It's because the players don't play for pride anymore. They're all coddled as kids, then when they get into the league they're paid way too much. Couple this with a push to make all the rules softer, and what you're left with is a product that is far less compelling to watch on TV.
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Apple Reportedly Bid on NFL Sunday Ticket 'Weeks Ago' and Still Awaiting Answer
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1. Who is the target audience to sell useless hardware to then? What’s the purpose of the Apple TV 4k console and the coveted remote that they sell for $149 + (with maxed RAM)
2. True - And I don’t have to give them anything for free either…
3. I don’t subscribe… I did the 3 month trial and found nothing compelling enough to justify paying them something monthly - so i did not renew my subscription.
At the end of the day Apple needs to create a compelling reason to get people to subscribe to their service… the subscription fee is only a small fraction of the revenue that can be generated by such a service... Data brokering, advertising, etc… will generate much more revenue than subscription fees - but for any of it to work they need eyeballs, and to get my eyeballs they need to give me something - after all, I don‘t have to give Apple anything for free… but maybe that’s what they are expecting?
Get NFL Sunday Ticket and it be included in the standard monthly subscription fee, and maybe, just maybe i might renew my subscription for content thats limited to only once a week for only a few months a year. They, and apparently you too, think I should pay for something like that? How’s having that mindset working out for Apple TV so far?
When I grew up, boys played football, and girls played soccer in school.National Football League (NFL) — $13 Billion
European football is by far the most popular sport in the world. However, American football is the most profitable. The National Football League (NFL) is valued at $13 billion, which is how much they generate every year.
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European football - a.k.a. Soccer is a drinking mans sport… where they tend to have drunken stadium wide riots every so often… fun stuff! I look forward to the World Cup coming back to the U.S. in 2026… thats always a good time! Too bad we share it with the rest of North America too… a huge geographical area, compared to say, um, a place like Qatar.
Its all about the money…
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It depends on the price, the NFL’s rights are not cheap at all, Sunday Ticket is expensive, I think it will be a separate purchase for the customers, maybe it won’t even be a part of Apple TV+, but just a service you buy with your Apple ID and enjoy, without the need to have a Apple TV+ subscription.
If this a go, it would mean customers will need an Apple TV box, brilliant.
Again, you are not being reasonable at all.
Of course I would love it if Apple would include Sunday Ticket without additional fees, but asking someone who paid $4-5 billion per year for something to pass through that to end user for free is just not a reasonable proposition at all, no matter how rich that someone is.
NFL charges NFL Game Pass to streaming customers about $300 per year. If Apple could charge customers somewhere around (or less than) $100 per year, that is a huge reason for so many to subscribe to Apple TV.
You don't need an AppleTV box to watch AppleTV+
Though you bring up a good reminder that the naming scheme does make many people think that.
It reminds me of how Playstation Vue failed because many believed a Playstation was needed for it.
Apple TV is just over 2 years old and they started from literally zero in terms of content. They'll learn, create/license content and probably be fine. It only takes 1 or 2 "viral" shows to get the ball rolling.
I personally haven't found a show I like on Apple TV yet, but I've heard people enjoy The Morning Show, Ted Lasso, For All Mankind and others.
The box itself is great for cord cutters like me, I can buy any TV I want and get the same UI across all my TVs. I can use it to watch anything from live tv to any stream service I'd like, it gives me access to Apple Fitness on my TV, it's a hub for my HomeKit devices and you get little features like a Picture in Picture when the door bell rings showing you who's at the door.
It's great for watching music videos or listening to music with the lyrics up. It provides access to synced iCloud photos on a nice big screen for looking at and sharing pictures.
There's remote control functionality built in to iOS and watchOS so anyone in the house can control it without having to look for the physical remote.
It provides access to my entire iTunes library, including tv shows and films which were purchased in the last 19 years or so and is convenient for purchasing/renting and watching things which aren't available on streaming services.
It has access to games including Apple Arcade, which can be fun for party style gaming.
This list is going on a bit but I'll conclude with AirPlay, which again, is great for sharing content or just seeing it on a bigger screen. We have them on all the screens at the place I work for quickly throwing up presentations or demos etc without having to mess around with cables, inputs or dongles.
I pay for Apple One for Apple Music, iCloud storage and Apple Fitness, so TV+ is essentially free.
Tell me you don't know anything about sports without actually saying it. The ignorance emanating from this post is staggering. I could break down why you're wrong on so many levels, but I'll simply say that if you think no one from another country would watch football (despite the Canadian Football League being a thing and NFL games selling out stadiums all over Europe, not to mention Australian Football), I suggest you go watch a premier league rugby match. All the violence, none of the pads.
The NFL prints money and draws eyeballs like nothing else.
Apple loves money and attention and, for ATV+, very intriguing content.
Quite in contrast to your statement above, this feels very much modern Apple, in fact.
The naming issue IMO is still one of the stupidest things Apple has done in recent years (excluding all the endless rumors of Apple Car and goggles).
So many people here talking about Apple's baseball broadcast obviously don't understand what NFL Sunday Ticket is. It is just every team's local FOX or CBS broadcast of the games. It's essentially a distribution deal.
The only thing they could possibly put their own spin on is the proprietary Red Zone broadcast. DirecTV has its own Red Zone broadcast separate from the NFL's Red Zone broadcast that you can purchase on Xfinity and other providers.
The only thing they could possibly put their own spin on is the proprietary Red Zone broadcast. DirecTV has its own Red Zone broadcast separate from the NFL's Red Zone broadcast that you can purchase on Xfinity and other providers.
