Live sports are quickly becoming some of the most important programming for streaming services. Time and time again, streamers are realizing that premier sporting events drive subscriptions like nothing else on television. Look no further than the boost Peacock got during the 2024 Paris Olympics, or its exclusive NFL Wild Card game. Or how about Netflix’s success as the exclusive home of WWE Raw? Or Paramount+’s stranglehold on fans of the UEFA Champions League? The list goes on and on.
But not everyone is taking note. And there’s one streamer in particular that seems to fall firmly in the “pretender” camp alongside all of the other contenders: Apple.
Late last week, Apple TV+ emerged as the likely destination for Formula One broadcasts in the United States. The glitzy global racing circuit will join Friday night Major League Baseball doubleheaders and the full suite of Major League Soccer games to round out Apple’s murderer’s row of live sports.
Sarcasm aside, if Apple’s portfolio seems a bit haphazard, that’s because it is. Regular season baseball on Friday nights, historically one of the least-watched nights of the week, when most local fans won’t even know where the game is airing? Pass. MLS on Apple might as well be in the “witness protection program” according to one sports media reporter. And Formula One? Half of those races aren’t even during normal waking hours in the United States. And as far as motorsports in America go, it’s still a distant second behind NASCAR.
To make matters worse, it seems like Apple’s F1 deal won’t even be exclusive. Fans of the circuit will reportedly still be able to subscribe to F1 TV for live race coverage and bypass Apple entirely. If the whole point of acquiring live sports is to manufacture subscribers, exclusivity is half the battle. But it’s only half.
Apple aced the exclusivity test with its first two broadcast deals with MLB and MLS, but it failed the other crucial part of the subscription-driving game: buying inventory people care about.
Baseball fans aren’t going to shell out $10 per month to watch the one or two games their team happens to play on Apple. And while MLS fans are forced to buy MLS Season Pass if they want to watch any live games, there simply aren’t enough of them to make the $250 million per year rights fee a worthwhile investment.
Look at Apple’s competition. Amazon has an entire weekly NFL package to themselves, and now they’re getting playoff games. That’s in addition to becoming a full NBA partner this upcoming season, having a slate of NASCAR races that were well received in their first year on the streamer, and WNBA inventory.
Netflix has taken a far different approach, but has been measurably more successful than Apple. The Netflix strategy typically focuses on “eventizing” live sports inventory. That could be a Christmas Day NFL doubleheader, or fights featuring superstars like Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. When it’s not “eventizing” it’s buying inventory that fans will find no matter where it is airing, like the aforementioned WWE package. It’s clear what Netflix is doing, and it makes sense.
Even YouTube seems to have a more sound gameplan than Apple. Instead of buying traditional inventory, YouTube has leveraged its platform to service the NFL’s Sunday Ticket package. Now, they’re dabbling in live broadcasts of their own, airing an exclusive NFL game in Week 1.
Aside from Apple, all of the major tech companies seem to be at least somewhat calculated in their approach to live sports. Apple, on the other hand, seems to be treating live sports like a vanity project with no clear direction.
Why else would Apple blow everyone else’s bids out of the water for Formula One and not even demand exclusivity? For a company like Apple, where $150 million per year for F1 rights amounts to a rounding error, it can be justified as a great way to entertain high-powered clients. There’s certainly a sort-of glamor halo effect that comes with being associated with Formula One, but is that justifiable from a business perspective?
So far, Apple’s live sports strategy is strikingly similar to its strategy with the rest of Apple TV+: paying hundreds of millions of dollars for films that have little to no breakthrough potential or impact. Why ink a nine-figure first-look deal with Martin Scorsese? Because who wouldn’t want to be in business with Martin Scorsese!
But the strange thing is, insofar as Apple has actually laid out its live sports strategy, the company has emphasized wanting global ownership. “Its philosophy is to acquire global media rights and deliver the same experience to fans, across their devices, in as many countries as possible,” former Fox Sports exec and current media consultant Patrick Crakes said in March. And sure, it accomplished that with the MLS deal. But MLS is an American-centric league. Few outside the United States are interested in watching MLS games, save the most diehard Lionel Messi fans. But the Formula One deal is U.S.-only. Apple is buying domestic rights for a global racing circuit, practically the exact opposite of what its purported strategy is.
If Apple wants to get serious about live sports, they need to start going after properties people care about. Formula One races, while much more popular than they were just five years ago, still only average a touch over one million viewers for a Grand Prix. That number is bound to take a haircut on Apple as casual fans decide it’s not worth the price of a subscription. And while the streamer hasn’t released any official viewership data for MLS games, it appears those numbers are strikingly low. Friday Night Baseball likely suffers the same fate.
For now, it’s hard to take Apple seriously. It seems the streamer is just in sports because it’s “cool” or they’re “supposed” to be doing it. That’s no recipe for success, and it’s fair to question whether Apple has genuine aspirations to be a destination for live sports because of it.