Apple and Major League Soccer (MLS) have entered into a 10-year partnership starting in 2023 — a huge step for both parties. Now, two years later, a new report sheds light on how that partnership is going, including an inside look at viewership numbers and more.
New Viewership Details for MLS Season Pass
Apple and MLS have historically been very secretive when it comes to the performance of the MLS Season Pass. But here's an inside look at how things are going.
Paul Tenorio writes for The Athletic (Apple News+ link):
Sources… familiar with the numbers told The Athletic that an average of more than a million people watch MLS games on Saturday across all games, that about 94 percent of subscribers think the Season Pass is “significantly” better than previous broadcasts, and that playoff viewership has grown by about 50 percent from 2023 to 2024. That number may have been helped by Messi and Miami in the playoffs, as well as the huge push around Miami’s playoff opener, but the audience was still growing even without Miami’s three playoff games.
Unlike other streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and even Apple TV+, it’s hard to find a good benchmark to compare these numbers to.
Is a million viewers a week on Saturdays a good thing? It’s hard to say, since we don’t know how much those numbers have grown, and it’s hard to compare the MLS Season Pass to any other streaming offering.
The 50 percent increase in playoff viewership points to a positive outlook, though, as does MLS’s recent comment that subscriber numbers are “better than expected.”
Apple’s Strong Commitment to MLS Deal
The full report is worth reading, in part for its wealth of detail about the inner workings of the Apple-MLS partnership. For example:
According to many people involved in the production, one of the standout achievements of the first two years has been Apple's commitment to the project. Apple has built a large team focused on the Season Pass, and they regularly interact with MLS leaders. Apple CEO Eddy Cue recently attended a meeting of the league’s sports and competition committee to discuss with owners what Apple is doing to help the league move forward and what MLS is doing to grow in the coming years, sources said.
Apple and MLS had a lot to gain when they entered into a 10-year deal, but they also had a lot to risk.
- Apple is investing a ton of money not only in broadcasting MLS, but in becoming the official sponsor of the entire league.
- MLS is pushing viewers toward streaming, which is risky given that many sports viewers have linear viewing habits.
Overall, it appears the partnership has been very healthy and beneficial for both companies so far.
Apple’s ambitions for sports are clearly bigger than MLS’s, but perhaps its efforts in that area will help it get a foot in the door, and More and more leagues are trying to move to streaming.
What are your takeaways from the report? Let us know in the comments.
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