There was some intriguing news about MLS as its atypical-for-the-sport expanded post-season playoffs began. The ever-niggly Austin Karp of SPORTS BUSINESS JOURNAL reported it a week ago and devoted a substantial part of this week’s podcast to it:
MLS viewership on Apple TV and other outlets shows the league was up 29% year-over-year for regular-season weekend matches in 2025. In some of the first viewership data to be released publicly, MLS shared with SBJ that it had 3.7 million global aggregate viewers for a full slate of weekend games — somewhere in the range of 12-15 matches per weekend — most of which were primetime windows.
“We’re bullish on this number. We’re happy with what we’re seeing,” said MLS SVP/Media Seth Bacon, in his first public comments on the MLS-Apple numbers.
(T)his audience figure provides the first glimpse into consumption of games across Apple TV, but also on Fox and FS1 in the U.S., Canadian outlets TSN/RDS and other sources like EA FC Mobile in-game simulcasts. The audience includes English- and Spanish-language telecasts, and doesn’t account for any Leagues Cup games or midweek MLS games, which presumably have a smaller audience.
Putting out spin on viewership data is hardly newsworthy; not a week goes by where SBJ or its competitors aren’t supplying some ballyhooed release on American football, now more than ever qualifying those positives with the caveat of Nielsen’s newly introduced Big Dats Plus Panel methodology that finally measures device-centric viewership and incorporates it into estimates that advertisers insist upon. And that’s even true among streamers such as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix that are reluctant to share any specific viewership data on their entertainment properties because, well, as SVODs, they don’t have to. Apple TV has been even more reticent to share concrete data; for one thing, their subscriber count lags behind those of their larger rivals and for another, their MLS arrangement isn’t dependent upon proof of performance. Karp drove this point home for those otherwise unaware:
MLS and Apple have been questioned and criticized over the lack of information regarding viewership since their relationship — valued at $250 million annually — began before the 2023 season, as MLS has become one of the only major sports properties to not share reliable, consistent metrics. That has led many to wonder if MLS has suffered since the move away from a linear TV-first model. Apple historically hasn’t released much data on its programming, and this was the first major sports league to place all its games on the platform.
And it took a former colleague of mine who was weaned on a world where traditional national Nielsen measurement was neither possible nor necessary to reinforce how big a deal to us sports-loving numbers crunchers this is:
MLS made a move to redefine itself and its distribution,” said Patrick Crakes, a media consultant and former Fox Sports exec. “This is a global statistic. It’s what they’re managing their business around. … I expect as they go forward, they’ll come up with more things that will help them reach more people.” Crakes also gave credit to MLS and Apple for making Season Pass available in more places this season, including through Xfinity and DirecTV. “It’s all helping the ecosystem to work together, and this is what they want to be measured against,” he said. “It seems like they’ve done some smart things to move things along, still validate the Apple deal”.
To the league’s credit, they took full advantage of these shackles being loosened to provide a bit more than merely just a plus sign without context:
By having its games on Apple TV, MLS gets a far better understanding of who its audience is — like other properties exclusively with a direct-to-consumer outlet. “Having real data and saying these are real people has really been a game changer for us and that’s the benefit of being on the platforms that we’re on,” said Bacon. “We know that these are people who are coming in and making that commitment of their time and their money to spend time with us. So from our standpoint, they’re a much more qualified viewer than someone who’s getting kind of swept up into some sort of panel-based mathematical representation of viewership.”
While MLS did not release audience demo or details, the league said it’s seeing more engagement time with viewers on Apple TV — at around 60 minutes per match. A typical game broadcast window for MLS is just under two hours. The engagement figure, (MLS EVP Camilo) Durana noted, is 3x what MLS had when it was last on linear TV for its package of games in 2022. That’s an impressive figure — as a source tells SBJ the NFL has an average time spent per viewer of 80 minutes this season, albeit across a longer broadcast window. That figure is closer to 84 minutes for Prime Video and “Thursday Night Football” games.
The league said it’s also getting a much younger demo than it did on linear TV, reflective of what Prime Video has delivered for properties such as “TNF” or NASCAR recently — but MLS would not reveal that figure. “The ability to access from multiple devices, the consistency and the ability to sort of start watching on your mobile and then switch to your large-screen device — we’ve seen our audiences get younger since the transition to Apple,” Bacon said.
And as noted on the podcast that dropped earlier this morning, the partnership is broadening during the playoffs, with Apple making matches available to its full subscriber base rather than just those who were MLS Season Pass subscribers during the regular season. It’s a similar tactic that the Tennis Channel historically used with its Grand Slam coverage, both to satisfy the desired reach goals of their respective league partners and to use as a dangling carrot to attract potential future subscribers. When you can get addicted to the best possible play, you’re that much more willing to consider paying for more of it down the road not fully considering that that’s only gonna buy you more of less.
Moreover, it may finally be an acknowledgement on Apple’s part of what the rest of the streaming industry has already figured out. You need true destination content like sports to help drive adoption of what you might hope would become destination entertainment content. Another global-appeal niche sport, F1 racing, will join MLS on Apple next year; both having moved on from ESPN where they were one among many to a much more precious relationship.
Sure, the license fees these sports are receiving–substantially more than ESPN was willing to offer–are the primary motivator. But it’s not like these sports harbor any delusions of grandeur that they will somehow become as widely viewed as football or basketball, global potential notwithstanding. While conceding that any comparisons with linear benchmarks both current and historic are invalid, Karp’s back-of-the-matchbook math concluded that all in the average per-game viewership for MLS is effectively in line with what a typical ESPN telecast was delivering when they had the package. And while in an era of inexorable decline any gains are seen as welcome anomalies considering the infusion of Lionel Messi and, now, Son Heung-Min it’s hard not to speculate that something more than +29% over a modest global reach base might have been possible.
But Apple’s decision to finally have a dollop of transparency is at least to me a far bigger deal, and may very well indicate an appetite to algorthimically promote MLS even more aggressively going forward. A looming World Cup year can’t hurt, either. After all, football fans of any kind do occasionally watch something else.
Courage…