Don Garber: MLS was ‘way early’ on move to streaming-exclusive model

After three seasons behind a $100 per year paywall, it’s fair to say that MLS is finally moving in the right direction.

For the first time since the league’s monumental deal with Apple began in 2023, MLS fans can watch matches with a standard Apple TV subscription. There’s no need to shell out $100 for the MLS Season Pass.

But those three years behind the paywall stunted the league’s growth at a time when it should’ve been booming thanks to signing the world’s most popular player, Lionel Messi. Aside from a very limited package of games on Fox Sports, MLS had very little exposure to audiences outside of its core fan base. And through changing the model beginning this season and removing the Season Pass paywall, both Apple and MLS have tacitly admitted the initial arrangement was a mistake.

Back when the MLS-Apple deal was announced in 2022, most media observers characterized it as ahead of its time. There were both optimists and skeptics in that group, but most shared the assessment that this deal could be the future of sports broadcasting.

But nearly four years after the deal’s announcement, not a single notable league has followed MLS’s lead and moved all of its games to a streaming service. Perhaps the league served as a cautionary tale that sports fans aren’t ready to fully transition to streaming quite yet. And what was once viewed as a deal ahead of its time now seems like a deal that was way ahead of its time.

MLS commissioner Don Garber seems to acknowledge as much. During a recent conversation on The Main Event with Andrew Marchand, Garber said MLS was likely “way early” in the transition to streaming.

“I think the challenge is the direct-to-consumer, primarily exclusive subscription [model], which I believe is the future of sport … I think we were way early on it,” Garber said.

A quick look at other major media rights deals since 2022 would seem to confirm Garber’s suspicions. Leagues are embracing streaming, but aren’t going all-in on digital distribution quite yet. The NFL continues to carve games out for streaming services, but still airs the vast majority of games on broadcast television. The NBA put a package of games on Prime Video and another on Peacock, but still has a heavy broadcast and cable presence. NASCAR has aired a handful of races on Prime Video, but most of its events remain on linear television. Even this week, Duke men’s basketball signed a three-game streaming deal, but the vast majority of college sports remain on broadcast and cable.

The one throughline among all of these leagues is that streaming is just one small component of a larger, multiplatform distribution strategy. With MLS, streaming is the whole enchilada.

Perhaps it was a miscalculation for the league to make the jump to streaming so early. But eventually, the MLS model will look more familiar across other sports. In the next few years, both MLB and the NBA plan to launch centralized streaming hubs for local game broadcasts, likely resembling how MLS looks on Apple. And who knows what distribution for live sports will look like in 10 or 20 more years, when streaming figures to be the dominant force in entertainment.

Luckily, under the new arrangement with Apple, MLS will be able to bring its rights to market much earlier than originally anticipated. The deal, which originally went through 2032, will now end following the 2029 season. Perhaps MLS will then reevaluate and determine that a more balanced approach is necessary.

For now, the league is at least making its product much more accessible than it had been in any previous season under Apple.