New BT Sport Hype Mode could be the best/worst thing to happen to football

Bt Sport Hype Mode Screenshot (Image credit: BT Sport)

What you need to know

BT Sport has announced Hype Mode, a whole new way to watch football.
The new mode will offer "a youthful and entertaining broadcast experience."
Viewers will see shot speed, player speed, and more on-screen.

UK broadcaster BT Sport has announced a new feature that will change the way we watch football. Whether that's good or not, it's difficult to tell! Welcome to Hype Mode, a feature coming to BT Sport's apps from tomorrow.

Set to kick off with the Manchester United Vs Leeds United game in the Premier League tomorrow, the feature promises "a youthful and entertaining broadcast experience." That boils down to some on-screen overlays that will show viewers how fast people are running, how hard they're hitting their shots, and more. Oh, and there are some funky animations to go with it.

The best way to explain it is to just show it to you. Brace yourself. (Yes the video's small, blame BT Sport's player for that. Full-screen mode is your friend!)

Debuting this Saturday around its exclusively live coverage of Manchester United versus Leeds United, a new Hype Mode feature provides a youthful and entertaining broadcast experience, never before seen in the UK. The Hype Mode features fun, action-themed on-screen descriptions for key plays, shot tracers lined with graphics such as blazes of fire, player runs augmented with smoke trails, and larger-than-life on-pitch graphics to denote shot speeds.

I've watched that video a few times now and each time I watch it, I think I like it more and more. I haven't decided yet — maybe I've had too much coffee?

The feature should be good to go on iPhone and iPad tomorrow, and as far as I can tell the Apple TV app will work as well. Those watching on Sky Q and some smart TVs are out of luck, while game console support is in the works.

The BT Sport app is one of the best apps for watching Premier League football and changes like this, as controversial as they may be, at least show someone's thinking outside the box!

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.