We will never know the “math” around the Apple/MLS deal. You know who else won’t really know? MLS.
Find any Netflix research report. The big streaming services never disclose meaningful metrics around how they measure the profitability of shows or programs, despite intense pressure on them to do so. Everyone wants to know, what is “viewership” at “Stranger Things/Ted Lasso/[Whatever]”… they Netflix's and Disneys deliberately say very little about this, even to their production partners (which is what MLS is here- they are the exact same as the guys producing a niche show on Netflix or Disney or whatever). In fact, especially to their production partners - they want these guys in the dark, as part of the leverage they have over them.
The streamers have been forced to give some info, so they do disclose “hours views” of top shows. So you get this kind of thing now…
https://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...d-july-13-2022
But here’s the dirty secret. Viewership of any particular show per se doesn’t really matter to them. It's where the conversation starts, but what matters is the quality and quantity of “engagement” - how many people click on a show, how many stay for more than 60 seconds, how many stay for more than 5 minutes, how many stay for the whole thing, and, most critically of all: what do different customer personas do before and after clicking on a show, and what types of combinations of content correlate to keeping users on the site, vs churning out.
The actual things that correlate to watching, or canceling, those are jealously guarded crown jewels.
So what this is really about is: how many MLS hardcores can you get to watch other Apple + shows, and what shows, and for how long , and in what “order”… and how do subscriber behaviours for "product" like this change the mix? (Note that the biggest subscriber customer bases out there are Britbox on Amazon, which exists in precisely the same way MLS Season pass does… and many wonder if that is the future for everything.) Amazon has started a second supplemental service, Paramount, in search of this type of customer.
How do I know this is what this is “really about”? Easy. The 730pm start times in the Northeastern winter. That can only be about enticing MLS viewers elsewhere before and after the game, in a prime TV viewing time. Even at the cost of seriously degrading the product. (Hat tip to jloome who figured this out a while ago.) Live sports fed programming for decades (60 Minutes on CBSon Sundays at 7pm is no accident). Could we get back to that world?
MLS (and Apple too I suppose) hope the opposite might be true - that some Apple viewers in non-traditional markets will start watching MLS - the parallel would be Drive to Survive, which has driven F1 viewership up in North America big time. I have to say, I personally doubt there will be much of that - because Drive to Survive is actually better than F1, but MLS soccer in March in the cold is worse than other soccer products - but who knows?
This is a lab experiment at heart. What “matters” is whether this helps Apple figure out whether this model can be extended to the NFL or NBA. I think the NBA is especially suited for the Apple/MLS model, as it is, kind of uniquely, genuinely a single entity global team sports product. I could see an Apple/NBA deal someday that would be worth 10x the Apple/MLS deal, with Apple having used to MLS deal to figure out and perfect the business model.
Also: all streamers are ruthless, and the business model is ruthless. If this isn’t working, Apple will have a way to cut bait long before 10 years. Not that I am privy to how this contract works- I just know something about how streamers negotiate generally. This is why MLS rushed out all the nosestretchers about Ronaldo, I believe. MLS moved to Hollywood, and, like everyone else in Hollywood, MLS live in fear of getting "cancelled".
Back to the original point: anybody tweeting about “subscriber counts” or “viewership” is not talking about how Apple or anyone else would actually measure this.
