‘Stay the course’: do MLS’s anemic ratings in the Apple TV era matter?

There are some good news stories that MLS would like to bring to a broader audience as attendance rises and sponsorship revenues fatten. Broadcast ratings are not one of them.

This month’s MLS Cup final between the Los Angeles Galaxy and the New York Red Bulls, two venerable clubs in the country’s biggest media markets, was watched by a average 468,000 viewers on Fox and Fox Deportes – down nearly half from those channels’ 2023 audience of 890,000. October’s MLB World Series title game – another LA-NY clash, as the Dodgers defeated the Yankees – drew one an average of 18.6 million people on Fox.

That modest figure doesn’t tell the whole story for MLS, as the Galaxy’s 2-1 win was also available via Apple platforms as part of the league’s eye-catching $2.5 billion 10-year deal with the tech giant. That near-exclusive arrangement to cover every game began last season and was hailed as a milestone in sports streaming: It centralized previously local rights, standardized kickoff times and provided a generous boost to the coffers of a league struggling to attract TV viewers. to pull. Despite sky-high expansion costs as it expands its collection of clubs.

But how many people are watching the subscription package? Well, MLS Commissioner Don Garber could tell you. But then he would have to kill you. Apple doesn’t make ratings public for its Apple TV+ and MLS Season Pass services, so predicting viewership for games, even the championship game, is a matter of guesswork and interpreting the crumbs that occasionally fall.

Still, it’s fair to conclude that if the numbers were impressive, we’d know about it. For example, the PR department of MLS is would like to tell you that in 2024, more than 11 million fans attended regular season games, average attendance was a league record 23,234, sponsorship revenue increased 13%, TikTok followers increased 26%, and July 16 was the best sales day in history of the competition. Liga online store. Conspicuously absent from this positivity blitz are the statistics on the league’s main source of revenue.

In an era when rising broadcast rights fees are a crucial driver of team valuations and player salaries, MLS is the odd one out: growing despite TV ratings, not because of TV ratings. Based on Nielsen estimates and back-of-the-envelope calculations, a reporter said suspected that the MLS final on Apple TV+ attracted only about 65,000 viewers.

That’s an underwhelming number that doesn’t seem to take into account additional viewers on Apple’s tied but distinctive MLS Season Pass offering — or even international eyeballs, since the match was available in more than 100 countries and regions. But even if the actual number were, say, triple that and added to Fox’s 468,000, it’s disappointing for the flagship event in a country of 335 million. And Apple, which charges a regular annual fee of $99, even gave the contest away for free.

It was also broadcast on a large screen in Times Square, which is visited by 250,000 to 400,000 pedestrians every day. Have more New Yorkers caught a glimpse of the MLS Cup on the? Mega Zilla then watched the game nationally on an Apple platform?

We can only speculate. But we can note that Garber told reporters earlier this month: “We have over a million viewers [regular-season] matches on Saturday evening, the collective viewership of those matches. We are proud of that. That’s far more than we’ve ever had for a regular season game.” However, it’s sophistry to compare the number of viewers for one game to the combined number of many. MLS often hosts more than 10 games on Saturday nights. Last year, Apple said- CEO Eddy Cue revealedsomewhat vaguely: “We’ve had over a million viewers watching the biggest games this season; no one expected that.”

Fox’s viewership was hardly superior to that of the 431,000 who tuned into CBS on November 23 for the minor league USL Championship – and less than half of the 968,000 who watched the Orlando Pride defeat the Washington Spirit in the NWSL final on the same day on the same channel. And vastly lower than the 2.2 million that saw LAFC win the 2022 MLS Cup on Fox and Univision. (It was the most watched MLS Cup since 1997 according to the competitionwho did issue a press release about that statistic.)

Possible explanations? Every non-NFL sport is subject to ratings turbulence. even the NBA. It can’t help that this year’s MLS Cup went head-to-head with American College Football’s SEC Championship game, which average 16.6 m viewers on ABC. Or that Inter Miami lost in the first round of the play-offs. Lionel Messi is so central to MLS’s appeal and marketing strategies that a match without him almost seems like a non-event. And Messi’s Miami were shockingly eliminated by Atlanta United on November 9, a month before the final.

MLS may also be punished for its unwieldy, padded postseason. Too many teams qualify, devaluing the regular season; there’s a confusing mix of game formats from round to round and a momentum-killing international break in the middle. And the US football audience is fragile: highly variable, depending on the network, the day, the kick-off time, the alternatives and the prestige of the league. Almost 3.8m viewers watched the U.S. men’s team lose to Uruguay in the Copa América in July. But it’s common for lower profile matches to pick up on obscure channels a tenth of that figure.

For diehard supporters it is useful to have one central channel. But with no local broadcasts and only 34 regular season and eight playoff games on Fox channels, MLS has clearly lost some visibility, reducing its chances of attracting casual fans.

“The deal with Apple takes MLS out of the mainstream. People watch sports like they watch anything else on TV, they scroll through the guide and end up in familiar places,” said Jon Lewis, founder of Watching sports media. “If you play most of your games behind a paywall, you’ll have a hard time broadening your audience.”

Especially when “You don’t have Messi there and you’re not on national TV for a season and you just stroll in on a Saturday in December without much momentum,” Lewis adds. “You now have a viewer base made up of people who positively need to look up MLS. And the number of people who would positively seek out MLS rather than just come across it… is not as high as I think a lot of people think.”

Despite Apple’s enormous cultural and financial influence, the TV business is surprisingly a niche market. According to Nielsen’s estimatesIn November, streaming platforms accounted for 42% of US TV viewing, but Apple TV+ was responsible for less than 1% of that – far behind Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube.

“Apple TV+ generates fewer views in one month than Netflix in one day,” Bloomberg claimed in July. The report added that Apple has spent more than $20 billion on original content since 2019; the $250 million it pays annually to show every MLS game is comparable to the amount it spent on a single miniseries, Masters of the Air.

It could well wish for better value for money, especially at a time when streaming services are generally looking to cut costs, but with the recent quarterly turnover of $95 billion, Apple isn’t exactly struggling. MLS, meanwhile, may feel that losing the attention of a few hundred thousand casual fans is a worthwhile sacrifice, given the long-term financial benefits of the deal and the control it offers over production and storytelling.

It is certainly strange and concerning that the championship match of the football league with the second highest total attendance in the world apparently has a hard time surpassing it pickle in the TV ratings. And or some of the less enticing matches even take out professional cornhole is an open question. But it is not a crisis, especially since a North American World Cup, with the interest and revenue it will generate, is only 18 months away. The most likely short-term effect of a modest TV audience is to boost the idea that MLS should reworking his calendar and switch to a fall-to-spring season, in tune with European leagues and ensuring the postseason doesn’t clash with the all-powerful American soccer.

“Strictly from a business point of view, I don’t necessarily see anything that warrants immediate action,” says Lewis – especially with the World Cup on the horizon and the unlikelihood of getting a better deal elsewhere. MLS’s previous broadcast partnerships were only worth together $90 million per year.

“TV money is more important than TV viewers,” says Lewis. “Is there a possibility that viewership will erode so much over the course of this deal that the MLS will have no choice but to take less money in 10 years? Yes, that is possible, but I don’t think this risk is big enough or immediate enough to warrant taking action. Furthermore, we have no idea what the industry will look like in 2032 once this deal is completed. So I think: stay the course.”