On the most recent episode of the Marchand and Ourand podcast, Andrew Marchand of The New York Post said he would be shocked if Apple TV+ did not have some portion of Major League Soccer’s next media rights deal. It may not be an exclusive deal. He suggested it was possible Apple could win the streaming rights while broadcast rights stayed with ESPN and ABC.
His podcast partner, Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand took it a step further. He said he doesn’t see Apple being excluded from much of anything that hits the market in the coming years.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple sort of runs the table on the next couple of rights that come up including the NFL. We’ve talked about this before, the Sunday Ticket rights,” Ourand said.
Apple recently got into the sports business, adding an exclusive package of Major League Baseball games on Friday nights. Ourand is confident that deal is less about Major League Baseball and more about the company finding out what it can offer leagues across all sports. The MLS could fit the same description.
“It’s kind of a test. They want to see if this works, and MLS? It’s not the NBA. It’s a relatively low-cost test to see if they can do live video, if they can do things differently, and if they can have a sort of ‘Apple way’ of doing things.”
He cited a new book about the Apple company in the modern age. Tripp Mickle’s After Steve looks at how Apple became a trillion-dollar company.
Ourand, who is friends with the author and has read the book, says that it gives great insight into CEO Tim Cook’s philosophy of releasing products. He said Apple’s willingness to experiment and the availability of properties like MLS and Major League Baseball line up perfectly.
“Early Apple would only release an iPhone or an iPod when it was fully formed and ready to go and there were no problems with it. Apple under Tim Cook? They’re happy to release different things that have bugs or don’t work very well, because they’re gonna improve on it, so if you look at where baseball is right now, it’s not gonna be where baseball is in three years.”