What’s Apple doing reportedly paying for part of Lionel Messi’s deal to come play for Major League Soccer club Inter Miami in the U.S.? Start with the fact that, with “MLS Season Pass,” Apple TV+ streams all MLS soccer games and follow the money from there.
David Brancaccio and Alex Schroeder for MarketPlace:
With Messi in the MLS, all those games are likely to draw more eyeballs from all around the world. And Apple TV+ would stand to benefit.
“The real story here is that it’s essentially Apple TV that’s acquiring the world’s superstar in our default global sport,” said Andrés Martinez, a professor at Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Andrés Martinez: The real story here is that it’s essentially Apple TV that’s acquiring the world’s superstar in our default global sport. Apple signed a 10-year deal with the MLS for global TV rights, and it is going to give revenue-sharing participation to Messi. This is the rise of of media within sports as the driving purpose. There was a study of Nielsen ratings done by Sportico that showed that 94 [out of 100] of the most-watched telecasts in the U.S. were live sporting events. And I think that’s what Apple has seen, that if you want to drive subscriptions, you have to offer compelling live sport.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s precisely these types of ideas that are certifiably genius.
Cook should consider bidding for and winning NFL Sunday Ticket away from DirecTV, buying rights to Premiere League and La Liga games, etc. and making them Apple TV exclusives. Go directly to the sports leagues with boatloads of cash. — MacDailyNews, May 6, 2014
As we wrote in early June of the pending deal:
[This is] multiple times bigger than David Beckham joining LA Galaxy in 2007. (As part of his deal, Beckham received the option to purchase an MLS expansion team for $25 million after he finished his playing career, which he did: Inter Miami.)
Messi to Inter Miami [will] be an immeasurable boon to MLS, Apple TV+, MLS Season Pass, football (soccer) in America, and, of course, Inter Miami (currently dead last in the MLS Eastern Conference; funnily enough, the same spot LA Galaxy currently occupies in the Western Conference. It seems as if all of the stars are somehow aligned).
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