Sports broadcasting news:

NEW YORK, NY & CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA (June 14,2022) – Apple and Major League Soccer today announced that the Apple TV app will be the exclusive destination to watch every single live MLS match beginning in 2023. This partnership is a historic first for a major professional sports league and will allow fans around the world to watch all MLS, Leagues Cup, 1 and select MLS NEXT Pro and MLS NEXT matches in one place — without any local broadcast blackouts or the need for a traditional pay TV bundle.

From early 2023 through 2032, fans can get every live MLS match by subscribing to a new MLS streaming service, available exclusively through the Apple TV app. In addition to all of the match content, the service will provide fans a new weekly live match whip-around show so they never miss an exciting goal or save, and also game replays, highlights, analysis, and other original programming. This live and on-demand MLS content will provide in-depth, behind-the-scenes views of the players and clubs that fans love. A broad selection of MLS and Leagues Cup matches, including some of the biggest matchups, will also be available at no additional cost to Apple TV+ subscribers, with a limited number of matches available for free. As an added benefit to fans, access to the new MLS streaming service will be included as part of MLS full-season ticket packages.

The MLS live and on-demand content on the Apple TV app will be available to anyone with internet access across all devices where the app can be found, including iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV 4K, and Apple TV HD; Samsung, LG, Panasonic, Sony, TCL, VIZIO, and other smart TVs; Amazon Fire TV and Roku devices; PlayStation and Xbox gaming consoles; Chromecast with Google TV; and Comcast Xfinity. Fans can also watch on  tv.apple.com.

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At launch, all MLS and Leagues Cup matches will include announcers calling the action in English and Spanish, and all matches involving Canadian teams will be available in French. Apple and MLS will also provide enhanced league and club coverage for fans to easily follow the league or their favorite clubs in Apple News, with the ability to watch highlights right in the News app.

That money is pretty crazy for MLS. $250 million per year is no joke for a league that had previously worked TV deals worth less than $100 million. It’s pretty key for the growth of the league, and will add to the quality of the product, but now Union games will no longer be airing on PHL17, so that’s the rub. There can still be national broadcasts worked out (ESPN, FOX, etc, but local broadcasts are going away.

There’s some risk in going this route. How many Union casuals out there will watch on PHL 17 but not pay for Apple TV? I’m not sure. I have no clue. And what happens to the broadcast teams that have worked traditional television? Will they simply be absorbed into the new production setup? Is that it for J.P. Dellacamera and Danny Higginbotham? MLS/Apple would be smart to bring along most of the play-by-play and color guys already in place, but now you aren’t gonna get local announcers and instead everything is gonna be called from a neutral perspective, we’d assume. Some people like homerism and some don’t, so we’ll see how this plays. No local blackouts or restrictions is huge though.

This isn’t NHL/NBA/NFL/MLB money, but it’s a good step for MLS. A progressive step. Streaming seems to be the future, whether we want it to be or not. You knew some larger league was gonna make the full plunge at some point, so here we are.

The one thing that’s really annoying is you gotta pay for all of this individual shit now. If you wanna watch some Premier League games, you need Peacock. There have been Phillies games on Facebook, YouTube, whatever. There’s Paramount Plus, ESPN +, blah blah blah. It’s like we’re in a traditional cable and streaming limbo here. I’d rather have everything be all-stream or no-stream so that we don’t have to keep spending money on these ala carte offerings while already paying for the FIOS or Comcast bundle. Let’s move out of this transition phase into whatever comes next.

Go Union.