• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, January 5, 2014

Users of the Yahoo Sports smartphone app can now create their own instant replays for redistribution. The major update to the sports news app includes a “Loops” tool that allows users to extract a few seconds of game highlights, apply filters, effects and text to create an animated GIF.

The “Loops” tab is found in the news page associated with specific games from the major sports leagues. A user can find the specific moment in the game to clip by scanning by period or by major play. The tool then offers editing features for containing the action within the clip, applying a loop effect and building a headline. Slow motion and freeze frames can be edited into the Loop as well. The clip is added to the news feed for the game and can be shared across the major social networks.

In just a few days since the app was updated, the Loops feature is already proving popular with fans. At least one of the weekend NFL playoff contests was turned into over 400 user-generated loops.

Coverage of the new Loops feature at TechCrunch reports that Yahoo is using video clip editing technology from its second-screen app IntoNow. That TV viewing app allows a user to clip a moment from the show they are watching and post it with comments to the feed being viewed by others.  The users of Yahoo Sports and IntoNow cannot actually view the full games in the apps themselves, but the clipping feature does allow the user to access small sections of a few seconds from anywhere in the broadcast.  

The Loops feature is part of a Yahoo Sports app upgrade for iOS 7. It includes Loop support for games in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB as well as the NCAA.