Apple TV's MLS gamble backfires: Record-low final viewership

Reporter John Ourand, a two-decade veteran of Sports Business Journal and the leading sports TV industry insider in the United States, suggests that Apple TV’s MLS viewership for the 2024 final was as low as 65,000 viewers on MLS Season Pass.

Ourand, who now writes for the sports industry newsletter Puck, added that the game didn’t fare much better on television either.

“[The] TV ratings were abysmal, averaging just 468,000 viewers on both FOX and FOX Deportes.”

Combining the TV and streaming numbers, the MLS Cup final between LA Galaxy and New York Red Bulls was watched by approximately 533,000 viewers. In its 29-year history, that’s a new low for an MLS Cup final. The previous worst was in 2010 when 748,000 watched the final.

To make matters worse for MLS, the 2024 TV number was down almost 50% compared to last year when FOX and FOX Deportes also showed the final. Furthermore, the 2024 MLS Cup final was far less than the recent television broadcast of the NWSL Championship final (967,900 on CBS).

How Ourand estimated the MLS Cup viewership on MLS Season Pass

Both Apple and MLS have been reluctant to release any viewership numbers for the MLS Season Pass. As a result, Ourand’s findings are particularly eye-opening.

To determine how many people watched the 2024 MLS Cup final, Ourand employed some simple math.

“Apple, which streamed the game, doesn’t release viewer figures, but all of Apple TV+ averaged just 287,000 viewers during the MLS Cup time slot on game night, per Nielsen’s Streaming Platform Ratings,” wrote Ourand.

“For context, some 222,000 people were watching Apple TV+ during the same window the previous Saturday, when no live MLS match was being streamed, suggesting that MLS Cup led to an incremental gain of just 65,000 viewers,” Ourand added. “In the hour before the MLS Cup, total Apple TV+ viewership was at 251,000. Then, in the hour after the MLS Cup, that figure was up to 385,000.”

The 65,000 viewing number checks out. Recently, MLS Commissioner Don Garber mentioned that there are approximately one million views for MLS games on Apple TV every weekend. With an average of 14 MLS matches per weekend, that translates to an audience of roughly 71,428 per game.

Given that the MLS Cup final was also shown on FOX and FOX Deportes, that most likely cannibalized the MLS Season Pass viewing number.

MLS’ gamble with Apple TV

The 2024 MLS Cup final concluded year two of Major League Soccer’s 10-year deal with Apple TV. In what Awful Announcing describes as maybe “one of the worst contracts in the history of sports broadcasting, both for the league and for the media company,” the $250 million per year deal doesn’t end until the end of 2032.

While Apple paying MLS $250 million a year for the global rights sounds like a lot of money, MLS pays for all of the production costs which runs into the tens of millions of dollars per year.

It’s no wonder that Garber cast doubts on the Apple deal in October, stating, “If we’re wrong and the world doesn’t go into the streaming environment the way we think it is, then you’ve just got to be smart, make a decision and if it’s not the right decision, you figure out what you need to do to go forward.”

After almost two years since the MLS partnership began with Apple, even with the addition of the world’s greatest player (Lionel Messi) to the league, Major League Soccer has been unable to surpass the minimum guarantee to trigger the revenue share part of the deal with Apple.

In late 2023, Garber himself admitted that the deal could pose a risk. “After we hit the minimum guarantee from Apple, we make 50 cents of every dollar.

“I’m highly, highly confident we’ll get into that revenue share.”

More than one year later, World Soccer Talk understands that MLS is nowhere close to hitting the minimum guarantee, which is an undisclosed target based on an MLS Season Pass subscriber number that Apple and MLS set as a goal.

Judging by the viewership for the 2024 MLS Cup final, the league is going backward, not forward.

Photo: IMAGO / Icon Sportswire