MLS Season Pass Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

The narrative coming out of the 2024 MLS season has not been great for the league.

This month’s MLS Cup drew a dismal audience, despite featuring teams in the United States’ two largest media markets. Viewership cratered by 47% on linear television, and it doesn’t seem like very many people tuned in with MLS Season Pass on Apple TV either.

The game may serve as somewhat of a reckoning for the league, who in 2023 rode high off the momentum (and MLS Season Pass subscribers) that generational talent Lionel Messi provided. 2024 has proved to be a different story, with many questioning the health of the league given what seems to be declining interest in the television product.

But according to a report by Alex Silverman of Sports Business Journal on Monday, the league has acknowledged some of its shortcomings and plans to implement some changes for 2025.

Chief amongst those changes is expanding viewers’ entry points into MLS games on Apple TV. Since starting a new 10-year $2.5 billion media rights deal with Apple in 2023, critics have bashed the league for being out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Other than a limited 34-game linear television schedule on Fox (which only featured Messi’s Inter Miami twice last season and is rarely advertised on the network), one wouldn’t get any exposure to the league unless they specifically clicked the Apple TV streaming tile on their device.

Looking toward 2025, MLS wants to change that. Per Silverman’s report, MLS plans to try and integrate its games directly into pay TV program guides, which would lead you back to the Apple TV platform if selected. The league is also looking into partnerships with wireless carriers, which could be similar in nature to the league’s partnership with T-Mobile during the 2023 season. That partnership allowed T-Mobile customers to access MLS Season Pass via a free trial.

Also notable in the report was that MLS is “looking at creating featured matches in stand-alone time slots.” That would be a stark departure from its original strategy with the Apple deal, which has consolidated match windows into standard times (7:30 p.m. local) in an effort to form habitual viewing. Prior to signing on with Apple, MLS matches were played at disparate times based on the specific necessities of the regional sports networks carrying the games.

Featured match windows could help the league highlight teams and players they want to market better, similar to how national window games work in leagues like the NFL and NBA.

While these ideas are good in theory, and the league certainly has to try something to grow its audience, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether they’ll work.

Media consultant Patrick Crakes, who is a former Fox programming executive, spoke with SBJ about the issue.

“MLS needed a media partner that treated them as core, and they got that in Apple,” Crakes said. “They now, with Apple, have learned a ton, and they’re beginning to approach that [issue].”

Perhaps Apple hasn’t treated them as core so much as they’ve treated MLS as a core. As in, they’ve treated them like you would treat an apple core. You throw it away. So far, it seems like Apple hasn’t done much to market or push the league forward as many expected they’d do when the deal was signed.

The type of exposure that Apple is capable of giving the league is exactly what MLS could use, it just hasn’t happened yet. At least not on a large enough scale. Whether or not the league will get that exposure remains to be seen. But it’s clear that change needs to happen, and it looks like MLS is trying to do just that.

[Sports Business Journal]

About Drew Lerner

Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.