Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Apple’s Plan to Conquer Sports Goes Beyond the Super Bowl”.
It is sports ball time for Apple, yes, Apple music is a sponsor of the Super Bowl halftime show, and it will be for a few years going forward, but Apple, isn’t just trying to be popular now with fans of football Apple has its eye on all the Balls as everyone buzzes about Apple’s, must-see big halftime, show with Rihanna there’s one more thing we’re going to be watching in the coming days. What will Apple do with another kind of football, the soccer kind of football? Yes, I know this is not a real soccer ball, but it’s all I have to work with today. Okay thanks: let’s talk about Apple’s big play to change the sports streaming game, I’m Bridget Carey – and this is one more thing: Apple music has replaced Pepsi as the Super Bowl halftime show, sponsor and Pepsi had it for a decade-long stretch. The Apple music sponsorship of the halftime show is going to continue on for a few years. Apple music signed a multi-year partnership with the NFL. The amount Apple paid is not officially known, but several outlets are reporting that Apple could have paid around 50 million dollars.
For this event and The Hollywood Reporter added that Apple’s sponsorship may have been extra enticing for the NFL because it could make this show bigger, making it stand out Beyond just the 12-minute performance of swinging around umbrella, ella Ellis and yes, Apple has given a huge platform To Rihanna, to not just be at the center of the field we’re talking about. This is one of television’s, most watched events and its Big Pop Culture moment, but Apple also has a platform with apple, music and Apple tv plus, to really promote this thing and push Rihanna content in all directions to tens of millions of its subscribe fibers with podcasts And playlists pumping up the hype Apple doesn’t say how many people subscribe to Apple music, but some groups estimate they’re around 80 million subscribers. It is fascinating for Apple to have such a big presence in the Super Bowl. For a few reasons, number one apple is Apple. It doesn’t need to participate in really big cultural events, Apple’s not like Budweiser, it doesn’t have to advertise in the big game, but it has advertised at the Super Bowl before you may know.
The iconic 1984 Apple ad, where a woman throws a sledgehammer through a screen to break Conformity with the introduction of the Macintosh. Many in the advertising World point to this commercial as something that has changed how advertising was done in the Super Bowl, making it a big production spectacle, but Apple didn’t do many more Super Bowl ads. After that there was a real Downer one the next year. It was called Lemmings with PC users walking off a cliff and that doesn’t get talked about much and in 1999 there was a Hal 2001 Space Odyssey reference about how Max won’t get affected by the Y2K bug. You, like your Macintosh better than me, don’t you Dave? None of these commercials actually showed Apple products, so, yes, Apple does think differently.
You could say about how it handles media. According to the New York Times the last time Apple did. A big sponsorship was in 2016 when it’s sponsored the Met Gala to get more attention for the Apple watch in the world of fashion. So what does sponsoring the halftime show do for a company that doesn’t really need to even show its products in its commercials? Yes, it is a great plug for Apple music, but the second thing to think about here is how Apple really wants to be a bigger part of the conversation around Sports, and that means sports streaming. The New York Times reported that the idea of Apple sponsoring the Super Bowl halftime show bubbled up in conversations with the NFL to deepen business ties between the two for a while Apple was negotiating with the NFL to get the rights to the NFL’s Sunday ticket package.
Now that didn’t happen, YouTube TV and Google won that battle. It has the ticket for the next seven years. Maybe Apple walked away because it’s a messy package for folks to pay more to watch out of Market games. The price for viewers has not been set yet, but there is an NBC sports report that has a source estimating it could cost you and me around 300 for access to the season.
The rights to streaming Sports is still a big active Battleground for all the big tech companies and there’s still a lot of time on the clock. To make more deals. Look at Amazon paying a reported 1.2 billion dollars a year for the exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football. Other sports online streaming rights are scattered all over different networks. Nbc’S peacock has a deal to broadcast Sunday. Baseball games YouTube had an exclusive baseball game deal for Wednesdays and Amazon has Yankees games, at least for the New York area, since it owns a piece of the Yankees yes network, but Apple also has its own baseball. Deal. Apple is paying a reported 55 million dollars to Major League Baseball for the rights to broadcast two weekly Friday games on Apple, TV plus and apple also pays another 30 million dollars worth of advertising to the MLB.
All that comes to about 50 games in a season and that deal could go on for seven years. So, if you’re a baseball fan, that is a lot of jumping around to find your games. But the most interesting streaming Sports deal right now is what Apple has done with major league soccer Apple TV plus has exclusive streaming rights to MLS games, and if you want to access the season pass on Apple TV, plus, it’s priced at about a hundred dollars.
But if you’re a subscriber it’s a little less at about eighty dollars for all the games and all the major league soccer clubs are going to wear an Apple TV plus patch on their Jersey, sleeves. This season, games start in late February and apple is going for something. No one has done dominating all the rights for one sport. It’S also been reported by The Daily Mail. That apple is entering the bidding war for the rights to stream.
The Premier League in 2025 and apple made a documentary about the European super league and Apple, has that whole Ted lasso show, which is Apple TV’s top rated show all about. The sport Apple had to pay the Premier League for the rights to use the archive footage and logo, and whatnot is Tim Cook. The king of soccer apple is dominating a single sport in a way we have not seen from other streamers, and it could be a test to show how Apple does Sports differently and on Apple’s terms. But now is when we have to call a timeout and talk to cnet’s Ace reporter for all things, sports streaming, Eli Blumenthal – and I also just like talking to him for all things: Sports.
What is Apple doing differently here. Besides, just putting the games on Apple TV plus so Apple’s owning the entire production, so that includes the games, but also a lot of content around the games behind the scenes shows a whip around show during game days that will bounce between live contests similar to NFL Redzone, they really are taking over the entire MLS operation. What are you looking closely at as a sports fan when this season launches, so I’m looking at a couple of things? First and foremost, how do the games look? Doesn’T stream reliably, whereas with the NFL, which is on a whole host of networks, CBS FOX NBC, Amazon ESPN? There are other ways to watch with MLS, since Apple has the exclusive on it. If they have trouble with one game stream, that game might not be accessible or watchable, so seeing how well and reliably that goes on seeing what the games look like does Apple, take some risk going to 4K.
For example, do they offer different camera angles or different experiences beyond what we’re accustomed to with traditional Sports, we’ll be curious to watch well Apple’s, putting everything into soccer. I can’t help but think what other sports could they try to be going after next yeah, so one that is coming in the not too distant future. The rights to the NBA Apple’s Services head at EQ is a well-known NBA fan. A well-known Golden State Warriors fan.
He’S posted pictures on his Twitter of him wearing the championship ring for the Warriors or one of their championship rings and has been seen Courtside numerous times with players like Stephen Curry, so it’ll be interesting to see when that comes up in a couple of years. Does Apple maybe look at what they’ve done with Major League Baseball, look at what they’ve done with major league soccer and turn to the NBA and make a play there. It’S certainly on his mind, I’m assuming well, thanks we’ll have to keep watching. You know it’s clear fans have a lot of fragmentation between different services to find their game depending on the day depending on the sport or even the team, or where they live. Apple tends to want a clean experience, and maybe scoring big with soccer is a way to show other big sports leagues. What Apple can bring to a streaming experience that no one has seen before just like apple, showed a new way of handling a Super Bowl ad 38 years ago, even if you are not into soccer or football or American NFL football or giant musical halftime shows it’s Going to be interesting, where Apple grows next with sports, so I want to hear from you what has your experience been with catching Sports on streaming networks? How many subscriptions do you have to keep track of, and what do you want to see improved share your stories in the comments below I’m Bridget Carey, thanks for watching .