MLB, Apple deal has potential
In March, Major League Baseball announced a broadcast-rights deal with a new partner that was strange in that the partner was Apple. Specifically, Apple TV+, the streaming service of one of the world’s biggest companies — one that became that way in part because it’s always been, to oversimplify things, cool.
Baseball, to oversimplify things again, is not cool. It’s a sport firmly rooted in tradition. Its audience skews significantly older than other North American leagues.
It seems like the antithesis of an Apple sport. But inside this curious marriage is the germ of an idea that could blow up the traditional sports broadcasting model, the bedrock upon which network television sits. Live sports might be the only thing allowing networks to keep streaming services from wiping them out. If Apple’s foray into live sports becomes the start of a longterm trend, will streaming services one day become the only way to watch your favourite teams?
Apple’s initial deal with MLB is limited. Friday Night Baseball is a weekly doubleheader of games exclusive to Apple TV+, available only as a subscription service. It has a much smaller library than giants like Netflix or Disney+, but has delivered a number of hits, including Emmy-winning comedy Ted Lasso and the film CODA, which won an Oscar for best picture.
Baseball is incongruous among all that, but Apple is trying to give a modern flavour to the game. Apple is producing the whole of Friday Night Baseball, from the cameras to the sounds to the on-screen graphics.
The picture quality and sound are noticeably enhanced. Sometimes it displays a hitter’s choice of walk-up music. (Those song selections are later curated into playlists available on Apple Music.)
Aside from the Friday programming, Apple TV+ has MLB highlight shows, a library of classic games and selected archives of This Week in Baseball, the magazine show baseball fans of a certain age will remember.
Which, again, leads to the question: why baseball? And the short answer is, because it was available. MLB, with its 162-game schedule, has a massive inventory and had already experimented with exclusivity, with a small number of games shown exclusively on Youtube. The deal with Apple continues that trend of removing a few games from traditional broadcasters and making them exclusive to digital platforms.
It is just a small number of games for any particular team, but that doesn’t mean that devoted fans won’t struggle to find them when they randomly aren’t on the normal outlet. (Blue Jays fans, the May 27 late game in Anaheim will only be available on Friday Night Baseball.)
North America’s other big sports are already locked into long-term broadcast deals, but even there some change is in the offing. The NFL’S Thursday Night Football package will move to Amazon Prime Video next season.
The appeal of live sports to a streaming service built on the idea of on-demand programming is that they will bring in subscriptions from fans who don’t want to miss a game. Will that be the case for Apple TV+, given the curious match with baseball?