Dylan Hernández: MLS deal with Apple TV could be hurting league's efforts to grow its fan base

Dylan Hernández, Los Angeles Times on Dec 7, 2024

Published in Soccer

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LOS ANGELES — Until he sustained a season-ending knee injury last week in the Western Conference final, Galaxy playmaker Riqui Puig was having a tremendous season.

So I heard.

I watched Puig play only twice this year, once in the Galaxy's season-opening 1-1 draw with Inter Miami and a second time in his team's Fourth of July defeat to LAFC at the Rose Bowl. Outside of short highlight clips on social media, I never saw the former Barcelona prospect, not even when he assisted on the goal that sent the Galaxy to the MLS Cup final.

That wasn't a reflection of my interest.

Some of my friends will make fun of me for publicly admitting this, but I like Major League Soccer. I covered the league in my first job out of college and have casually kept up with it since. I take my children to a couple of games a year. My 11-year-old son owns Galaxy and LAFC hats but no Dodgers or Lakers merchandise.

When flipping through channels in the past, if presented with the choice of, say, college football or MLS, I usually watched MLS. But not this year.

While the MLS Cup final between the Galaxy and New York Red Bulls will be shown on Fox and Fox Deportes, the majority of games are now exclusively behind a paywall, courtesy of the league's broadcasting deal with Apple. MLS Season Pass subscriptions were reasonably priced — $79 for the entire season for Apple TV+ subscribers, $99 for non-subscribers — but I was already paying for DirecTV Stream, Netflix, Amazon Prime, PlayStation Plus and who knows what else.

MLS became a casualty in my household, as well as in many others, and the possibility of being out of sight and out of mind should be a concern for a league that is looking to expand its audience.

Which isn't to say the league made a mistake. This was a gamble MLS had to take.

Now in the second year of a 10-year, $2.5 billion deal with Apple, MLS did what Major League Baseball is talking about doing, which is to centralize its broadcasting rights and sell them to a digital platform. Regional sports networks have been decimated by cord cutting, making traditional economic models unsustainable.

The move to Apple not only increased the league's broadcast revenues — previous deals with ESPN, Fox and Univision were worth a combined $90 million annually, according to multiple reports — but also introduced a measure of uniformity in the league.

The quality of the broadcasts are better than they were under regional sports networks.

Viewers know where to watch games and when, as every one of them is on Season Pass and most of them are scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. local time either on Wednesday or Saturday.

"That's been fueling our growth and driving our fan engagement," MLS Commissioner Don Garber said Friday at his annual state of the league address.

Apple and MLS declined to reveal the number of League Pass subscribers, but the league provided polling figures that indicated 94% of viewers offered positive or neutral reviews of League Pass. The average viewing time for a game is about 65 minutes for a 90-minute game, according to Garber.

In other words, the League Pass is well-liked — by the people who have it.

The challenge now is to increase that audience. The launch of League Pass last year coincided with the arrival of Lionel Messi, which presumably resulted in a wave of subscriptions. But the league can't count on the appearance of the next Messi; there is only one of him.

MLS pointed to how its fans watch sports on streaming devices or recorded television than any other U.S. sports league, as well as how 71% of its fans are under the age of 45. The league also pointed to how it effectively drew more viewers to the Apple broadcast of Inter Miami's postseason opener with a livestream of a "Messi Cam' on TikTok, indicating further collaborations with wide-reaching entities could be in its future.

Garber mentioned how Season Pass is available in other countries. The commissioner also made note of how Apple places games every week in front of its paywall.

"What we have, really, is a communication problem," Garber said. "This is new, and we've got to work with Apple, we've got to work with our clubs and we've got to work with our partners to get more exposure to what we think is a great product."

The greatest benefit to the league could be Apple's vested interest in improving the on-field product. MLS insiders said Apple has not only encouraged teams to sign more high-profile players but also pushed the league to switch to a fall-to-spring calendar more commonplace in other parts of the world, reasoning that doing so would simplify the process of buying and selling players.

The on-field product is what matters. The on-field product is why MLS continues to face competition for viewers from overseas leagues. The on-field product is why the league hasn't succeeded in converting every soccer fan into a MLS fan. And ultimately, if casual viewers such as myself are to pay to watch the Galaxy or LAFC on a screen of some kind, the on-field product will be why.