Roku is adding sports directly to the homescreen

Image: Roku

Roku has never radically overhauled its simple, familiar homescreen. Instead, the company has gradually introduced new sections like “what to watch” and “featured free” that help steer users to new content. Today, the company is following the same strategy, but this time, it’s with sports. A new sports hub is coming to the Roku homescreen starting today, and it “integrates live and upcoming sports across the Roku platform and introduces a centralized location for sports content.”

Clicking into the sports section will show you various live games happening at that moment, and you can also browse by whatever individual sport or league you’re interested in. When you choose a specific game, Roku will present the various ways that you can stream it.

As for which services are integrated into the new sports offering, Roku says they include Apple TV, DirecTV, Fox Sports, FuboTV, Paramount Plus, Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, Sling, The Roku Channel, TNT, TBS, and truTV. That should cover a lot, including Thursday Night Football on Prime, and don’t forget that Apple will soon be streaming Major League Soccer matches.

Image: Roku
The sports hub integrates services like FuboTV and Sling TV.

“Sports-related content from supported channels will be available during the season(s) of the sports leagues they air,” Roku said in its press release, while also promising “deeper, more convenient integration of sports within other platform features, such as Roku Search, Roku Voice, Sports Zone, and more.”

Roku doesn’t appear to be offering live score updates as of yet, so it trails the Apple TV app slightly in that respect. But Alex Hill, the company’s director of live and sports content, said “We will continue to make enhancements to that experience, like adding more supported providers and finding new ways for our users to follow their favorite teams.”

Aside from the new sports hub, Roku has recently rolled out discoverability features like The Buzz, a continue watching section, and a platform-wide save list for building a watch list of shows and movies from various apps.