Philips Hue Sports Live will light up your living room when England score this summer
Philips Hue is offering a little added immersion to World Cup games this summer, with custom lighting actions when a goal is scored.
Philips Hue has announced a new Sports Live mode designed to enable your smart lights to sync with the on-screen action… and it’s here just in time for the World Cup.
The Sports Live mode offers lighting effects that respond to what’s happening in the stadium – including on-field events like kick-offs, goals, red cards and yellow cards.
All you’ll need is a Hue Bridge or Hue Bridge Pro and at least one colour capable Hue light in the room or zone. It takes about 5-10 minutes to set up and, from there, you can access the Sports Live feature from the Sync tab in the Hue app. The feature is identified as “called “Sports Live – Championship 2026” presumably because Philips won’t have paid FIFA all the world’s money to be an official partner, so they can’t actually mention the World Cup itself.
Users can also choose their favourite team and follow individual matches from the aforementioned *ahem* “international tournament” to activate the feature. From here, the lights will react in real time as follows:
- Match started: green blinking for 5 seconds.
- Goal scored: a 5-second animation in the scoring team’s colours.
- Penalty shootout: blue blinking for 5 seconds.
- Yellow card: yellow blinking for 5 seconds.
- Red card: red blinking for 5 seconds.
- Second yellow card (resulting in a red): red-and-yellow blinking for 5 seconds.
- Break ends/ match resume: green blinking for 5 seconds.
- Upon victory: a 15-second animation in the winning team’s colours.
The new feature is powered by live score data and, to account for delays in broadcasting and streaming, users can sync up the match clock on their TV with the Hue app. This way you aren’t seeing a “five second animation in the scoring team’s colours” before the ball actually hits the net on your television. The scenes are automatically enabled at the start of the match and removed when the match ends. You can pause it and resume at anytime.
Chris Smith
