As Apple TV Rolls Out MLS Season Pass, What Features Are Essential for Sports League-Specific Streamers?
The media/entertainment industry has always been a copycat business. This is no different from any other industry, where success is rewarded and then duplicated by others hoping to cash in.
That process may well repeat itself when it comes to MLS Season Pass, which was launched by Apple TV earlier this week. Season Pass will be the home of every Major League Soccer game for the next 10 years, and it has some important features that will be crucial for other media companies to utilize when they begin exploring the possibility of an all-in-one sports league streaming service.
One of the primary features that Season Pass offers that others very well might want to emulate is the offering of team-specific pages and themes. Once fans select their favorite MLS team on Season Pass, that club’s matches will automatically appear in the “Up Next” watchlist on the Apple TV app. Each club page will offer fans a single destination to find everything there is to watch involving their favorite team. Fans can explore live matches, game previews, and other key club content, including interviews and replays.
Giving users the ability to navigate straight to their favorite team’s games will be crucial for any potential combined sports streamer. Streaming users are taking longer and longer to find the content they want to watch, and the longer it takes them to find a show, movie, or game that they’re interested in, the more likely that they grow frustrated and turn their TVs off altogether.
Another feature any all-in-one sports streamer would do well to add is the ability for users to stream multiple broadcasts of the game they’re watching. Multiple alternate streams gained big popularity when ESPN+ began offering the so-called “Manning-Cast” of “Monday Night Football,” which provides analysis and commentary from Peyton and Eli Manning — as well as conversations with special guests — instead of the traditional analyst/color commentator pairing so ubiquitous to most NFL games.
Prime Video also offered multiple commentary streams of “Thursday Night Football” this season, including an analytics-focused stream featuring real-time stats and different camera angles. MLS Season Pass will also offer multiple commentary streams with its MLS broadcasts this season.
Exclusive analysis built around the games offered on the service is also a big need. MLS Season Pass has amassed a highly talented group of analysts and broadcasters, and has already announced it will host a weekly whip-around show to recap highlights from all the week’s games in real-time. That brings Season Pass closer in line with linear networks like ESPN, and it’s something an all-in-one sports streamer will have to have in order to keep viewers engaged when their favorite teams aren’t playing.
There are still several major hurdles to clear before any media company can launch a league-specific sports streaming service, but the time could be drawing closer. Sports streaming revenues are expected to skyrocket in the next five years, and the decline of pay TV means live sports will need SOMEWHERE to go when cord-cutting reaches its apex.
Some companies are already making cautious first steps toward expanding their sports streaming offerings. Amazon is exploring the launch of its own standalone sports streamer, and Warner Bros. Discovery has several options in front of it for bringing more live games to its future streaming service Max—a combination of its current streamers HBO Max and discovery+.
The biggest stumbling block standing between media companies and a streaming service that offers all major sports leagues is current media rights deals. The NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB all have lucrative deals with broadcast and cable TV networks, running into the hundreds of billions of dollars. But once those deals have expired and sports leagues are potentially more willing to turn to streaming, their services will need to adopt several of the features now offered on MLS Season Pass if they hope to be successful.
MLS Season Pass
MLS Season Pass is a video streaming service that offers every match—including Leagues Cup and the entire Audi MLS Cup Playoffs—with no blackouts. It offers both English and Spanish announcers. MLS Season Pass also offers pre-match coverage, post-match analysis, highlights, player profiles, interviews, club content, match replays, live MLS NEXT Pro and MLS NEXT matches, and more.