Apple’s Eddy Cue rips fragmentation in sports media: ‘We’ve gone backwards’

There are quite a few obstacles to being a sports fan in 2025 as compared to prior generations. For one, there’s more content at people’s disposal. Live sports are now competing with video games, YouTubers, TikTokers, and a slew of on-demand streaming services for people’s attention.

Another key obstacle, however, is fragmentation. Back when there were only a handful of networks carrying live sports, being a sports fan was relatively straightforward. You purchased a satellite or cable TV bundle for one price, and then you had access to every channel you needed to watch all of the live sports available at the time.

Now, things are different. With the advent of streaming, the live sports landscape has become more fragmented. Whereas a New York Yankees fan in 2005 simply needed a cable subscription to watch all of the team’s games, they now need a cable subscription, a Prime Video subscription, and an Apple TV subscription. It’s more expensive to be a sports fan, and it’s more difficult to keep up with where the games are.

In short, the experience of watching live sporting events has become less fan-friendly over the years.

Apple is trying to fix that. While it’s more than fair to critique the streamer for its sports strategy to this point, which seems like more of a vanity project than anything else, Apple has been (mostly) consistent about one thing: ease of use for fans.

When Apple began its deal with Major League Soccer in 2022, the entire point of the agreement was to put all of the league’s games all in one place. It did that, but at a cost-prohibitive price of about $100 per year. That model priced a lot of would-be casual viewers of MLS matches out, and has largely left the league out-of-sight and out-of-mind ever since.

Now, Apple is deploying a similar model with Formula One. The company recently announced a five-year, $140 million-per-year deal with the glitzy racing circuit, under which Apple TV will carry all its events. Crucially, this new deal won’t involve an additional payment as MLS Season Pass does, but the idea of owning the entirety of a given sports league remains the same.

And at a recent motorsports conference, Apple’s Senior Vice President Eddy Cue believes that’s a good thing for fans.

“We’ve gone backwards,” Cue said, per Barrett Sports Media. “You used to buy one subscription, your cable subscription, and you got pretty much everything they had. Now, there’s so many different subscriptions, so I think that needs to be fixed.

“If I’m a league and I have two partners, it should be very easy for me to go between them and do all kinds of things like picture-in-picture, but I can’t,” he continued. “So I think there are definitely solutions to some of these. It’s harder, but that’s why we’re all here.”

Apple is doing its part to minimize fragmentation, but potentially at the expense of the leagues it partners with. In Nielsen’s most recent measurements, Apple TV captures less than 0.5% of all television viewing, far behind competitors like Peacock, Paramount+, and Tubi.

So while the experience for MLS or F1 fans might be great when they decide to buy into the Apple ecosystem, it’s getting them there that is the problem. And until that changes, Apple’s true impact on fragmentation in sports media will be pretty minimal.