS 10.3's new user-selectable icons feature that allows fans to use favorite team logos
The MLB.com At Bat and NHL iOS applications have been updated today to take advantage of one of the new, but still under-the-radar features available …
Context & Ripple Effects
A week after Google added tappable icons for sports and entertainment to its own apps, Apple's iOS 10.3 ships a comparable hook — user-selectable app icons — and the first movers are the two biggest North American hockey and baseball apps. MLB.com At Bat and the NHL app are using it to let fans swap the generic app icon for their favorite team's logo.
The move looks cosmetic, but it extends a pattern in the coverage: leagues treating the phone's surface as branding real estate, from this icon swap to MLB later putting Oakland Athletics season tickets on iPhone NFC entry — each iOS release becoming a new channel for team identity.
First-order effects
- Fans of MLB and NHL clubs can immediately replace the default app icon with their team's logo, making the home screen a per-fan branded surface for the two leagues' flagship apps.
Second-order effects
- Other sports and media apps face pressure to ship alternate-icon variants of every team or franchise logo, turning a one-time design asset into an ongoing per-team asset pipeline — and giving early adopters like MLB and NHL a differentiation window on iOS.
Third-order effects
- If OS-level personalization hooks keep landing, platform owners become gatekeepers of how leagues express brand identity on-device — a dynamic that culminates years later when Apple stops renting that surface to third parties and launches its own Apple Sports scores app directly.
The trend: Sports leagues are progressively colonizing every layer of the smartphone interface — icons, tickets, scores — with each OS release opening a new branding surface that platforms eventually compete to reclaim for themselves.