Assessing the MLS and Apple TV partnership two years into the decade-long deal

When the Los Angeles Galaxy hosts the New York Red Bulls in MLS Cup on Saturday, fans can watch the game on Fox and Fox Deportes in the U.S. or stream it free of charge via the league’s broadcast partner, Apple TV.

Like many games this season, of which several included Inter Miami and Lionel Messi, the championship game will be free to watch on the streaming service even though it is also a subscription product. The issue is whether many viewers know this.

The innovative 10-year partnership between MLS and Apple has brought clear improvements, including broadcast quality across all games and accessibility worldwide without blackout restrictions. But it has also limited the league’s ability to grow an audience. With consumers continuing to move from linear to streaming options, MLS is left questioning if its pioneering deal came too early — especially in the saturated American sports marketplace and as the soccer-watching landscape expands to include the English Premier League, German Bundesliga, European Champions League and Mexico’s Liga MX.

“The question is, are we early? Are we on time?” MLS commissioner Don Garber said at a recent leadership conference in London. “And time will tell. History will judge it.”

If the last two years were about launching the app — MLS had to rush to get its production capabilities up and running in 2023 — the next few years will be about finding ways to reach new and bigger audiences, as well as polishing some of the issues that exist on the broadcasts. Growth ahead of and coming out of the 2026 World Cup is crucial, especially considering the 10-year length of the deal.

MLS leaders remain bullish on the potential of the partnership.

“We are very pleased with the product that we and Apple delivered to our fans,” MLS deputy commissioner Gary Stevenson said this week in a video interview from Los Angeles. “It starts with the product, and the product is excellent and has been well received. There are always things to improve, and we’ve got a list of 7,000 things, but that’s always the case.

“Apple doesn’t stand still. They want to continue to make the product better and better and better. This is very early in the project, and we are pleased with where we are, but we’ve got a lot of work to do together.”

What have Apple and MLS learned?

The fans watching Season Pass enjoy the product, but getting more people to tune in is the hard part. The number is also hard to judge from the outside as Apple does not share subscription data.

“We have more subscribers than we and Apple thought we would have,” Garber told the CNBC Sports videocast this week.

Sources — who have been kept anonymous to protect relationships, like others in this piece — briefed on the numbers told The Athletic that more than one million people watch MLS games on an average Saturday across all games, that around 94 percent of subscribers feel Season Pass is “significantly” better than previous broadcasts and that playoff viewership was up around 50 percent from 2023 to 2024. That number may have been aided by Messi and Miami in the playoffs, as well as a huge push around Miami’s playoff opener, but audiences were still up even removing Miami’s three playoff games.

Both Apple and MLS have focused on the quality of the broadcast and presentation of the product on the app. Apple’s nimbleness to add broadcast innovations in streaming has undoubtedly made the product better over the last two years. A multiview feature allows subscribers to watch up to four games at a time, while the service also allows viewers who are late to tune into a game to catch up on what they missed via selected highlights.

There have also been some hiccups, as expected.

Users have to manually switch to new games rather than being rolled from one game into another, a quirk that felt especially odd during the playoffs when games were being played concurrently. Audio issues have popped up across some of the broadcasts. Some of those problems could be attributed to a production process spread across MLS, IMG and NEP Group. MLS is also producing the broadcasts in multiple languages, complicating the process.

Sources familiar with the production said MLS slashed the budget from the first year into the second, but other sources said it wasn’t just a cost-cutting mission. Many cuts were about finding inefficiencies after overspending to launch the product in 2023, including overtime costs.

While MLS initially said broadcasts would use a minimum of 12 cameras, there have been games this year with six cameras, according to sources involved in the broadcasts. Stevenson insisted the number of cameras has not impacted the quality of the broadcasts. That may be true, but fewer camera angles also present fewer options for referees during video reviews of close calls.

“It’s like anything else, the more reps you take as a production company, the better you get,” Stevenson said. “And so as we have our team — with IMG and NEP and our group — we think that after two years, we now understand how to be as efficient as possible. We’re really in a good spot to continue to improve the production in year three and beyond.”

MLS executive Gary Stevenson says the Apple partnership has brought higher-quality broadcasts. (Andy Mead / Getty Images)

Stevenson pointed to the use of data in broadcasts as an example of that improvement, saying MLS will continue to hone analytics to inform and engage viewers. It’s an area where they see continued growth and value.

Broadcast talent has been mostly well-received by fans, but some broadcasts have struggled noticeably with lower-quality analysis. MLS has used a broadcast coach in 2023, and in 2024 hired an executive producer, Ignacio Garcia, to oversee all aspects of production, but there is room for improvement for some on-air talent.

One standout from the first two years, according to multiple people involved in production, is Apple’s commitment to the project. Apple has built out a large team to focus on Season Pass and they engage regularly with MLS’ leaders. Apple executive Eddy Cue recently sat in on a league sporting and competition committee meeting, sources said, to engage with owners about what Apple is doing to help push the league forward and to hear what MLS is doing to grow in the coming years.

