MLS On Apple TV Is Already A Great Product … That Is Promoted Poorly

Rewind for a moment to last June, when Major League Soccer and Apple TV first revealed they would be partnering together for the next decade in a revolutionary worldwide streaming partnership. And imagine that they stressed these three points, in this order:

1. Starting in 2023, Apple TV would show roughly 40% of the league’s matches for free to anyone in the world with a high-speed internet connection.
2. The league would take over TV production and upgrade telecasts to a standard similar other major North American sports leagues and major soccer leagues around the world in terms of production quality and pre- and post-match programming.
3. Fans those who wanted even more MLS content could purchase MLS Season Pass for access to every single game in the league. The price ($99.99 yearly, $14.99 per month) would similar to packages in other North American sports leagues, but without regional blackouts and free to season-ticket holders.

That is the wonderful reality that longtime MLS fans are now catching up with after Week 1 of the new season, which began Saturday.

The improvement in broadcast quality relative to regional sports networks is so obvious it’s impossible to know where to start. And the overall number of weekly matches available for the cost only of an internet connection is now greater than what that number used to be when it required a more costly cable subscription.

Yes, local broadcasts are gone, so you can’t see every game your own team plays without also paying for Season Pass. But you can still see a sizable chunk.

In short, this new era has actually made the league a lot more accessible for most fans. Yet that’s an aspect of their new agreement MLS and Apple seemed to almost purposefully ignore when this agreement first launched, instead placing the majority of the emphasis on promoting the Season Pass subscription ahead of most other aspects of the deal.

The result was a skeptical fanbase that worried the league was actually going to become less available to the public, and a perception among some that the league was leaving working class fans behind. A sizeable contingent of American soccer fans who pay more attention to other leagues abroad were — and may even still be — under the impression that the entire league is now pay to view.

This promotional misstep certainly isn’t fatal, and it’s not entirely clear where the blame for it lies. But it should at least be concerning to league headquarters, in part because part of the appeal from MLS’ standpoint is Apple’s supposed ability to promote their products.

This isn’t the only time Apple TV has struggled with this particular issue. The streaming service has also put its Friday night Major League Baseball package in front of any paywall. But that’s a reality many local baseball fans don’t learn until their particular team’s game is a part of that package.

There are some who believe Apple can basically do no wrong. That’s ludicrous, of course. Like any company, It has sustained plenty of failures along the way to its current position, though perhaps it has learned better from them than others.

And in technology, Apple’s brand successes are built around the ideas of superior quality and maybe even a little elitism. The endless iPhone model roll-outs don’t cut costs, but they do add new functionalities. Apple News or Apple Music are designed to give you either the very best or a very personalized experience.

So perhaps it’s unsurprising to see there’s a struggle to highlight what is best about Apple’s new sports properties, in part because the very essence of big pro sports sort cut against the grain of Apple’s brand. No matter how much sports are monetized , their ultimate appeal to fans is the community they create. And their best function in society is uniting people people of different ethnic, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds who otherwise would be polite strangers at best and enemies at worst.

Apple should be lauded for making so many of these MLS games free and realizing real pro sports need to be a less exclusive experience than watching Ted Lasso. Now it just needs to get more comfortable actually banging the drum to let others know this is what it’s doing. Because the quality of the product is strong enough that getting people to the free stuff is what will ultimately drive more Season Pass subscriptions, and grow the value of the league and Apple’s partnership within it.