The Apple TV Rights Deal is a Poison Pill for the MLS
This coming season there are changes coming to the viewing pleasure of the MLS. For starters, the US Open Cup and some 20 international games are coming to HBO Max as their primary home.
The MLS is now off the air from ESPN and now are going to be an almost exclusive streaming broadcast. In a decade, almost every MLS game from 2023 to 2033 would be exclusive to Apple TV+, something that is almost unheard of in the world. According to World Soccer Talk, FOX Sports, only gave the MLS $7m per season to have a select amount of games. They figured since the demand is lowering, registering a loss of 6% of viewership. Apple on the other hand gave the MLS an impressive $250m per season to be an almost exclusive.
To watch other leagues, for instance the Premier League the NBC family of networks have the games on many channels on TV as well as having every game on Peacock. The Champions League, Europa League, Paramount has a couple of games on TV and a Red Zone-esque show on CBS Sports. LaLiga and the Bundesliga are both on ESPN+ and on ESPN Deportes, these are how the MLS should’ve done the TV rights deal. Why bother making it an almost streaming exclusive, the league would not only decrease in viewership but to also lose fans in the process.
Not only would the viewership be even more down, but illegal streaming would be on the rise as well. In a video essay by Tifo Football, a British YouTube channel, one of the main reasons why there’s a rise in piracy is because it would be either too expensive or having to pay for far too many streaming services. In that same video, there are only three official channels: Sky Sports, BT Sports and Amazon Prime. While it may be counter intuitive with more possible ways to watch the games, the price to watch the Premier League rose to almost 30%. As a result, there have been crackdowns on people viewing games. The chairman of FACT, Kiernan Sharp, said that these crackdowns are ” to help ensure that the public are made aware of the dangers of using illegal streaming services and, more importantly, that they understand that there is the risk of criminal prosecution“.