News: Apple and Major League Soccer to present all MLS matches for 10 years, beginning in 2023

This is pretty much the streaming service I hoped it wouldn't be.

 

this seems like a good deal - why are you in opposition?

As a D.C. United Season Ticket Member you will receive:
• Multi-Year Apple TV Subscription included in your Full Season Membership, beginning with the 2023 MLS Regular Season!

 

I actually think this makes sense. For the first time, every MLS match is on the same provider. No more hunting around to see if it's FS1, Fox, ESPN, ESPN+, Telemundo or whatever. Apple TV+ is $49.99 a year which shouldn't be a deal breaker for someone interested in MLS.

 

I just looked it up, and I was paying $74.99 for the MLS "Shootout" package in 2004.

 

The MLS package will be an additional charge on top of subscribing to AppleTV.

I think this is a mistake. I think MLS is taking the short term money at the expense of longer term growth. When other sports leagues have gone to primarily online streaming or some other type of paywall their viewer numbers have gone down sharply shortly thereafter. The guy who used to run F1 cut a bunch of deals that put the races behind paywalls in various countries for more short term money, and predictably their viewership numbers declined sharply. The decline in viewership directly lead to less sponsors willing to put their logos on the cars and the ones who were still interested not willing to pay as much as they were before.

I could be wrong. MLS may not care about viewship numbers, since their national TV ratings suck so bad, and figure they can't do any worse going to AppleTV. Maybe Apple is an exception to the rule, but I won't be surprised in five years if MLS regrets making this deal.

 

So far I've seen that Apple TV is free, that you have to pay for it, but it includes MLS coverage, and that it costs, but you have to pay extra for MLS. I wonder which is the real situation?

I will consider it if it's free, or if you pay for the service, but I won't pay for the service AND pay extra for MLS.

 

I am surprised its a 10-year commitment but I am sure it has some outs.

There were a number of reports (Athletic, others) that no traditional sports provider was really willing to step up. If apple is going to change how its platform works to fit how the more common sports streaming providers (and ImNumber10 makes a good point) make content available then I think this should work.

AppleTV started with Major League Stick-, er, baseball earlier this year so this is not their first attempt.

In relation to Formula1 - F1 itself runs/owns F1TV.com which seems to be doing quite well. If Apple even comes half-way close to how that platform works it will be awesome - content is available live and almost immediately after; and up to 50 years of races plus qualifying sessions and all sorts of other stuff like the F2 F3 and Porsche Cup races, tech analysis, interviews, etc) is available on demand.

 

It seems if one is an STH then you get a subscription included in the STH package; non-STHs will probably have to pay for games - I expect on a per game basis, or group of games/team package or for all MLS games. Anyone know how Apple is doing it with MLB content?

 

here is some perspective on the deal. I wonder what MLS is getting per match? Maybe not even $100k per match in the early years - probably tied to viewership. MLS gonna need some higher profile marquee players....

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Disney loses bid for the rights to stream Indian Premier League cricket matches.

The rights, which sold for nearly $3 billion, went to Viacom18, a joint venture between Paramount and Reliance Industries

This article is part of our Daily Business Briefing
By Benjamin Mullin
June 13, 2022

Viacom18 has won the rights to stream a package of popular cricket matches from the Indian Premier League, according to two people with knowledge of the bidding, snatching a significant weapon in the streaming wars away from one of its chief rivals, the Walt Disney Company.

The deal makes Viacom18 — a joint venture between Paramount and India’s Reliance Industries — an increasingly powerful player in the Indian media market. It could also slow Disney’s quest to reach between 230 million and 260 million Disney+ subscribers globally by 2024.

Viacom18 paid nearly $3 billion for the rights in an auction on Monday, according to the people, who would speak only anonymously because the bids were private. That price is a significant increase from the $2.5 billion that 21st Century Fox paid for the combined TV and streaming rights package in 2017. Disney took over the rights when it bought Fox in 2019.

Still to be determined is the outcome of an auction that will award a smaller package of nonexclusive streaming rights.

A spokeswoman for Disney had no immediate comment.

The auction for cricket rights posed a messy equation for Disney. The company has at least 50.1 million subscribers in India, but they don’t pay as much as their counterparts in the United States. For Disney, the auction meant paying a premium to keep relatively low-revenue subscribers or ceding a valuable property to its rivals in the region.

While Disney risks some subscriber erosion in its Disney+ business in India, the company’s chief executive, Bob Chapek, has said the cricket matches are “not critical” to achieving its subscriber targets.

By securing the streaming rights, Viacom18 gets a marquee property for its streaming service. The company recently received a $1.78 billion infusion from Bodhi Tree Systems, an investment firm created by the former 21st Century Fox executives James Murdoch and Uday Shankar.

Since its inception 15 years ago, the Indian Premier League, the world’s largest cricket league, has turned the once-staid game into a commercial juggernaut. At $13.4 million per match, the league’s broadcast deal means Indian cricket, on a per-match basis, surpasses English Premier League soccer (about $11 million per match).

Cricketers have become household names, earning multimillion-dollar contracts, and viewership for the league has soared on streaming platforms, though the number of television viewers has fallen this year.

 

I hate Apple TV, but not quite as bad since I'm a season ticket member.

 

They BETTER keep Dave Johnson on the call

 

This is the most concerning part so far. I like local broadcasts to be local broadcasts.

 

MLS and Apple TV, please add in Dave Johnson to this deal next season

 

Paywalls no longer bother me. How many folks still received only over the air broadcasts of the major networks? Probably not many, and moreover they probably aren't in a demographic that any sports league (or any other venture) really is interested in targeting. Cable is a paywall, streaming services are paywalls. I certainly pay more for media now than in the days of the over the air broadcasts, but I can now watch Serie A, the EPL, Formula 1, etc. live. Hell, I can watch Uruguayan Primera if I want to. How many of us here remember "Soccer Made in Germany" and other abridged versions of European matches presented days after they were played? No thanks.

