MLS Season Pass: Is it worth the price?

MLS Season Pass is a unique offering in the American sports landscape. It’s got every game, every team, with no restrictions, blackouts, or stipulations. No other sports league offers a truly comparable product, something that has everything in one place. But is MLS Season Pass worth the price that Major League Soccer and Apple are charging?

The cheapest price available for MLS Season Pass is $12.99/month. But that’s if you also already subscribe to Apple TV+ ($6.99/month), Apple’s premium content streaming service. For everyone else, the standard price is $14.99/month.

Remember, MLS Season Pass does only a few things, but it does them well. All MLS regular season, Leagues Cup, playoff games, available in HD and in multiple languages. Professional presentation. Wrap up and whip-around shows, as well as exclusive video features on each team. Even some MLS NEXT Pro reserve and MLS NEXT youth circuit games.

At the end of the day, value is in the eye of the beholder.

How MLS Season Pass price compares to other services

MLS Season Pass sounds great for the average American soccer fan. But when you compare those offerings, which are impressive, to other services that stream soccer, it becomes a bit more cloudy.

Paramount+ ($5.99), Peacock Premium ($5.99), and ESPN+ ($9.99) are all less expensive per month than MLS Season Pass. And they each offer a substantially larger stable of content compared to the MLS offering. Even when talking just soccer, Peacock has the Premier League, US national teams in Spanish, Chivas home games, and Olympic soccer. Paramount+ boasts Champions League, Europa League, Serie A, the NWSL, English Women’s Super League, the Scottish, Brazilian and Argentine leagues, and more. ESPN+ has the Bundesliga, LaLiga, USL, friendlies and more.

So the answer to the question of whether MLS Season Pass is a worthwhile investment really comes down to what type of fan you are:

Say you’re a big soccer fan. But maybe you only have a passing interest in MLS. Or perhaps you don’t have a team in your area. The question for you is whether MLS Season Pass is worth $99 a season. It may be worth it just to watch Messi play for Inter Miami.

MLS Season Pass as a hardcore fan

The other type of fan is the dedicated supporter of an MLS team. Or maybe you’re just a die-hard domestic soccer aficionado and want to support the game in the US. Either way, MLS Season Pass is essential for you. It’s the only way you can watch every game from your favorite team(s).

Of course, if you have MLS season tickets, you get MLS Season Pass for free. So if you can’t make a home game, and for all the road matches, that’s makes things very simple.

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Maybe you live too far away from your team’s home stadium for season tickets to be practical. Or you just can’t afford to make it out to many matches per season. But you still want to follow every goal and game.

In that case, the investment is likely worth the money. It works out pretty well from a cord cutter’s perspective, too. The total overall cost of a season’s worth of MLS Season Pass is comparable to the monthly price of many cable/satellite plans that you would have needed to watch regional local broadcasts pre-2023. If local sports was one of the things tethering you to a traditional cable package, MLS Season Pass makes making the shift a little bit easier. Even with Apple TV+, Netflix, and one or two other streaming services on top of Season Pass, you’re still probably coming out under what you would have paid for traditional TV plan.

So at the end of the day, if you’re a huge MLS fan, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got MLS Season Pass so you don’t miss any of the action.

Photo: Imago.