How does Apple view its 10-year, $2B+ deal with Major League Soccer? As a way to reinvent sports for a streaming environment and get in on the ground floor of what could be the freshest source of “reality television” on the planet.
Apple executive, Eddy Cue, has plans for Major League Soccer (and it’s provided in some detail in Sam Schube’s article in GQ). Whether you’re a fan of Apple products and its philosophical approach to product development or not, you have to admire what Cue and his team have done with AppleTV+.
And now they’re going to do it to sports. More specifically, to the game referred to everywhere (but here) as “football.”
Is MLS the right call for Apple?
If you’ve been asleep at the wheel (or otherwise consumed with political dramas), you may have missed the fact that Apple, the technology company, entered into a 10-year sponsorship with MLS to the tune of $2.5 billion. That doesn’t include side deals Apple has made with the league’s new superstar, Lionel Messi.
If you find yourself sounding like Capt. Kirk in STAR TREK V: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (“What does God need with a starship?”) as you ask yourself why Apple would want a deal with the least major league sport of America’s major league sports … you haven’t been paying attention. To Apple. Or to sports.
Let’s start with the latter.
Sports on television is huge. Bigger than any other show on TV – streaming, cable, broadcast, or satellite. A.C. Neilson list of the top 100 most-watched shows in the US last year counted 94 sporting events (and of those, NFL games made up 82 of the 94). America’s national pastime is Americans’ favorite thing to watch on TV.
But why is that? There are a number of reasons why. It’s fresh. It’s current. And more times than not, there’s a clear “winner” and a clear “loser.” It’s an event that is best watched live and it’s an experience that is often shared socially between fans and friends.
In many ways, sports viewing on television (and other streaming devices) represent the last vestiges of what Americans enjoyed in the earlier days of media-consumption (the 50s – 70s) and still presents a shared experience between people that allows us to socialize in a generally friendly way.
From an advertiser’s point-of-view, blockbuster sporting events represent some of the last opportunities to hit a broad audience with a big message. And although it’s less cost-effective than it was in the past, airtime on major games is still selling out.
MLS’s appeal to Apple
So what does Apple, a company that makes and sells products, see in a relatively minor, major league sport? Enter Apple TV+.
It’s hard to run a streaming service without a fresh supply of content. And nobody knows that better than the guy who brought us everything from iTunes to award-winning movies and series on Apple TV+.
(Thanks for FOR ALL MANKIND, by the way.)
Eddy Cue and his team know what they’re doing. Since 2012, Cue and his team – a group responsible for everything Apple sells that isn’t a product – spent billions of dollars a year acquiring and producing programming for Apple TV+ ($21B in the most recent fiscal quarter).
As Cue says in his GQ interview:
“We spend a lot of money, a lot of time on finding the best unscripted drama in the world. That’s what we try to create in some of our shows that we do for TV+,” he told me in the first of a few conversations this spring and summer. “Sports is that in spades. It’s the greatest unscripted drama there is.”
Kicking into high gear
The transformation of MLS as a result of their partnership with Apple has just begun. From schedule changes to adding technology to the mix in a way that makes the game more understandable – and fun – for fans, Apple’s fingerprints on the design and execution of the product on the field (and on the television) is starting to show.
I think we’ll see MLS become a true, major league sport when the effect of these changes really take hold. Popularity of the sport is climbing with Gen-Z and teens in particular. And given the media device habits of these audiences, that bodes well for a company that owns a major streaming media platform and makes devices you can use to access that platform to watch your favorite team.
It’s all a different way to think about sports, media, and technology.
“Think Different.” Now there’s a slogan worth considering.
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