Apple TV coverage (ongoing thread)

Its literally impossible to have a real discussion about this without people getting defensive. Bottom line is casual fans cannot find or watch the league

 

They can if they have more than a single digit IQ. If they can't find and watch those games they probably can't solve the old kid's mazes you would find at fast food restaurants. There are probably quite a few people who, like me, chose not to pay full price this year after getting a significant discount in year 1.

Meanwhile, that "article" from Ourand that WST relies on so heavily literally admits he made the number up using some of the worst logic humanly possible and also admits he has no access to the real numbers. It's below the caliber of tabloid journalism.

 

So in other words you don’t really know what those numbers you quoted represent.

 

The AppleTV+ app for Android should be released soon.

https://9to5mac.com/2025/02/12/apple-tv-app-on-android/

 

MLS Season Pass is available free for T-Mobile users starting next Tuesday. Seems like Apple/MLS learned their lesson last year.

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/offers/t-mobile-and-metro-customers-score-mls-season-pass-on-us

 

Heads up, it turns auto renew on. Make sure you manually cancel if you don't want to auto renew

 

I guess it depends on what you define as a casual fan. For example I don't really watch hockey but I will sometimes watch if I run into a game. That has never translated to me spending a dime or intentionally investing any more time or effort into watching. What does MLS benefit from such fans?
If your talking fans that are interested in the product but have been priced out or are not computer savvy enough to figure out Apple TV. I am not sure how much this really impacts growth, my guess is not a lot. So the question is since we signed a 10 year contract. How do we bring in new fans?
They have made some changes with the Sunday game being free to everyone. Not sure if they will continue the game of the week presented both on fox and apple which is also for free. Personally I think that is pretty good. Maybe make the lower division games free all the time?

 

is there a list of free games that are on Apple?
i'm in UK and used to watch MLS when it was on Sky, but not seen anything since it went on Apple.
I'm not going to pay for MLS but would be interested in watching the free games on Apple.
MLS really do need to get games on Sky or somewhere they are easily accessible for free (although Sky is not free!).

 

Like that they have one "free" game outside of apple TV. Wish it was the same day and time every week but it's better than nothing.

 

I'm assuming they'll fill in the blanks late in the season, but right now they've got 1 game listed for Fox/FS1 during the last 8 weeks of the season.

 

FOX's big money maker is college football (and FOX itself, NFL). They may pick up a couple of more games but not until after they know the CFB/NFL schedules.

 

Yep
I just saw this on a sports email I get called The Gist
"Midway through their landmark four-year, $240M deal, the NWSL announced broadcasting changes yesterday, increasing the number of games airing on both ESPN and CBS while adding Victory+ as a free streaming partner. It’s a crucial move to increase access to the 14-team league and comes with two new squads (Boston Legacy FC and Denver Summit FC) set to debut in 2026."

Increase access? I thought the paywall was the way to build a fanbase?!

 

I have Apple TV+ (where I watch a lot of their shows), I get Season Pass free through T-Mobile, and I'd say I've probably watched parts of 3 or 4 games this entire season. I have no idea who is good, what the standings look like, and I'm honestly not sure when MLS Cup even happens anymore.

The league is so far off the radar for me, and it's largely because of the combination of all the games being crammed together in overlapping time slots and the lack of ability to just stumble on a game flipping through the channels on my TV. Before this deal FC Dallas had every non-nationally televised game on our OTA channel 14.1 (MyTV affiliate) and people discussed them as part of the local sports landscape. Now I don't even hear people talking about them at Matadors NPSL games like they used to. MLS went for the true fan approach over the wide net approach. It gave them a ton of money but reduced visibility pretty significantly. They need some place to consistently put a feature match each week, preferably on network/OTA TV and not an inconsistently scheduled moving target of 2-3 locations.

On the other hand, I've watched almost every NASCAR Xfinity series race this year because it's always on CW and even when I don't plan to watch I stumble across it and end up sticking with it. Xfinity series races are up over 100k in average viewership compared to last year while the main Cup series has dropped about 400k due to races being split between Fox, FS1, TNT/HBO Max, Prime, USA (without Peacock), and NBC.

Minimizing outlets is a good approach. Minimizing visibility isn't.

The next broadcast deal will be fascinating. MLS Friday or Sunday Night on CW wouldn't be a bad idea. Go with a 7pm ET start every week of the season.

 

For all the anecdotal talk about finding games "flipping through channels" the actual ratings data never showed any significant number of people doing that. In fact what little ratings data we have from both the pre-MLS Season Pass days and now shows that on average Season Pass is getting significantly higher ratings on average across the board when you compare apples to apples. That is, comparing the reported over 100K average per game to every MLS game, not just the nationally televised ones. There were reports that regional MLS games were pulling thousands of viewers in some cases. Not tens of thousands, but just thousands.

So given the actual data we have, how is Season Pass in anyway a failure other than people's personal biases against subscriptions and/or Apple?

 

I’m going to ask a question here for the peanut gallery.

IIRC, Direct Kick’s condensed matches were about 15 minutes. After that you could get them, I think at mlssoccer, and they were about 20 minutes. On Apple they’re 6-7 minutes.

How long was best? Me, I thought Direct Kick did it best. I felt that I could watch those recaps and could understand the match. The 20 minute versions didn’t add to that.

Why would you think that? To me it was really obvious that the Apple deal was about money and international reach. Never about building the fanbase here.

 

I’ll go 10 minutes. Sometimes apple are a little short, but 20 minutes is way too long.

 

CNBC has an interesting article today about Apple's interest in acquiring more rights to sports coverage. MLS coverage is used as an example of growing sports by eliminating blackouts.

 

It does feel like Apple is ready to try something similar to what NBC was doing with the multiple add-on packages at differing price points, but doing it at a global scale with things like F1.

Positioning themselves with a deeper overall sports portfolio will certainly help getting people used to going their app for the sports they want to see.

 

F1 is included as part of the regular Apple TV subscription.

Does Season Pass end up the same way at some point?

 

Is anyone else with androids having trouble watching? It won't work on my android browsers and the Apple app won't work either. It loaded really slow on my smart TV too and I had to click watch a second time because the first time there was an error. I haven't been impressed with AppleTV MLS Season Pass. ESPN+ doesn't have near the problems.

 

No, I only watch with other humans! The robots are not interested in MLS!

That said, sometimes the other humans interrupt, so maybe androids would be preferable!

Oh, wait, not that kind of android!
Sorry

 

Hey, I for one welcome our robot overlords!

 

I have been at a teaching conference all week and half the seminars have been on AI.

I'm awaiting for 'em.