MLS Season Pass Nears Important Milestone; Has First Season Been a Success So Far?
Apple’s 10-year deal to stream every Major League Soccer game that was struck in 2022 was rightly seen as a highly ambitious move. Soccer has always trailed other sports in the United States in terms of popularity, and Apple had very limited experience in offering live sporting events via streaming.
But according to a report from the Seattle Times, it’s been so far, so good for Apple’s new streaming app MLS Season Pass. The company launched the app in February, just a few weeks before the start of the 2023 MLS season, and it’s about to pass an important milestone for Apple and the league.
The Times reports that built into the contract between Apple and MLS is a threshold that, once crossed, means the company has to share subscription revenues with the league. Players might get a bigger paycheck too, as their collective bargaining agreement stipulates they’ll get 12.5% of media revenue if the league gets $100 million more than it did last year.
These are important benchmarks of success, made all the more newsworthy because Apple does not publicly share subscriber numbers for either MLS Season Pass or Apple TV+. The company dropped the price for an annual subscription for the rest of this season in June to $39 for Apple TV+ subscribers and $49 for non-subscribers, which raised some questions about how the app was doing so far.
The numbers are especially good news for the league, because Apple has recourse if the MLS deal doesn’t work out in its favor. The tech giant has an opt-out clause in the agreement that allows it to walk away if it doesn’t get to a specific number of subscribers within a set time period. It’s not clear if passing the threshold for revenue sharing will abrogate that clause, but it’s certainly a good sign for MLS.
The revenues could jump even higher this season, as international soccer superstar Lionel Messi is joining Inter Miami CF this summer. Messi’s first match with the club will be the team’s July 21 Leagues Cup game against Cruz Azul, and he could bring a big infusion of subscribers and cash to MLS Season Pass when he debuts.
There are still some holdouts and streaming-reticent users who have not embraced MLS Season Pass, and likely never will. But cord cutting dictates that more and more sports leagues are thinking about how to make a transition to streaming, and they’re all watching Apple to see if its first year streaming MLS games is a success.
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.