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Apple and MLS to present all MLS matches for 10 years, beginning in 2023

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Re: Apple and MLS to present all MLS matches for 10 years, beginning in 2023

#141

Post by ericmay »

bachmeier wrote: post #130
ericmay wrote: post #61

This is a great move for Apple. The game-changer for them, IMO, is to buy the rights to broadcast Pac-12 and Big-10 football (and ideally all sports). I am an avid college football fan. Trying to find games to watch is a pain without some sort of lame ass subscription somewhere. I already pay for Apple TV + because it's bundled with other services that I use. With the incoming threat of ESPN + Disney + SEC fracturing…

At one point we had 12 different channels that carried college sports and maybe half the games we wanted to watch weren't available.

Yea… it’s like you can’t even pay for it!

Re: Apple and MLS to present all MLS matches for 10 years, beginning in 2023

#142

Post by wollsmoth »

jayknight wrote: post #23
porcoda wrote: post #17

Finally! I don't care if it's apple or someone else, but the "no blackouts" thing is big. Nothing drives me more crazy than being unable to stream a game because I happen to live in the same geographic region as the team home field. This would finally motivate me to cancel the cable TV subscription - the only sport I watch is soccer, and the only reason I keep the cable TV is so I can dig out the remote whenever the…

MLB next, please. I don't have cable, which means I just don't watch baseball right now. I would 100% sign up for MLB.tv if I could watch my two favorite teams play.

It's so dumb. Since I live in a different market from my favorite team, I can watch every game they play, unless it involves a local team. :-|

Re: Apple and MLS to present all MLS matches for 10 years, beginning in 2023

#143

Post by Tiktaalik »

JamesSwift wrote: post #66
avgDev wrote: post #26

This is probably one of the best decision by any TV provider. MLS is going to blow up in the coming years. There is a lot of talk about US national team being very competitive in 2026 World Cup. MLS has produced stars already, like Alphonso Davies. Once the hype gets higher and more money start being spent on soccer in the US, it will become a power house.

I just dont see MLS "blowing up". Will it be more popular than today? Possibly, though I feel like its been given several chances to catch on and never has. Will it challenge NFL / NBA popularity in any way? IMO, absolutely not.

It doesn't need to challenge NFL or NBA for there to be a lot of success and money made all around. The potential room for growth for MLS is massive in comparison with the other established big leagues that already have reached a saturation point have have less room to grow.

This is why the NHL has spent the last few decades starting up hockey teams in the American South where there's few fans instead of say, Saskatoon, where there'd be a legion of fans. In Saskatoon it's a small market and you'd already be top dog with no growth. In Phoenix you may never reach the other leagues, but even if you can move viewership by a few percentage points, the size of the market ensures massive gains.

Re: Apple and MLS to present all MLS matches for 10 years, beginning in 2023

#144

Post by freck »

culturestate wrote: post #118
freck wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this is something MLS wanted out of the deal and Apple conceded. It makes the season tickets even more valuable for every team in the league. Do you really think Apple demanded a subscription give-away?

> Do you really think Apple demanded a subscription give-away? I don’t, but it’s really not the most outlandish idea. It gives every season ticket holder a reason to either buy an Apple TV or, maybe more importantly, start using the Apple TV app on their existing devices. Imagine you’re an Orlando City fan who’s happy with Hulu and never really cared to open the Apple TV app on your Samsung TV. Now that you’re using…

But season ticket holders as a group are probably the ones most likely to pay for a season of MLS. Why not let them pay and get exposed to Ted Lasso on their own dime?

Re: Apple and MLS to present all MLS matches for 10 years, beginning in 2023

#145

Post by noirbot »

PaulHoule wrote: post #95
JamesSwift wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just dont see MLS "blowing up". Will it be more popular than today? Possibly, though I feel like its been given several chances to catch on and never has. Will it challenge NFL / NBA popularity in any way? IMO, absolutely not.

Engagement with MLS is somewhere close to zero. Back when I was involved in coaching youth soccer I found the other coaches had never heard of the New England Revolution, New York Red Bulls, L.A. Galaxy, etc. These folks were fans of man united but had no interest at all in US soccer. Who knows? Maybe not having lockouts will mean that if some team starts playing well people will be able to watch it. MLS definitely n…

My guess is that those are actually the teams you're least likely to have a lot of fans of. LA, NYC, and Boston all already have massive and influential sports teams. The folks likely to want to watch/know about MLS are in the cities that don't - Kansas City, Austin, to a lesser extent Atlanta or Portland.

