The 2024 MLS TV thread

Don't tell worldcrookeddytalk that. Him trying to spin it negatively might blow a fuse.

 

It's never about each race. If it was people would have stopped watching during the Mercedes domination. It's about the season, the teams, the personalities and the history.

It's really about 7 teams of petrolheads based northeast of London, 2 in northern Italy and a couple of back markers in Switzerland and the US that make up the grid.

 

A sport that isn't about sport is a reality show. I don't watch those. I do watch some of the races though but I mostly fast forward them.

 

There's also, as I understand it, significant sport-related things that take place away from the track, especially in the offseason. Technology updates in the cars for example. Drivers, crew, R&D, etc. moving between teams as well. I too tend to ignore the "soap opera" parts of sport but no sport is just about what happens "between the lines" on game day.

 

I watch it for the sport.

 

Maybe the glitch will get us out of the habit of slapping down a tweet and calling it a day without even a one-sentence summary of the content.

 

http://amp.awfulannouncing.com/soccer/did-anyone-actually-watch-the-mls-cup-final-on-apple-tv.html

Nielsen data points to an alarmingly small streaming audience for MLS Cup. Assuming the Nielsen estimates are even remotely accurate......uh oh.

 

So over 400K on FOX watched the Cup final but they estimate only 65K on Apple MLS Season Pass. I find it hard to believe that more people who won't pay for Season Pass watch for some reason. Just me though.

 

One of the things I prefer about BlueSky is that there is an option to copy a skeet's text. Makes it very easy to link to the skeet, but also quote the text.

 

That's for Apple TV+, not MLS Season Pass. The viewership numbers for the time slot were 287K. IF those were all watching MLS Cup... that's puts the final viewership at around 800K. The thing is, we don't have the actual viewership numbers for MLS Season Pass, Unless those are released, we simply won't know the true number.

 

Exactly, we won't ever know and I fail to see the reason why we need to know. The league is growing on social media interactions, revenue is up, attendance is up and other than New England and Chicago almost every team is in a new facility made for soccer or soon will be. Unless you believe that one day MLS is going to be the biggest league in the world which I don't, what's the point? Does anyone believe anymore that the league will fold, because that was always the biggest concern about an American soccer league?

 

1867637029137527149 is not a valid tweet id

MLS moves is panicking

 

Burner account?

 

It's hard to know if the information is being presented accurately. The Awful Announcing writer doesn't seem to know that MLS isn't on Apple TV+, so that make me skeptical of his ability to interpret the information he's receiving. However, Apple TV+ subscribers could have watched, as MLS Cup wasn't paywalled on MLS Season Pass. Is Nielsen tracking Apple TV+ viewers or all viewers on the Apple TV platform? If Nielsen has been reliably tracking MLS Season Pass viewership, why haven't we seen numbers previously? There's a link to the source, but it's a paywalled newsletter that I'm not going to read.

 

As I look at the article again I see that the Nielsen data doesn't track specific Apple TV content. It says that Apple TV+ had 287,000 viewers of anything during the timeslot, and 222,000 viewers in the same slot a week before, then the writers make the inference to attribute that 65,000 difference to MLS Cup viewers. But the question remains, is that data only for Apple TV+ subscribers or for all viewers on the Apple TV platform? With Apple's terrible brand muddling of this stuff, I don't have confidence in generalist narrative-driving bloggers to understand the difference.

 

I'd never pay musk $8 lol

 

Apple TV provides limited free games all year to sell MLSSP to its subscribers. They showed the Cup as well this year and a few playoff games.

 

All these "Apple isn't promoting MLS clowns" don't realize that the Apple TV app (comes with ALL Apple products) has literally 2 tabs - Apple TV+ and MLS. If that isn't exposure, I don't know what is.

 

All over Twitter accounts who usually follow and talk about USMNT are all of a sudden talking about MLS viewership numbers. The only time those accounts mention MLS is to shit on it or critize something even though they never watch it. Aside from Will (MLS Moves) who is a fan and dedicates his time to MLS, the others are just deep down celebrating this. Never fails with those people.

As for viewership numbers, if it's true and Apple deal is failing then we should find out in a couple of years. Pretty sure Apple has some clause that they can get out of the contract if MLS isn't doing what they expected. But until then we won't know.

 

Just an educated guess, but it seems that a very vocal segment of the Apple TV Deal detractors are also not fans of Apple. So much so, that they will just dump on Apple no matter what they and MLS do to help improve Season Pass.

 

I think it's a case of Nielson estimating the Apple TV+ audience but completely ignoring Season Pass.

 

As negative as I am, its a bit hard to believe that only 65k would have watched on season pass when that was their primary way of viewing the league all year. Something is off.

 

That's a lot of people watching a team that hasn't won much silverware in a long time.

Could have been worse..... could have had a lot of Spurs fans......

 

MLS needs to do better marketing it sport