With the elimination of MLS Season Pass and the addition of out-of-market MLS games at no additional fee to Apple TV subscribers, fans are given a blueprint at how leagues can gain new fans and ease access as sports and streaming become increasingly connected.
After experiencing years of steady growth amid expansion and rising popularity, Major League Soccer made headlines in two major ways over the past week, both of which fare well for the league and sport’s continued climb in the United States.
In addition to the league announcing a switch to a summer-to-spring schedule to better align itself with premier association football leagues around the world, many fans will soon have much easier access to MLS games.
Apple announced this week that the MLS Season Pass package would be discontinued after 2025, with all MLS regular season matches and much more available to all Apple TV subscribers at no additional fee starting next year.
While MLS doesn’t hold the popularity or cultural significance that the NFL, MLB, NBA and even NHL do, increased exposure on one of the country’s most popular streaming services with over 45 million subscribers is sure to create plenty of new fans.
It’s also worth noting before any getting deeper that I myself may be one of those new fans – despite being a lifelong sports fan who follows the big four North American leagues, association football hasn’t gathered much more than a fleeting interest from myself over the years, with its lack of publicity and access certainly playing into that.
Perhaps the league’s status as somewhat of a little sibling compared to the other big four leagues made a deal like this possible, but it should provide a framework of how leagues and fans could ideally get the best of both worlds. Instead of expensive packages like MLB.TV and NBA League Pass serving as separate subscriptions that many pay for in addition to other mainline streaming services, putting sports in the same place as other entertainment (as it had been for decades) is what many sports fans are reminiscent of in the age of cord-cutting.
Of course, this is certainly easier said than done, but some versions of the streamlined MLS offering do already exist. YouTube TV, the fourth-largest television carrier in the U.S., is the exclusive home of NFL Sunday Ticket, the NFL’s out-of-market package that can only be purchased as an add-on to YouTube TV.
ESPN+, a subscription service that offers a wide range of additional live sports content and sports documentaries, is also the carrier of out-of-market NHL games as well as games exclusive to ESPN+ and Hulu each week.
The NFL deal, however, was far from popular and appeared to violate antitrust laws, with a federal judge later tossing a jury’s verdict against the NFL regarding Sunday Ticket’s exclusivity.
What the MLS deal does that the two aforementioned deals didn’t is it actually simplifies the process of watching sports for once. The need for an additional subscription for soccer fans is eliminated, as well as the need to even go to a sports-specific streaming service – for families and sports fans who enjoy their fair share of entertainment as well, this can be a cost-friendly measure as well.
Of course, fans of multiple sports should express some caution regarding any imminent easing of the viewing experience – MLB.tv and NBA League Pass remain expensive packages (unless you’re a T-Mobile customer) while football fans who had subscribed to Sunday Ticket for years are now forced to subscribe to YouTube TV just to access all of the out-of-market games.
Streaming platforms also now have plenty of exclusivity for national games across all major sports leagues – Prime Video is the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football while also nabbing a playoff game, while NBA fans are double-dipping with Prime Video and Peacock this year, both of which hold slates of exclusive games.
That also isn’t to mention Apple TV’s exclusive Friday Night Baseball broadcasts of the past four MLB seasons, as well as Netflix holding the rights to the NFL’s newly coveted Christmas Day games.
With the 2025-26 season marking the first year of a new 11-year media rights deal the NBA signed with ABC/ESPN, NBC and Prime Video, basketball fans shouldn’t have any hope that a streaming platform is going to be scooping up League Pass anytime soon.
While the addition of all MLS games to Apple TV should work wonders for the league’s growth, a deal like that may not be as attractive to other North American leagues due to the popularity and draw they already hold. With less of an emphasis placed on expanding the domestic audience, the larger leagues will likely continue to take the route of maximizing revenue from broadcasts over making things easier for the average fan.
Yet one peak to the future may be offered how MLB structures its media rights deals after the 2028 season. While the league is slated to make an all-but-confirmed return to NBC next season, all of MLB’s media deals are set to expire after the 2028 World Series.
The league has expressed interest in providing a blackout-free, direct-to-consumer product ahead of the 2029 season, with some teams’ fans having seen a bit of a preview of that already in the past two seasons as MLB has taken over the broadcasts of several clubs amid the financial struggles of Main Street Sports Group (formerly Diamond Sports Group).
While this would certainly be an enticing product, it likely would win over the favor of more fans if it were to be offered alongside one or more streaming services, with a pipe dream being similar to what Apple TV is now offering with MLS games.
A larger league making a similar move would be indicative of a full-blown shift away from cable and traditional live TV to a television experience that is entirely tied to streaming platforms. As the vast majority of the country’s most popular television shows have been streaming exclusives for the better part of the last 15 years, live sports have stood out as the last remaining stalwart of cable and live TV as a whole.
Though we’re still echelons away from a more streamlined, simple sports-viewing experience, Apple TV’s MLS deal provides a clear blueprint and example of how to make things simpler for fans in an era where watching games has only become more difficult.
It will take unprecedented cooperation between leagues, pay TV carriers and streaming platforms to make it happen, but as the migration to streaming services continues, it likely will become a matter of necessity at that point.
In some ways, it would mark a reversion to the early cable days, where entertainment and live sports could be accessed in the same place, with it maybe even being feasible to flip between “channels,” or whatever they may be called then.
For now, leagues will have a watchful eye in how the MLS fares on Apple TV as the sport and league look to grow on the precipice of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. For myself, perhaps this is what it will take to turn a fleeting interest into a passion and hobby.
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