 

I'm not so sure this is a mistake. MLS is getting $250M per year from Apple alone. This is more than the $150M-$200M that The Athletic was reporting this spring that MLS was likely to get for *everything*, and the $250M doesn't include what ESPN and Univision will likely pay for linear TV rights, since they're both expected to show some games nationally as a part of this deal.

Plus, Apple is likely getting the NFL Sunday Ticket package starting in 2023. With the NFL having Thursday Night games on Amazon, and the NHL showing some games exclusively on Hulu and ESPN+, watching more sports on streaming services is the way of the future.

 

a WHOLE LOT more details: especially that the deal is worth $250m per year in the early years. Per the CBA on TV rights - team budgets will increase ~$1m per team in 23 and 24, and then go up approx $2m per team in addition to the already agreed upon 5% - 6% increases in roster spend for '23-'27. So, we might well start seeing more names associated with European leagues over here...
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MLS has sold all of its global media rights exclusively to Apple, becoming the first major U.S. sports league to go all-in with a digital media company. MLS still is negotiating with linear TV networks, including ESPN and Fox, to broadcast select matches. However, those games would not be exclusive to the broadcasters; they would simulcast with Apple. MLS execs said that Apple is not paying a straight rights fee for the package of rights. Rather, Apple is paying a minimum guarantee that sources say is worth $250M per year starting in ‘23. MLS will start to bring in more revenue as Apple sell subscriptions for a newly launched MLS subscription offering. “What's different here is traditionally media companies pay rights fees, and you sell ads,” said MLS Commissioner Don Garber. “This is a partnership. And that partnership's core is a subscription business that we're going to build together, and we're going to get a guarantee against the revenues that will be achieved on the subscription business. Then, we go over those guarantees, we'll have the opportunity to make more money, which is really unique in sports media.”

COULD SIGNAL SHIFT IN SPORTS: The deal potentially represents a huge shift in sports media, as leagues and conferences have spent the better part of a decade trying to convince deep pocketed digital companies like Apple to invest more in sports content. Apple, which recently cut a deal with MLB, has participated in numerous discussions over the past several years, but this marks its biggest move so far into sports. “Never has there been a league where there's a single place you can watch every single game,” said Apple Senior VP/Services Eddy Cue. Apple’s MLS deal terms will have an undetermined number of games made available for free through the AppleTV app. Apple’s streaming service, AppleTV+, will carry a more significant number of games, as well. The main component of this deal, though, is a subscription service that will have every MLS game with no blackouts.

PACKAGE INCLUDES EVERY GAME: The yet-to-be-named streaming service will live within the Apple TV app and will include every game, including ones that previously were part of national TV packages on ESPN, Fox and Univision and those that aired locally under individual club deals. The newly expanded Leagues Cup featuring every MLS and Liga MX club will also be included in the service, as will select MLS NEXT Pro and MLS NEXT matches. MLS and Apple execs said that they have not yet developed a price point for the service, but all MLS season-ticket holders will receive access to the package at no additional charge. MLS will produce all of its matches, something Garber said will require a “significant” investment, but will ensure consistency across the league and allow for more technological innovation.

APPEALING DEAL FOR APPLE: MLS planted the seeds for this type of all-encompassing deal in recent years by instructing each of its teams to ensure that their local broadcast agreements expired by the end of the ‘22 season. The fact that MLS could offer all its games with no geographic restrictions or carve-outs made the package particularly appealing to Apple, Cue said. Another attraction for Apple: MLS touts that its young and tech savvy fan base. Survey data indicates the average MLS fan is 39.6 years old and that Generation Z and Millennials account for 58% of its fan base. Apple’s MLS deal will start next season, coinciding with a restructuring of the MLS schedule that will see most regular-season matches played on Saturday nights. Having a series of matches on Saturday nights with staggered start times will allow the league to offer a whip-around show akin to NFL Red Zone through its new streaming service and Apple TV+. There will still be some mid-week games, primarily on Wednesday nights. Some matches could be played in other time slots based on stadium conflicts or linear TV scheduling.

 

um, me?! only OTA for network tv. I am happy not to be targeted....

 

The price point is the main thing for me, because I don't give a damn about any other MLS teams or games. If it's 15-20 bucks a month, its just Flo with better production values.

Everyone is talking about the studio shows and stuff they are going to do, but fans of individual teams are gonna lose any pre/post game that they had.

 

As if those were high value quality productions.

 

As the resident cranky old fart, I don't like this deal. There I said it. Move on nothing to see here, I no longer fit Garber's demographic.

 

My main gripe with paywalls is that every time. a free piece of content (or content I got with my plan) goes behind the paywall, the providers don't adjust the cost for their plans. 5 ys ago, I had the top tier VZ plan which included free streaming from most of the channels our household needed at the time (NBCSN, FS1, ESPN, BeIN, Disney, Bravo, CBS, etc) which got me EPL, Bundisliga, UCL/UEL, Serie A, La Liga, PSGs games, my kid's programming, my wife's trashy TV, etc.

I've since downgraded my plan 2 tiers, but would need to pay each of those channels for their streaming subscriptions to have that content which takes me well past the combined cost for the top tier programming package.

In the meantime, those channels have replaced their free programming with the Turkish Super Liga, bowling, division 3 lacrosse, Red Bull cliff diving, and the Cornhole world championships. Clearly not the same value of programming they were selling before things got paywalled.

We've been sliding toward a cord cutting for a while, but its still a PITA with some older TVs in the house that have limited HDMI inputs necessary to have the casting devices of which Apple+ would add one we're not currently using.