Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Apple reportedly had 2 million subscribers to MLS Season Pass in 2023

Phil Nickinson
By
Lionel Messi seen on a promo for MLS Season Pass on a TV.
Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

We’re in the era of streaming sports exclusives. NFL Sunday Ticket is on YouTube and YouTube TV. Peacock has the English Premier League. Paramount+ has the Championship League. And we’re on the eve of the 2024 MLS season, whose matches can all be had on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV.

Apple is notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to any sort of numbers, whether it’s hardware or viewership But Alex Silverman at the Sports Business Journal cites two unnamed sources “with knowledge of the numbers” as saying that MLS Season Pass finished the 2023 season with more than 2 million subscribers.

Recommended Videos

It’s a little hard to put those numbers in any sort of context, though analytics firm Antenna estimated approximately the same sort of numbers for NFL Sunday Ticket by the end of September 2023. And complicating matters even more is that it includes paid subscribers, whether they watched at full price from the first match, or got in on a prorated deal further into the season. It also includes comped subscriptions, which MLS season ticket-holders receive. And T-Mobile subscribers also were able to watch for free. (We’ve been told that no such deal is in place yet for T-Mobile in 2024.)

Related

Boosting the back half of the 2023 MLS season — and certainly a draw going into the 2024 campaign — was Inter Miami’s signing of Lionel Messi, who immediately found his image front and center on MLS Season Pass and it remains so today. Messi arrived in time to appear in (and win) the Leagues Cup, but wasn’t able to lift Inter Miami to a playoff run.

Every game for every team is available on MLS Season Pass, with no blackouts. Some games also are available on linear television.

MLS Season Pass subscriptions for the 2024 season are available now. It costs $15 a month or $99 for the season if you don’t also subscribe to Apple TV+, or $13/$79 if you do. MLS Season Pass is available in the Apple TV app on most major streaming platforms, on Apple devices, and in a web browser.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Phil Nickinson
Phil Nickinson
Section Editor, Audio/Video
Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…
YouTube TV laps the competition with 8 million subscribers
YouTube TV on Apple TV.

If there ever was any doubt which live streaming service was dominating in the U.S., it ends now. YouTube TV has more than 8 million subscribers, according to a blog post penned by CEO Neal Mohan. That's up from the 5 million subscribers the service announced in July 2022.

By comparison, Hulu With Live TV — the second-biggest service — reported 4.6 million subscribers as of September 30, 2023, which marked the end of parent company Disney's fiscal year. YouTube's parent company, Google/Alphabet, doesn't report subscription numbers with any real sort of fidelity. "More than 8 million" is all we're going to get. The new numbers also mean that YouTube TV has about four times as many subscribers as the third-highest service, which is Sling TV, at just over 2 million.

Read more
MLS Season Pass in 2024: How to watch every game on Apple TV
MLS Season Pass on Apple TV.

It was a big year for football in 2023, for both the American and international versions. On the pigskin front, NFL Sunday Ticket made a (mostly) successful leap to YouTube TV. And the beautiful game found a new North American home on Apple TV with MLS Season Pass.

Major League Soccer will be even bigger in 2024. There's a new team (with a new stadium) in St. Louis this season and another on the way in San Diego in 2025. Oh, and Lionel Messi is still in Miami. And this year, he's brought an old friend — Luis Suarez. Just in case you didn't think there'd be any major storylines this year.

Read more
The tvOS 17.2 update is now available with redesigned TV app
Apple TV tvOS 17.2 update screen.

It's update day in Apple land. And in addition to the new hotness that is iOS 17.2 for phones and tablets, and MacOS 14.2 Sonoma for, uh, Macs, we also have tvOS 17.2 for Apple TV.

We've been running the beta track for a little while now and already have talked about updates to the sidebar in the TV app, as well as new functionality for the Siri button on the remote control. And they're still there, which is good.

Read more