Apple has also integrated the league and the Season Pass app across its entire ecosystem, including into the Apple Sports app, Apple Maps and Apple Music.

“The Apple deal for us is quite simple,” Garber said at the leadership conference. “We weren’t getting enough in terms of exposure, in terms of schedule, in terms of promotion from the linear networks, because we’re not just competing against the other leagues, we’re competing against every single (soccer) league that is selling their rights in the United States. We wanted to have a relationship with a company in Apple, arguably the largest, most innovative and most important company in technology in the world, that would lean into us in a way where it would be a partnership.

“When Apple was looking at getting in the sports business, they were really thoughtful. How could they use their global platform, how could they use their ecosystem? There’s all sorts of technology that will drive millions of subscribers, which is a positive thing for us, and we hope to see that (grow).

“If it continues to grow, we’re very much in the revenue-share mode with Apple, and it will turn out to be one of the greatest deals in sports history. If we’re wrong and the world doesn’t go into the streaming environment the way we think it is, then you just got to be smart. But I’m really bullish on Apple.”

What comes next for MLS Season Pass?

Across conversations with multiple sources involved in MLS Season Pass, one theme kept coming up regarding 2025 and beyond: growth and reach.

The league is keenly aware that it needs to generate more buzz in local markets and nationally. That has long been the case, but there is concern that they are losing some of the buzz in markets where they had a stronger foothold.

This season yielded some efforts to find those eyeballs, including a TikTok broadcast with an isolated “Messi Cam” during the playoffs. That feature helped MLS’ TikTok account gain 500,000 followers and also exposed a new audience to Season Pass. The sources said you can expect MLS and Apple to try to replicate those types of TikTok broadcasts.

MLS used a “Messi Cam” on TikTok during the MLS Cup Playoffs. (Chris Arjoon / Getty Images)

Apple also plays MLS games on devices in its retail stores, on Apple.com and will broadcast MLS Cup from Times Square this weekend. Those efforts are all pointed toward promoting the product. Apple has also been testing games for Apple TV+ subscribers throughout 2024 and will continue to push games there. A Box-to-Box-produced documentary on MLS will feature on Apple TV+, as well, to reach its estimated 25 million subscribers.

The reach of Apple TV continues to grow, too, according to Kantar’s Entertainment on Demand data, which should aid Season Pass. Apple TV is on more “living room devices” as the number of smart TVs in use across the world increases, and reports have indicated Apple is working on a deal to bring Apple TV to Android devices, which would especially help MLS’ reach in South America, where Android holds the majority of the market share. Apple has also been price-testing MLS Season Pass over the season, including price tests in different global markets to see what might work in increasing the international audience.

MLS also continues to engage with DIRECTV regarding increased availability in bars.

While fans have complained about uniform kickoff times at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the appointment viewing has coincided with league records in ticket sales and sponsorship revenue. Still, sources said Apple is considering introducing a Game of the Week in 2025, with a marquee game to be played on Sundays. The hope is that it becomes appointment viewing for all MLS fans in the same way Apple has found success with its Friday Night Baseball broadcasts.

MLS averages six of 14 games outside of the Season Pass paywall. Apple and MLS will continue to experiment with those free games, and advertising and marketing drawing attention to that access, as a way to bring in new fans.

Apple is still learning how to promote big games in a more “traditional” way that tells stories or makes moments feel big. On linear TV, big games are often promoted on a channel over several days. That typically includes ads or promo reads and discussions on other shows on that channel.

MLS plays an important role in improving those efforts, too. One way to do that is to create more ancillary content from its new studios and to make Season Pass a destination for content throughout the week. Currently, there is little incentive for fans to go to the app outside of game days.

MLS is looking to continue to grow its audience through innovative broadcasts. (The Columbus Dispatch)

The league is also planning to package its content differently outside of just the Apple universe to reach more fans. Where fans might see plenty of clips of CBS’ Champions League studios on social media, MLS content feels far less available.

“We do it with Bleacher Report and some others, but absolutely the idea of distributing more and more and more of our content, not only to the Apple ecosystem but outside the Apple ecosystem is one of our top priorities,” Stevenson said.

The efforts to increase audience go beyond content and marketing, however.

Discussions around improving the on-field product play an important role in growth, too, and that includes discussions around the league’s calendar — a switch to a fall-spring schedule is being weighed — as well as competitions like the Leagues Cup and considerations regarding player spend.

Cue’s presence at the committee meeting spoke to the league’s focus on all aspects of their partnership. As one source put it, Apple has made it clear they’re all-in on the project and eager to keep pushing it forward.

MLS hopes that commitment becomes as much a part of the league’s story as anything else.

“We’re viewed as one of the five men’s major leagues here in the United States, which is a great description, but at the end of the day we want to be viewed as one of the top soccer leagues in the world, which is a global market,” Garber told The Athletic in a sitdown interview this summer in his office at MLS headquarters in Manhattan. “Apple will be the link to audiences throughout the world.”

(Top photo: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)