It’s annoying to miss a sports event or game simply because you forgot about it. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to add all the upcoming sports events you don’t want to miss right to your iPhone’s calendar.
Calendar Subscriptions Make it Easy to Keep Up With Sports Events
A calendar subscription lets you to add a calendar to your calendar app so you’re automatically reminded of events, appointments, games, and more. Once added, these calendars will be updated with new events and changes, and you can typically recognize them by their .ics file extension.
The good thing is that when you subscribe to a calendar on your iPhone, you can now view it across all your Apple devices—and even Android devices (provided your Google account is synced with your iPhone’s calendar). And if you’re subscribing to multiple sports calendars, you might want to try out this nifty Apple Calendar trick to make navigating them easier.
How to Subscribe to Your Favorite Sports Calendar
Subscribing to a sports calendar is pretty straightforward once you have the link to the calendar. You can usually obtain it by visiting the official website of the sports event you want to follow. I’ll be using the Formula 1 calendar for this article, but you can do this with any sports event that offers an official calendar.
In addition to official websites, sports calendars can be found on other sites, such as Fixture Download, which provides a fairly detailed list of various sports events, including ice hockey, baseball, basketball, and soccer.
to get started:
- Visit the sports website (Formula 1, in this case). Alternatively, search for event name + calendar/event/schedule in your search engine.
- Look for the option to Add or Sync Calendar. You might be asked to choose your calendar, in which case select Apple Calendar.
- Follow the prompt to open Apple Calendar.
- Tap Subscribe > Add > Done.
If the calendar downloads in .ics format, you’ll have to add it manually.
- Open the Calendar app on your iPhone, then tap Calendars in the bottom-middle of your Apple Calendar.
- Tap Add Calendar and then Add Subscription Calendar.
- Paste the calendar link, then tap Subscribe.
- Tap Add.
Be careful downloading and accepting random .ics links off the internet, as there are several spam calendar subscriptions out there. Thankfully, if you’ve subscribed to a spam calendar, you can easily remove calendar spam subscriptions.
The sports calendar should show up alongside your other calendars and you shouldhave the option of tweaking the calendar’s title and auto-refresh frequency.
Maximize Your Calendar Subscription
You can do a couple of things to get the most out of your calendar subscription, such as turning on notifications to see events without opening Apple Calendar.
Simply tap Calendars in the bottom-middle of your Apple Calendar, tap the information icon beside the sports calendar you want to follow more closely and ensure the Event Alerts option is toggled on.
When you subscribe to a calendar, it should automatically appear in your iCloud and sync across your devices. If it doesn’t, you may need to adjust this setting on a Mac using the following steps:
- Open Calendar and Control-click the subscribed calendar from the left-hand side, then select Get info.
- Beside Location, select iCloud, then click OK.
This must be done on a Mac, as it isn’t possible on an iPhone. You can only view calendar subscriptions on Apple devices, which means they won’t be accessible on Microsoft Outlook or iCloud.
In some cases, sports calendars aren’t available as subscriptions but instead appear as regular calendars. This means events won’t update automatically—only those listed when you added the calendar will be visible.
The upside, however, is that if you use both an iPhone and a Windows PC, you can still take advantage of the calendar sync feature. For more details, check out this guide on how to use Apple Calendar on Windows.
