YouTube TV listened to sports fans, and it’s fixing multiview’s biggest problem

Since its launch last spring, YouTube TV’s multiview functionality has been a huge quality-of-life improvement for sports fans. You can use it to watch multiple games concurrently without making space for extra TVs — but until now, you could only watch the predetermined sets of games that YouTube thinks would appeal to most viewers. An incoming update changes that, finally letting you customize multiview with your preferred combination of broadcasts, as spotted by 9to5Google.

While a big improvement over the curated multiview feeds YouTube TV launched with, it sounds like you’re still bound by certain limitations. For instance, although you can build your own bundle of specific games, you can still only choose them from a predetermined list, according to a report from Cordcutters News.

Google spokesperson Allison Toh confirmed the rollout in an email to The Verge, noting it’s currently only available for NBA League Pass and men’s and women’s NCAA basketball. “We hope to gradually bring this to more live sports over the next few months,” Toh wrote.

I’m hoping these lists will eventually contain all games currently airing within their respective sport or league. As of this writing, however, YouTube TV’s help site still alludes to varying regional broadcast differences and server-side resources that limit what’s possible.

My ultimate dream would be to build a multiview of games from any sport or any channel (Sunday Ticket would be nice for the 2024 NFL season, just a thought!), but for now, I’ll take all the baby steps I can get.