Apple TV+’s Larger Opportunity With Live MLS Action
While much was made about the landmark TV rights deal between Major League Soccer and Apple TV+ a couple years back, both MLS and Apple appear to be just scratching the surface of what the product can be.
For instance: In the season’s early weeks, you’ll find games almost entirely on Saturdays, at specific time slots. There are some Sunday games, but that’s the only real deviation until Wednesday games are introduced around May — at which point, games appear in specific time slots depending on the time zone they’re in.
As the season goes on, other deviations arise. Last Friday saw NYCFC take on the Columbus Crew, there will be more Friday games in the future, and Thursday games get introduced, too. But these changes are small, come halfway through the season, and don’t really feature the SPOTLIGHT treatment. They’re games on Apple, because all MLS games appear on Apple. The attention isn’t necessarily greater (not that we’d know anything about viewership), nor is the pomp and circumstance.
The notable drawback to the MLS-Apple TV+ relationship thus far is that it quickly commoditized MLS action as an Apple product. There’s obvious value to that given the upside to being an Apple product. But like other programming on Apple TV+, there appears to be limited effort in differentiation from one another (even if, I’d argue, Apple actually has more of a decisive content “brand” than other streamers do there).
Being an Apple product doesn’t need to be doom for MLS, however. Rather, it just needs to be on the list of benefits to the relationship, instead of the primary benefit to the relationship.
As the biggest U.S. league to go streaming-only, MLS matches can be moved around inside Apple’s schedule without much care for traditional dayparts, other programming considerations or advertiser concerns. While getting parked on Saturdays (and Wednesdays) was a step to create a unified block of content for fans to sit with, there could be more value in making MLS games “always on” throughout a calendar week.
The same goes for game times. Nearly every Los Angeles Galaxy home game this season starts at 7:30 p.m. (first kick at 7:40 p.m.) local time. Why? Apple could work with MLS to program those games at a variety of times throughout the night and week to have a constant stream of live content from noon ET all the way through midnight the next day. And instead of making fans choose which MLS match they want to watch in a crowded time slot, why not use staggered start times throughout the day so that fans are greeted by a new game by halftime of the first?
As the engine supporting continued growth for MLS, Apple can both create entire days of soccer content for fans to tune into, and spread that out across many days and showcase nights. Maybe they try for the traveling show treatment (à la College Gameday) so audiences both on-site and on TV can learn more about the league’s various traditions, club histories and more. But when you’re Apple, what’s the real drawback to having games on almost every day of the week?
Potential spring/summer/fall programming could look like this…
Sunday: MLS Roadshow (morning) | Spotlight MLS Match (afternoon)
Monday: Spotlight MLS Match (evening)
Tuesday: Spotlight MLS Match (evening)
Wednesday: TV Series Episode Drop (morning) | MLS Matches (evening)
Thursday: Spotlight MLS Match (evening)
Friday: TV Series Episode Drop (evening) | Friday Night Baseball (evening)
Saturday: MLS Studio Programming (morning) | MLS Matches (all day)
There’s so much more Apple can do here as well. Interactive show and match airings for iPhone users, documentaries, new movie drops, 30-min magazine journalism-style profiles on certain players in MLS, segments on the history of soccer in the United States (and Mexico and Canada)… all of these initiatives help grow Apple from just “the place where MLS games are” to a soccer content hub.
And because the service has the flexibility to program anything around these soccer games, it can also easily avoid being pigeonholed into being the MLS Network. Rather, they can use soccer as the way to anchor audience eyeballs onto the service, and then sell them on the other content and vice versa, much like traditional TV already does.
That’s the balance Apple TV+ and other streamers can strike over the next few years, should they choose to do so. They don’t need to look like traditional TV, but can embrace some lessons from traditional TV to enhance the entire offering in ways geared around content promotion and keeping audiences inside your own funnel.
Unlike the other streaming/live sports arrangements, though, Apple’s MLS deal is complete rights, and with no local blackouts — not just a one-off game or single day of action. When San Diego F.C. joins as team No. 30 next year, that’s 30 games (two per team) per week to play around with and schedule as desired.
Embracing that flexibility and avoiding boxing itself in is how Apple TV+ can best make use of its current programming, while also growing the runway to expand into a lot more in the coming years.