MLS is being fairly smart with its expansion and focusing on cities where they're not trying to pull fans away from the NY Yankees or the LA Lakers or whatever. Sure, they still have teams there as well, but the die-hard fans are going to be in the towns where folks are happy to have any team to be excited for.

Re: Apple and MLS to present all MLS matches for 10 years, beginning in 2023

#146

Post by oplav »

heystefan wrote: post #137
colinmhayes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I think we're referring to different blackouts. I believe OP was complaining that streaming services such as NBA league pass never show your local team. If you want to watch your team you need a cable subscription. That's different than your local TV station not showing the game because it didn't sell out.

Wait, what? Why does this exist again?

Leagues, like the NBA and MLB, sell in-market broadcast rights to regional sports networks (an RSN), which gives the RSN exclusive rights to broadcast that game to in-market users. These RSNs typically only show their broadcast through cable packages, which is why local users would need to subscribe to cable packages that carry the RSN that holds the rights to their local team. However, some RSNs (at least in baseball) are starting to build direct to consumer streaming products. NESN, the RSN that carries the Boston Red Sox, has come out with NESN 360 which allows users to stream Red Sox games without a cable package at a price point of $30/month [1].

Leagues retain out-of-market broadcast rights and serve those to out of market users through their streaming platforms like MLB.tv and NBA League Pass.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/01/red-sox-broadcaster-to-offer...

Re: Apple and MLS to present all MLS matches for 10 years, beginning in 2023

#147

Post by noirbot »

syntaxfree wrote: post #117
PaulHoule wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engagement with MLS is somewhere close to zero. Back when I was involved in coaching youth soccer I found the other coaches had never heard of the New England Revolution, New York Red Bulls, L.A. Galaxy, etc. These folks were fans of man united but had no interest at all in US soccer. Who knows? Maybe not having lockouts will mean that if some team starts playing well people will be able to watch it. MLS definitely n…

As a South American fútbol fan: the is very annoying. Just say “New York Fútbol Club”. See, it breathes already. Also make way for teams that are just called “Sports Association Firebug” for historically cogent but difficult to parse at first.

A lot of the MLS teams are like this - Atlanta United, Austin FC, Sporting Kansas City, Toronto FC... It feels a bit clunky and "we wanna look more european" in my mind, but MLS is at least split between US and EU style for names.

There's literally "New York City Football Club" in the MLS.

Re: Apple and MLS to present all MLS matches for 10 years, beginning in 2023

#148

Post by manquer »

tablespoon wrote: post #103
al_borland wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought that was silly. Games sell out, that doesn’t mean local fans still don’t want to watch.

> I always thought that was silly. Games sell out, that doesn’t mean local fans still don’t want to watch. Do they still do blackouts if the game sells out? I'm not a sports fan, but I thought games would only get blacked out if they didn't sell enough in-person tickets.

The local/in-market rights are sold independent of out of market rights. The local rights are held by channels typically part of Cable TV, that is why there is blackouts the streaming app usually won't have rights to show you the game in that region, the cable channels do, those channels(RSNs) pay more because they focus more on 1-2 regions and also this is primary reason those packages sell so they cannot afford not to loose the deal, the streaming apps have a lot of regions to cover nationally and other usage drivers so will not be able to pay same price.

The kind of blackouts you describe is still common in U.K. to encourage you to go and support the local team rather than the big regional team because that is on TV. Think Wigan Athletic or Bolton Wanderers instead of Manchester United

English football has 11-21 tiers and strong grassroots. Those blackouts are not designed for big teams to sell tickets they will anyway sell out, but to help the smaller teams which are rarely featured on TV, not in the top premier league but play instead in Championship, league 1,2, or non conference leagues etc.

Re: Apple and MLS to present all MLS matches for 10 years, beginning in 2023

#150

Post by colinmhayes »

heystefan wrote: post #137
colinmhayes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I think we're referring to different blackouts. I believe OP was complaining that streaming services such as NBA league pass never show your local team. If you want to watch your team you need a cable subscription. That's different than your local TV station not showing the game because it didn't sell out.

Wait, what? Why does this exist again?

Live sports is the only reason tons of people pay $80+ a month for cable. The majority of my close friends have a cable subscription solely to watch basketball and monday night football. If those people could switch to streaming services to see their team cable would be even more fucked than they already are, so broadcast rights with blackouts are worth billions. The leagues don't think they'd be able to make that up with increased streaming revenue.
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