In principle, I agree. There should be other payment options though. Maybe you can pay $3 for a single game, like three times. After that, you have to buy a package (minus what you’ve paid for this season). Or have the option to break it up over 3 payments. Or have in be prorated as the season goes along, like MLS Live used to do. Or maybe a bundle of 5 games for $10, and then a required season package after that. I think $79/$99 is fair FOR THE ENTIRE LEAGUE, but some extra options for non-diehards would help I suspect. MLS Live was $65 or $70 IIRC and that was without your local team and without national games, which was two or three a week back then, so we’re talking maybe 10 games a week. Now you get all the games, 14 a week. Hard to argue with the current price IMO.
MLS Live was $79.99 in 2017, $69.99 for single team pass. https://www.epluribusloonum.com/pla...94/mls-live-pricing-announced-for-2017-season
So for the same price (if you already had Apple TV+) you get 25% more games, more content, and it’s in far superior quality.
Right. I think ESPN+ reset a lot of people’s expectation, though it is now $99 a year as well. I do think MLS/Apple should allow a game by game purchase, the NBA does this now, but it is more expensive. I think $8-$10 a game, and includes blackouts.
Maybe if you only want to watch 3 or 4 games, thats a good deal. But I don't believe there are very many people who only want to watch 3 or 4 games a season.
Let's see if MLS does a half-season price. At one point, NHL Center Ice, NBA League Pass and MLB Extra Innings not only did an "Early Bird" price but also a half-season price and I think even a ~$20 price for the last two or so weeks. This is only the first half of the first year of ten. There's definitely room to grow.
Here's something to consider. I'm sure I'm not the only one in the boat of "attends every home game and has minimal-to-no interest in watching games not involving my team." How many of us would pay $70 or $100 for essentially just the away games? Yeah, I know I get so much more, but if I'm not watching them, why am I buying them? If the season tickets didn't come with the TV package, I'd be hard-pressed to pay $100 for essentially half a season of Crew games.
And I'll just reiterate my former diatribe: If they were offering just the away games for say $75, that's less than five bucks a game. So you're willing to pay $800 to watch half the season at ldc but not willing to pay $75 to watch the other half from your couch? Five bucks just isn't that much. I don't know about anyone else but it would kill me to miss fully half the Crew's games because I was too cheap to fork over 75 bucks.
Exactly. I'm sure I'd begrudgingly pay the $100 under that same logic of the $5/game fee. I remember the pain of the TW years and that was far from ideal.
But the point is to give everyone all of the games and great content and hope that they become MLS fans rather than just fans of an MLS team.
NFL Sunday ticket also doesn’t do a team package and they probably never will ( despite the rumor possibilities) It’s good business to package an entire league if games and not a single team regardless of team. All I’m hearing is people who are cheap asses making excuses. But hey if you’re that poor I’m sure you have a friends house you can watch it at. If you live near Dublin you can come to my house.
They can hope all they want but you and I know that the quality of play will have to significantly improve before that happens.
I disagree. Much easier to make a local fan a fan of the local team. This is the case across literally all sports, here and internationally.
I’m not sure it is. We can agree to disagree, that’s fine. I think MLS showed Apple all the local ratings and said the league is growing blah blah blah. And then Apple asked what the national ratings looked like, MLS completely ignored the question, and just said instead of looking at this as a deal for the whole league, you are getting the rights for every single local market, and all the fans that give us good local ratings will sign up. One good market multiplied by 29 is a much better opportunity than one shit market (national casuals).
Don't forget that Apple TV is also essentially a league wide jersey sponsor too. That Dilly guy's placement of the logo on the sleeve will bring them tons of new Apple TV subscribers for sure.
MLS Season Pass drops price for midseason, Apple says service uptake beat its own expectations - 9to5Mac MLS Season Pass on Apple TV is dropping its price to account for the fact that about half of the season is now over. The 2023 pass subscription is now available for $49 (down from $99), with an additional $10 discount for Apple TV+ subscribers. The monthly subscription price is unchanged. Although Apple does not release viewership figures, Apple SVP of services Eddy Cue commented this week that MLS Season Pass had exceeded its own expectations and doing “much better than forecasted” in terms of both subscription and viewership numbers. The reduced $49 price covers the rest of the 2023 season. The subscription will renew (unless cancelled) at the standard full season price when the 2024 season commences next year.
Smart move. I believe NBA and MLB do the same type of midseason discount with their league subscriptions; not so sure about the NFL. Get people hooked and then keep them as a customer going forward.
Indeed they do. The MLB package is already discounted. Sidenote: One year, they had a July 4th promo for $20 for the rest of the season. That's how they got me. At one point, both those leagues (plus the NHL) had early bird, regular and half-season pricing. There was also playoff pricing that took effect with about two weeks left in the season. According to the internets, you can still get NHL Center Ice, despite the fact that the games are on ESPN+ with (IIRC) the ability to select a specific team's broadcast in most cases. Some channels aren't included for various reasons, such as they broadcast in French. I don't know if DirecTV's Sunday Ticket had special pricing, but they usually did something like "sign up on a two-year contract and get one season of Sunday Ticket at no additional cost." They had a regular price with the games and then there was a higher tier with Red Zone and I think a channel of live stats.
MLB and the NBA do this. NFL cannot since CBS and FOX demand ultra-premium pricing (meaning no single-team subscriptions and no midseason discounts) to protect their telecasts.
You really think Apple signed this deal without knowing the full details on both local and national viewership? I for one do not think that happened. This wasn't Sinclair buying Fox Sports.
This whole deal centers on the STH arrangements. I'm not remotely interested in trying to calculate the numbers - how many STH's are there in all of MLS? - but clearly the vast majority of subscribers are from that group. If it's less than 80% Id be shocked and may be in the 90% range. So the question has to be: how much is MLS (or the teams) paying them per customer? Because that's where the money is in this deal. If that's what Apple figured on, then they're likely happy, but they obviously knew the league wide sth numbers before.they ever signed the deal. The only question is just how much more were they looking for? And the answer, since they're not stupid, is probably not that much.