Fox Sports Net was bought by Sinclair and made Bally Sports, but the issue was the same. The Fox Sports Net affiliates generally wildly overpaid for the rights, then tried to extort the cable operators / streamers. They lost. When it became Bally, they tried to do the same. They lost. Bally Sports got thrown into backruptcy and a bunch have basically folded, because no one wants to take on the original contracts. It happened in San Diego; the Padres are streaming via MLB.com and are now on local cable but their media revenue tanked.
MLS owners are fleeing the league after seeing this brilliant thread 1867639459585331325 is not a valid tweet id
This is the MLS ratings news? How many people are MLS fans but not watching on AppleTV? https://awfulannouncing.com/soccer/...e-down-massively-fox-year-two-apple-deal.html It should be noted that last year’s MLS Cup was played on a much lighter day for sports on television, with its main competition being the Army-Navy football game. This year’s final was played directly against the SEC Championship game at 4 p.m. ET on Saturday afternoon.
Even if I were an MLS fan or even if I wanted to watch a lot of MLS matches for some other reason I would never use any Apple product or service if there were any way to avoid it. There are problems with a lot of the companies I have to deal with but none even come close to the crappiness of Apple products and services. If MLS actually wants to grow their market then they really need to abandon Apple and just about all other monopolistic entities and open their matches up where everyone can easily and inexpensively view them. The greed of MLS will, of course, prevent that and they will continue to put everything behind the Apple blockade and charge absolutely outrageous prices for everything. Many Many years ago I lived in Dallas but, even then, attending an MLS match was an extra expensive outing and mostly quite unpleasant. And now I could not afford even one good ticket. MLS has become an elitist and bigoted organization kowtowing to the foolish or the rich people in each market. I watch the MLS final match and I am VERY glad I did not have to pay for it. Even at $5.00 per ticket it would have been over priced. MLS fulfills one part of the definition of "pornography" as it has "no redeeming social value."
Cable TV is a monopoly, and is not inexpensive. Average cost of an MLS ticket today: $45-$50. Which is roughly the average cost of an EFL match ticket. Average cost of a ticket to an NFL game: $120 Average cost of a ticket for an NBA game: $94 Average cost of a ticket to an NHL game: $90-$120
Those are all interesting prices but totally irrelevant. The fact is those are already established "sports" and have a following that can support such over pricing. MLS does not and they will never have the support they need if they continue to behave like those other greedy entities. But, until they do, they will get no money from me at least until they can provide some entertaining soccer instead of the garbage the call soccer. BTW: While Cable TV is a monopoly it is not one I ever deal directly with. All my entertainment is streamed but my internet provider is part of the monopolistic overlords it is a pretty small part of my monthly budget. I do not and probably will not use cable TV ever again. I live in an area where OTA reception is poor at best so I do not even use that. I stream everything. It is impossible to avoid the "industry" completely if you want to watch anything but I minimize all contact with the corrupt bureaucracy and such. MLS is potentially a good league but they tried to start from the top rather than building a grass roots following and then moving into the potentially more profitable realms of TV contracts and big stadium deals. I can remember attending two pro football matches in one day (I was in Dallas and the teams were the Cowboys and the Texans), an early and a late one, when I was just a boy (with just one friend) and we were given $40.00 total at the start of the day and we bought two tickets for each game (seats about 10 rows up level with the twenty yard line at the Cotton Bowl) some drinks and snacks and we each had money left over for use later that evening. While admittedly that was quite a while ago I cannot imagine two teenage boys attending two MLS matches in one day and having money left over from even a couple of hundred dollars at todays prices. MLS is an elitist league that attracts primarily the rich and prices everyone else out of the game.
I watched a decent amount of free MLS matches this year. Too bad the greedy, elitist Euro leagues didn’t offer the same.
If "MLS doesn't have the support" how come they had record attendance this season of more than 11 million for an average attendance of around 23,250? https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/mls-sets-all-time-record-for-regular-season-attendance
As moderators, we need to apologize to the forum for this. It's partially our fault. We tried to get PJ1, PJ2, PJ3... and a whole bunch of others. But the 233 top PJs all decided to follow other sports on other boards, so we were stuck with PJ234. We'll do better next time.
Oh man. That explains why the Whitecaps' ownership has decided to sell. They've seen the writing on the wall. It's all over if they can't attract fans like GoodHands and PJ234.
Apple knows them, and I'd imagine that MLS HQ knows them too. Snark aside, there isn't currently a reliable way to measure streaming viewers that's in a similar vein to Nielsen numbers for traditional broadcast media. Especially for Live streaming broadcasts. Traditional TV viewing is easier to track because the TV's and cable boxes have Nielsen tracking built in. Whereas streaming services can be viewed from any number of devices among smart TV's, smart phones, web browsers, streaming boxes (Roku, Apple TV, etc.), cable boxes, from within other streaming apps (Prime), etc. That doesn't begin to factor in those using a VPN either. One thing to keep an eye on in 2025 is how the WWE and Netflix announces and quantify's the viewership for WWE RAW. We also have to consider that there are people who don't/can't watch an event live and will choose to watch it in full at a later time.
If the live version is anything like the boxing event with Tyson, I suspect a lot of people will opt for watching later.
Well, the streaming services know all the data. Moana 2 does not get made if the original Moana doesn’t become the most streamed movie in history. I was wondering if any news good or bad had been leaked. I’m not really a Euro snob nor a supporter of just our domestic league. In my youth, I was a watcher of Soccer Made in Germany and a huge fan of the Tampa Bay Rowdies in what I now think of is the false dawn of soccer in the United States. So, I am a fan of the Chicago Fire but they been terrible for a long time. Thus, I tend to watch a lot of yanks abroad right now cause I don’t wanna pay to watch the Fire. I wonder if the extra paywall (beyond just getting Apple TV) has been deleterious or if my personal experience is an outlier.
I been saying for a while now garber just saying the word Millenials all the time is not an effective marketing strategy
Simply put, MLS needs stories told by good storytellers. You know, I’m not the biggest fan of promotion / relegation. I’ve never been a proponent that we must carbon copy everything the rest of Europe does just because that’s the way they do it. For example, there’s nothing more boring to me than City name FC as a team name. I’ve always hated that. Always will. I wish the league had the courage to be more original. At the same time, maybe there is something entertaining about a dog fight at the bottom. There’s a story. Where’s the story in MLS? Who are our storytellers? Listen, I can appreciate someone like an Andrew Wiebe. But does this guy excite you? When you listen to him, do you get hyped? What about Sacha Kljestan? Over and over again, the league is being promoted by people who are NOT promoters. Also, MLS Next Pro. Wait, what? Who was the genius behind that name? It’s a wonderful idea with a lot of potential but the marketing is terrible. Besides Messi…. What makes this league interesting to you? How is it relatable to YOU? At the end of the day, the league seems handicapped by its own desire to handicap its own potential. And the league seems to be catered to a niche audience even within our own country. I get when MLS was brand new and it couldn’t try to compete with the big dogs. But MLS isn’t a new thing anymore. And it’s still stagnating in its own mediocrity. Maybe I’m just getting older and crustier… but I find myself less interested in the league than in years past.
The history. Galaxy vs. Red Bulls was an incredibly meaningful final to me regardless of it being a ratings flop. I “related” to it more so than watching any Yank in the Serie A or Eredivisie for instance regardless of what they are achieving in those leagues.