Editor’s Note: Informed by Apple’s recent rights acquisition of distribution partnership with the North American top-flight soccer league and as further elaboration on my recent thoughts shared with John Wall Street (”Apple’s MLS Deal Shows It Wants To Distribute Rights, Not Buy Them”), this is a deep-dive into Apple’s (and Amazon’s) sports video strategy. If you have only five minutes, there is a link above. If you want to get into the nitty-gritty details of the digital sports media ecosystem and how the trillion-dollar tech giants approach live sports programming, there is a 12,000-word and three-chart blog post summarized below and only one click away.

More sports is coming exclusively to Apple TV(+): The world’s most valuable company closed an unprecedented media rights agreement with Major League Soccer, ticking a lot of boxes that previously have made “Big Tech” reluctant to jump head-first into sports rights:

• 🌍 Global rights including local, national, and international territories fitting the global and scaled operations that have made companies such as Apple, Amazon, and Co. successful: Every Game, One Single Place, All Around the World.

• 🔒 Content ownership instead of rentals: 🔟 years is as close as licensees can get to owning any intellectual property in sports without buying the entity.

• 🎥  Ready-made production seeking distribution: a hands-off approach towards traditional broadcaster obligations such as host production, talent management, marketing/promotion, and sales.

🇺🇸 MLS ⚽, on the other hand, was betting the 🏡 house on ”Big Tech” by bringing an unprecedented set of local, national, and international media rights to market in time for the 2023 season — a mismatch for previous licensees 👎🏼 and a move that came attached with short-term financial losses due to several local and international stop-gap deals to align timelines. 📆 

After an assessment of what retailing its OTT product exclusively via Apple TV might mean for the league (👉🏼 MLS Pass: Good PR Headlines mean Good Business?) and 👥 end consumers (👉🏼 Content Packaging: Free-/Paid Content, Pricing, Pay-Per-Views, Season Passes), this blog deep-dives into Apple’s potential long-term vision: an 📱 iTunes of Sports.

• 🍎 Apple’s role: an enabling distributor for kick-starting direct-to-consumer ambitions for sports organizations 🤝 — rather than becoming a significant and incremental rights buyer in the global sports media market.🤑

• 🍎 Apple’s value: partially underwriting 💰🔒 the rocky linear/B2B/licensing-to-streaming /B2C/retailing transition of sports rights owners and facilitating access to a massive install base to piggy-back on (… fans and end consumers to whom MLS now has now direct economic exposure).🔀👨‍👨‍👦‍👦

• 🍎 Apple’s plan: live sports programming as Apple-exclusive services, owned and operated by rights owners and sold on Apple TV 📱, generating scalable service/platform revenues and differentiating its video aggregation platform (an inherently non-exclusive business) — cross-sold / bundled into the broader Apple ecosystem. 🚀🚀

Along the way, 🛒 Amazon sport’s video strategy is compared and contrasted with 🍎 Apple’s approach: Both trillion-dollar tech giants will keep buying select 🌟 low-inventory, high-value rights packages in pursuit of incremental subscriber growth 📈 for their respective subscription streaming service and broader ecosystem. To this end, Amazon might be the more relevant incremental buyer of sports programming in the short term, including big-ticket properties then sold as a premium add-on to Prime Video (e.g. 🇫🇷 ⚽ Le Pass Ligue 1), that all rights owners were looking for. Apple, 🙅🏼‍♂️ reluctant to become a traditional sports broadcaster (think: media instead of technology company), might have the bigger long-term vision, adding not only an MLS Pass but 🇬🇧 ⚽ Premier League, 🇩🇪 ⚽ Bundesliga, and 🤼 UFC (Pay-per-View) Passes.

Apple has historically moved at its own pace and does not seem to be willing to adopt the fast-pacing sports rights environment yet. Its 💡 blueprint for a new distribution model might be a bit ahead of its time but it now found a trailblazing first-mover in the MLS.

Besides 🏈 NFL’s Sunday Ticket (a.k.a. NFL+ 👀), the MLS might have been as high as it gets on the ladder of sports rights for the near-term future to concept-proof this potential sports media paradigm shift — and, importantly, next catalyst for Apple’s $20BN service business (generating both 💳 subscription and 📣 advertising revenues).

📝 Other takeaways include:

• 🆓 ❌ Consumers, don’t expect much top-rating live sports programming to be thrown into Apple TV+ or Prime Video for “free” going forward.

• 💰 Leagues, don’t expect any easy money for nothing, it’s a partnership with a guaranteed check but also shared up- and downside — and a much less hands-on media rights partner than before.

• 🥸 Rights buyers, bundled strategies are needed for streaming economics to support and sustain high-priced rights acquisitions — Apple and Amazon have the benefit of in-house soft- and hard-bundling.

On the backend, there is a mix of predictions and conclusions — and why I already appreciate Apple getting into all things sports rights: First, 🤫 reporters will have to work much harder to get the scoop ahead of time. Second, 👨🏻‍🏫 Apple has already the sports media terminology down, despite being new to the game. (see: 🔗 Twitterpost)

That's it, I appreciate any feedback or a follow on Twitter (@yannickramcke), where I share my thoughts regarding current developments in everything "Sports Business, Media & More" on a regular basis.