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.
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.)
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.
