Any time someone declares a product, especially a subscription product, to be a winning deal for consumers, assume they're lying. Such is the case with the
new Apple TV+ deal with MLS for $2.5 billion dollars
Like yes, if you've got Apple TV for Ted Lasso then this also being your home for American Division-1 pro soccer makes plenty of sense, and I think a lot of people will celebrate the move of a league away from hands of The Mouse irrespective of the details. But come on -- how many of you
actually have the Apple TV subscription?
Since when has anyone looked at the post-cable universe we live in and said "Yeah, just what I hoped for -- another thing I want to watch is on a
different streaming service now!" And one owned by fucking
Apple.
Here's the thing. Let's compare some numbers between the two. I'm going to look specifically at enterprise value for these two stocks. Enterprise value is meant to be a more holistic expression of what a firm is worth than, say, stock price, attempting to reflect all revenue and expenses for a firm. It can be very volatile, potentially, but that doesn't mean we can't draw comparisons between the two companies this way.
Looking it up,
Disney's enterprise value is around, let's be a little generous and say 250 billion. That's a lot, befitting a company whose control of artistic expression as a publisher is often declared to be aspirationally monopolistic. But what about Apple, who is known for selling good that are completely distinct from movies, TV shows, and teenage pop stars? Around
2 trillion, ten times what Disney is doing.
Yay anti-monopolies. But, come on, you don't get $2.5 billion to capture soccer broadcasting rights from nowhere.
But of course what really cements that claim as being incomprehensible is what this means for local broadcasts of MLS games. From the article:
Stevenson said MLS matches will not be aired on local television.
Clubs will be able to produce pre and post-match shows, though with MLS broadcasters. However, clubs will have the liberty over its local radio broadcasts.
So you won't be able to watch MLS games now without paying a subscription fee to
somebody. Yay, consumers. Not only that but now all game broadcast content is being filtered through the league itself. Again, yay anti-monopolies.
Stricter kickoff times might be a good thing, though. If Apple TV is going to support the "sports mix" option where I can have multiple MLS games being shown from a single channel, then paying that extra $5 might, and I can't believe I'm saying it, just might be worth it. God. I feel
dirty now.
This deal for MLS broadcasting rights also includes the division-III league
MLS Next Pro (check out that ugly logo btw), which is not quite analogous to AAA minor league baseball aside from direct affiliation with an MLS team as a talent development system (i.e., MLS team Real Salt Lake is affiliated with Next Pro team Real Monarchs), as it is two divisions below MLS, alongside NISA and USL League One, and one below the USL Championship. This distinction, however, is mostly a
financial one, generally relating to the size of the markets that a team serves, and not necessarily a direct judgment on the playing quality a team is capable of.
Currently ESPN has yearly contracts with USL to provide USLC and USLL1 games through streaming (and occasionally on broadcast TV -- tune in to ESPN this Saturday morning to watch USLC villains El Paso Locomotive get crushed by Detroit City FC, assuming everything goes to plan), so teams that move from one league to another will change what streaming service they are attached to. As USL broadcasts are in general controlled by the teams themselves, would mean significant changes in broadcasting structure to switch from one league to another due to the aforementioned MLS control.
This last part is a largely academic concern, however, as American soccer still has no promotion/relegation system.
