Apple TV buys all MLS broadcast rights for 10 years

I’m a sports fan because Bills games were shown for free on plug-in black-and-white TV back in the day.

 

How is subscribing to a streaming service to watch EFL Championship any easier than subscribing to a streaming service to watch MLS?

 

Isn't that how it used to be? All "sports" were "free" on over the air broadcasts, until they started "pay for view" with boxing and expanded to other sports via cable then to streaming?

 

But you had a very limited number of games you could watch. What the NFL is doing now is giving you access to certain geographically sanctioned games and a couple of national broadcasts but to you have to pay to get anything beyond that.

 

And you are "limited" now if you don't have/ can't afford all these streaming services. At least then I could watch a game for "free", without doing anything except turning on the TV.

 

To add that is why you probably had some many fans not directly from the home city end up being fans as they could/had to watch other teams.

 

Well not exactly for free unless you're talking about rabbit ears, and then you'd be unlikely to watch soccer on the limited number of available channels. Practically all I watch is soccer and art house flicks. I don't need cable for that. I can just subscribe to a couple of subscription services and save a ton of $. And Apple MLS is free for me. It's different for everybody, of course. But the streaming model is not necessarily bad for everyone.

 

Maybe MLS on Amazon would have been better??

 

Seems to me that at the end of the day, a buffet style model is superior - you pay for what you want and you don't have to pay for things you don't want, and specifically you don't have to pay for things you not only don't watch but that you do *not* want to support. The streaming model is way too fragmented right now, but if you had an aggregator that provided a convenient UI for picking and choosing what you want I think that would be the best model.

This would in theory also improve the quality of programming, if everyone has to compete for eyeballs and you can't produce slop and skate by just because it's part of a standard cable package.

 

I'm not talking about what it is now. I'm talking about a *hypothetical* buffet style model where you pick what you want and it's not overpriced. The streaming services at that point are no longer entirely verticals but just options that are part of all-encompassing buffet aggregators. The idea is that they'd be accessible to more people and thus the price goes down. And I no longer have to pay for things I *explicitly* do not want to support because I just don't pick them.

 

It is sad to say that all of our streaming subscriptions now total more than we used to pay for cable.

 

Maybe. But there's a lot more content available on demand than there ever was on legacy cable in addition to live events, plus you get the equivalent of unlimited DVR, don't need to pay a junk fee for "renting" the set-top box and have more flexibility in terms of opting out of services when you don't need them. There is plenty to complain about the current landscape of streaming services (not to mention the companies behind them) but the all-in-one cable model really needed to go.

 

This was always going to happen.

 

Never heard of it. Must be on a streaming service.

 

It’s on Apple TV+, but after watching about 3 minutes, I decided to pass.

 

I’m still not ready for DVR.

 

I have never once had a problem with the AppleTV app dropping the stream or requiring the login, since MLS started?

I have no idea how anyone could prefer the Amazon UI to AppleTV's... and certainly the picture quality on AppleTV is better.

Are you watching on some ancient device? Get an actual AppleTV, it's the best streaming box by far.

 

I have frequent problems at times with the AppleTV app on a MacBook hanging or actually shutting down. I don't know if it's my crappy wifi or what. And if I try to fast forward / rewind it often hangs or takes a long time as well.