Its not the players fault that they get a 10 yards + first down penalty for looking the wrong way on an opposing player , those taunting rules are some of the worst I ever seen in pro sport , asking ppl to hit others with all their might , releasing a ton of adrenaline , and then asking them to not gloat , jump up and down , send a juicy curse , do some taunting , is beyond ridiculous , I taunt my little boy sometimes if I get him in Mario kart , he can handle it just fine......
I put the taunting rules as the worst , and the QB "dont hit him ever" rules as second , the QB rule at least has some logic behind it , as you want to keep your money makers in the game and not the sideline.
Apple TV app is on nearly all devices. It's built in to TVs, various consoles, and other devices. https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-app/devices/
People need to stop mixing metaphors such as the Pro XDR display. That's not a product for you anyway; let it go. This is about content. It's neither hardware nor software. Stick to the point.
I am Canadian so excuse my ignorance, but we used to get Sunday Ticket on Satellite or Cable provider (it wasn't exclusive to one Cable Co) but for online streaming you could also get NFL Gamepass which was the online rights... In all cases it was just the OTA US broadcasts (Fox or NBC/CBS). Then a few years back DAZN got the NFL rights internationally, and they eventually sublicensed Sunday Ticket to our cable cos. They kept the streaming rights... US is obvious different since your OTA networks have broadcast and streaming rights for their own stuff and Gamepass was always kinda delayed for US customers (international customers got games live). Will whoever wins the rights be able to stream live games, I know CBS and Fox have streamed games via their apps, will they be prevented from doing so? Maybe only for out of market games?
FWIW I have had no problems with DAZN and gamepass, nor did I when it was just Gamepass before that.
Not sure why we are comparing this to (or worried about) the Apple MLB presentation
Sunday Ticket just aggregates the existing feeds for all the games
Apple wouldn't be doing any of their own commentators or any of that.
Sunday Ticket just aggregates the existing feeds for all the games
Apple wouldn't be doing any of their own commentators or any of that.
Yes, Gamepass was an international thing, and there used to be a loophole for Americans where you could log into the British app store, download the Gamepass app, and then there were a couple countries where it was free, so you'd get a VPN for that country and be able to watch all the games for free. This was a handful of years ago, and the NFL closed that loophole. But I think Gamepass is a thing here now where you can watch All-22 video after games have aired and coach's film and stuff.
The way it works here (at least how it was a handful of years ago when I had DirecTV) is you go to your DirecTV guide and there's a whole section of channels that are just every NFL game's local broadcast that you can flip on. If you're familiar with RedZone Network, DirecTV had their own RedZone channel hosted by a different dude than the RedZone channel that was provided to other cable providers around the country. I ditched DirecTV before streaming became a huge thing, but I think there was a Sunday Ticket app where you could access the games.
By contrast, with the Sunday Night Baseball thing that Apple TV is doing, that is a dedicated broadcast of 1 game per week. It's all Apple produced and commentated, so the "feel" of the broadcast is controlled by Apple. This would not be the case with NFL Sunday Ticket, as Apple would just "host" all the games on Apple TV+, and subscribers would just go to their app to access the live local feed from X city's FOX or CBS affiliate. As I mentioned in my original post, the only thing that Apple could really take and put their spin on is the RedZone that is a part exclusively of the Sunday Ticket package, but I don't see how you really change that all that much. It's already a good product.
I see your point about taunting. But some of it is way overboard. In the 80's, back when the NFL was actually being played as it was intended, you didn't see people celebrating and dancing after every single play. It was pretty much only after a touchdown... and even then, some players like Walter Payton and Barry Sanders declined to do it because it was unprofessional and juvenile-looking.
As for the rules, I totally agree. You remove the violence from the game, you weaken its appeal. They basically hedged their bets that people would watch more football if they felt that the NFL "cared". I don't think that's a winning bet and it's bound to fail, similarly to the way the NBA is failing compared to it's heyday (90's Jordan era). If you remove conflict, you remove drama. You remove drama, you remove compelling story-lines. And then, in turn, interest and ratings decline. So it's only a matter of time before people start to get bored with the NFL and the numbers begin to dip, since they're still working to make the game less appealing with rule changes.
But there's still the fundamental problem of the players not caring anymore like they use to. Back in the 80's, those guys played for their legacy and pride. These kids are playing for money, and it shows. How they go about solving that is anyone's guess.
You are underestimating the power of civil liability. It doesn't take having a brain to realize that repeated blows to the head isn't good for brain health. A large group of former players sued the NFL because of the prominence of CTE and other brain diseases at young ages amongst those former players. The NFL's hand was forced into minimizing these brutal hits while also preserving the nature of the game. I think the outcome is still a great product, and there's plenty of people who agree with me based on viewership numbers being at all time highs.
I'm a Chicago Bears fan, so I grew up on a punishing style of football, but the game was forced to evolve. Come September, I still can't wait for Sundays to sit on my couch, open my fantasy apps and take in a fast-action, attention-grabbing sport. Saying the players don't care just doesn't make sense when all the science is now out there, and they still elect to pay a dangerous game because they love it enough to put their bodies at risk.
Live sports in the US have become hard to watch due to relentless advertising. The format was already inundated with ads -- numerous lengthy commercial breaks, every stat/replay accompanied by the slogan of whichever sponsor is was "presented by", etc -- and in recent years, it's even worse. Now you get the on-uniform ads, the digitally superimposed pseudo-targeted ads on the field or ad boards around the perimeter, and my favorite, the picture-in-picture ads during the action -- because we wouldn't want the actual sport to interrupt an advertising opportunity, would we?