Carolyn M. Pride 
Major League Soccer has forged an unprecedented 10-year partnership with Apple to broadcast all MLS matches globally from 2023.
Apple TV will host MLS matches, League Cup, the MLS Next Pro development league and the MLS Next youth arm on a new subscription streaming service available through the Apple TV app. The deal announced Tuesday makes MLS the first professional sports league to align exclusively with a digital media platform.
The Sports Business Journal reported Tuesday that the partnership is worth $250 million a year, starting in 2023. MLS commissioner Don Garber chose to neither “confirm nor deny it,” but said the sales of additional linear rights for matches had not yet been accounted for.
“It’s a minimum guarantee. It’s not a rights fee,” Garber said of the nontraditional deal. “…So if we exceed the minimum guarantee, we share in the benefits of that guarantee. If we are able to sell our linear rights for what we hope and expect to sell, we will even exceed our expectations.”
The new media rights deal that would be worth a minimum of $2.5 billion over its lifetime dwarfs MLS’s current deal with ESPN, FOX and Univision, worth $90 million that has started in 2015 and expires this year. For MLS and Apple, the deal centralizes its product over two FIFA World Cups, but sacrifices a host of traditional mainstays.
Here’s what the media rights partnership between MLS and Apple means.
How MLS-Apple broadcasts will work
The MLS subscription channel on Apple TV will offer more than 900 games in all MLS competitions without local cuts. A selection of matches will also be broadcast on other platforms.
MLS deputy commissioner Gary Stevenson said the league will release a cast schedule as early as September that will feature multiple games in front of the Apple paywall, Apple TV+ and linear TV – which will also be available on the app.
Season pass holders will automatically receive a subscription to the MLS streaming service as part of their package.
MLS said app sign-up dates, subscription prices, broadcast crews and production details will be announced “in the coming months.”
Will MLS be shown on linear TV?
According to the Sports Business Journal and The Athletic, linear rights negotiations are underway with ESPN, Univision and FOX to televise MLS matches, which would be simulcast on Apple TV+. MLS will do the same with its linear rights in Canada.
Additionally, all matches shown on Apple TV+ will be produced centrally by MLS, unlike the current deal in which clubs produce matches locally.
What the deal means for local broadcasts
Stevenson said MLS games will not be shown on local television.
Clubs will be able to produce pre- and post-game broadcasts, but with MLS broadcasters. However, the clubs will have freedom on its local radio broadcasts.
MLS and Apple create strict kick-off times
Stevenson added that MLS will have had 63 different kick-off times by the end of 2022. But in 2023 the games will start almost simultaneously.
MLS games will be played on Wednesday and Saturday nights at 7 or 8 p.m. local time “unless there is a stadium availability issue or we have a linear window that is outside of that window,” Stevenson said. .
The strict start times give way to an MLS show on the app, airing up to six hours per game day, also centrally produced by MLS.
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