The MLS season always comes out of the woods in a surprising way, mainly because it started right when the end of the European season begins (Champions League qualifiers, final stages of domestic seasons, etc.). There are only 44 days left until the start of the MLS season, and while the league always says so in its marketing campaigns (all leagues do), this season could very well be the most important season. One of them, the League Cup with Liga MX will take place for the first time in July and August, a potential great advantage for league visibility, thanks to involvement with the most popular league in the United States, which is Liga MX. Second, it is first in the league with its Exclusive TV/streaming deal with Apple TV, a first-of-its-kind deal in which a sports league is moving all of its broadcasts to a streaming platform. It is this part that is the true rise or fall aspect of the 2023 season.
We don’t know much about what exactly Apple’s operation would look like, other than paying $2.5 billion over 10 years, season ticket holders will get the league pass (or whatever it’s called) for free and it will be a NFL-style coverage method – i.e. no local broadcast crews, a national studio program, strict start times. Recently, we learn a little more.
We know the cost to fans now, which is $99 for the season or $15 a month if they aren’t already an Apple TV subscriber, and $79 and $13 if they are. Certainly cheaper than the season-long commitment NBA or MLB fans make to their streaming services every game, but more expensive than when MLS was simply on ESPN+. Given how regional/parochial the MLS fandom is, and given that many of those fans already have season tickets that already guarantee the subscription, it’s hard to pin down just how popular the subscription will be.
In addition, there were a number of official signings, mainly on local broadcasts that the league and teams used to have. It also looks like Taylor Twellman is ready to be the voice or face of the studio show, Terry Bradshaw/Charles Barkley before, during and after the games. Twellman usually has helpful things to say and it usually involves them shouting and getting attention. So that’s what we have for sure.
playoffs are still a mess
One thing we’ve known for a while about the MLS deal with Apple is that Apple wanted a lot more playoff games. Given how dull and straightforward As stale as the regular season can get (and we’ll come back to this), the MLS playoffs are the draw. And there have to be enough of them, and compelling enough, to make more people sign up or dive in for the entire season.
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At first, the thought was that the league would adopt a World Cup style group stage to open the playoffs, with two groups of four from each conference and the top two from each group advancing after three games. That idea seems to be on the scrap heap right now, with the league reportedly moving to make the first round of the playoffs best-of-three, or a race to five points to be more to the point. The conference semi-finals and finals would still remain single-elimination, as would the MLS Cup. That could give Apple 23 to 31 playoff games, depending on how the first round goes.
That makes sense? If it does, it’s just barely. A three game first round certainly weighs more for a higher seed as they would have two games at home, and it’s also harder to see an eight-seed beating a #1 seed twice or never losing in three games (one win and two draws would settle it). But does that give the regular season enough added weight to make teams really invest in finishing as high as possible, as opposed to taking their playoff spot and reading waiting room magazines until they start? It does not seem.
Single elimination after that maintains the chaos that the MLS playoffs have also tried to be proud of in recent years, but again, it doesn’t add much to the slog the regular season can become or reward teams for outgrowing that regular season. On the other hand, it makes everyone feel like they have a chance. Where you end up in this debate is down to personal taste.
Is it story time with MLS, boys and girls?
In recent days, there has been one of the those awkward and only tangentially connected discussions going around Twitter, which Twitter at least used to specialize in, about how Wrexham FC apparently connected better with fans than many MLS clubs, making news thanks to their FA Cup defeat to Championship side Coventry City in Saturday.
As things go on Twitter, the debate flung its arms wildly and ran into just about every puddle of mud it could find, from complaints about the quality of MLS or the English Conference and Euro-snobbery to league structure and everything in between.
But somewhere there is a genuine nugget about what Apple and the league are all about. will do when games are not on. What else do you get for $79 or $99 Mon-Fri?
According from athletic Sam Stejskal, Paul Tenorio and Pablo Maurier:
The new Season Pass app will also include a significant amount of club-created content on channels called “Club Rooms”. According to an internal league document acquired by The Athletic this week, these club rooms require specific pre-season and in-season content, including club profiles, player profiles and a specific fan/culture feature called “The Ritual”. These channels will also have videos about club ‘legends’, team traditions and big games from the team’s history, as well as weekly and monthly content during the season, including first team reports, player interviews, MLS Next Pro and academy reports. and community reports.
And this is where Formula One Drive to Survive changed the world. Every league or organization thinks that with the right documentary, they can open themselves up to a much larger market. Tennis and golf are hot this year. But it involves some things that not every league is willing to do.
One, you have to be completely open with full participation, not try to steer where the stories go. And even that comes with risk, as we saw with Max Verstappen refusing to participate in Drive to Survive after he saw how he was positioned in the first season. Two, you need to have a story.
While Drive to Survive it certainly added a lot of character and color to people we knew nothing about before, it also made us care about every little thing that happened on race day. Suddenly it wasn’t just about the checkered flag, but we also realized why it was so important for McLaren or Alpine to secure fourth in the midfield. We’ve seen Haas struggle to be relevant. Or Daniel Ricciardo’s team jump to take one last breath on the podiums and a world championship. MLS can do a game in July in 90 degrees heat between two teams that can’t finish higher than fifth in the conference really matter that much?
The same goes for Welcome to Wrexham. Though it may not have been intended for fans like you and me, and it’s certainly benefited from the Galactus-sized charm of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, there’s a quest at the base of it. Reform the club, position it to escape the Conference and climb the English league pyramid. I don’t want to start another promotion/relegation rant, it’s so easy to do, but what’s the story of comparable interest in MLS? Looking for a playoff berth? It’s not exactly the same thing, because a club will not transform in the same way as Wrexham if they were promoted. It’s unfair to compare the significance of Wrexham to the community around it, because MLS teams simply haven’t been around that long and the comparisons are so different, but that’s another thing the MLS lineup really can’t achieve.
What is described above the athletic the story sounds like what you’d find on any or all of the team’s websites, which won’t cut it. And it’s not like all these documentaries strike gold. Tottenham and Juventus had theirs, and their US fan bases haven’t exploded or anything. It’s all in the delivery.
There’s a lot to be excited about with Apple’s deal. The strict start times, basically 7:30pm across all time zones, will make things easier for fans and make game day feel like a bigger deal than the expansion of start times we’ve seen in the past. It makes it feel more like an NFL weekend than an MLB one, which just lightly sprinkles throughout the day rather than demanding your attention at a specific time. The engaging show, if executed correctly, could be something fans look forward to, like Red Zone, and spice up the mid-season and make it more pop. The uniqueness of the business is a story in itself.
But if not done correctly, the MLS has already buried itself out of sight. And this is not an entity anyone would trust to walk a tightrope.
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