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Apple Reportedly 'Most Likely Winner' of NFL Sunday Ticket Rights, Considering Bid for UEFA Champions League Package
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You're kidding, right? More like $100 a month, for each of those. And that's counting todays price with Directv, which actually has a distribution channel that can handle the traffic and not eat up everyone's data cap!
NFL game pass is $279 for an entire season. Apple is not charging $100 per month.
Your DTV bill may be $100 a month (sounds low for DTV) but thats not the cost for Sunday Ticket
lol who is going to pay MLS $10 a month when your suggested fee for UEFA is $5 a month? Thats like charging G-League $10 per month while charging NBA $5 per month.
Game Pass has game replays (sans preseason), not live NFL games. NFL Sunday Ticket is what your thinking of which is around $300-400 depending on which plan you purchase.
I think it all depends on the price. I am sure you would lose some of those subscribers who like the content and low price and dont need sports. Not sure if the gains they would get by raising the ATV+ would offset those who would leave.
Don’t hold your breath for 4K. Apple won’t be producing the content themselves but rather just streaming the feeds from the networks actually broadcasting the games. So if Fox is broadcasting in 720p or 1080p, that’s what it will be on Sunday Ticket.
Unlikely, Microsoft and the NFL renewed their partnership back in 2020, I don't know for how many years, they just say "multi-year expansion", the previous contract was, I believe, five years.
MLS is exclusive rights to every game including playoffs. UEFA is 2 tournaments that are mostly simulcast on Spanish networks for free.
The number of games between the two is not comparable.
And the market is much bigger for champions league/Europa league meaning a lower entry price can be justified when magnitudes more people will pay for it. MLS will have fewer subscribers thus requiring a higher fee for Apple to profit.
Lastly, it’s tournament vs. league. Your bad comparison is league vs. league. I’d be happy to be wrong and MLS ends up being $5 a month, but it doesn’t matter since I’ll get it for free as a season ticket holder anyways.
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That will be fun to watch, an Apple service that promotes their direct competition.
Also last season the UEFA tournaments where in Paramount+ with all the other content they offer. The format and schedule makes it hard to be a separate service.
I think that products like the EUFA could be placed as part of the Apple TV + content and the MLS and NFL could be separate services that they will offer in a bundle.
Perhaps game pass international is different but game pass international is live games for all 32 teams and that is $279.
Yes, they're different products. Game Pass International is only for outside the US, Canada and Mexico, in the UK it works with some blackouts because some games are broadcasted on Sky in the UK, but everywhere else it's every game live and on-demand, I think it includes the Thursday Night Game that's on Amazon Prime Video.
I'm still considering whether to renew my subscription or not, with the time difference and the fact that I also work Sundays I'd basically be paying to watch, for sure, 2 games per month, more games if on Sundays I'm working the morning shift.
Game Pass International is 188.99 € - or 4 x € 47.25 instalments -, the subscription lasts until July 2023, and it's the whole season, preseason games, regular season, playoff and Super Bowl. It's still looking like a pretty sweet deal, though.
Not every month, of course, only the months when active. And I pay quite a bit more than the base $279. (there's different levels) I pay $395 a season and I'm assuming Apple will raise the price to recoup their cost.
I hope that at least for the first year, they give Apple One subscribers a hefty discount, just to entice people to sign up for Apple One. Would make sense in the long run. They have deep enough pockets to severely undercut what DirecTV was charging, just to add subscribers for the first year.
What I'm REALLY hoping for, though, is that unlike DirecTV's Sunday Ticket, Apple will let you stream to multiple devices in the same house/network.
I actually think Apple will charge less, maybe even significantly less, than DirecTV was charging, at least in the first year, just to make a splash and get more people to subscribe. I think adding subscribers is more important in the long run for them than actually making money off sports for the first few years. Apple probably just made 2 billion dollars in the time it took me to type this. I don't think they'd need to price it to recoup a loss at the expense of fewer subscribers.
I think it'll be set up in reverse, with sports packages including "free" tv+
tv+ -----------------------------------------$5.99
NFL channel + tv+ ------------------------ $29.99
Soccer channel (MLS + UEFA) + tv+ ---- $14.99
They need eyeballs on their TV shows to continue building a presence in the industry. Apple is not in the TV industry to generate profit from subscriptions. They're in TV to maintain control over the #1 type of content that people use their devices for today: streaming video. Apple cannot be held at the mercy of the streaming industry that would dictate the experience on their devices, which would threaten their multi trillion dollar valuation. So they became a part of that industry. Other streaming services aren't just content providers for Apple devices now, they're Apple's competitors in the space, so now they have to play ball on Apple's terms.
Getting NFL fans and UEFA/MLS fans on Apple's platform, with a too good to be true monthly price, is essentially walking them to the cash register to buy Apple devices, where Apple makes the real money. $3B is nothing when they're selling hundreds of billions in hardware.
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And how many would they lose if there's a price increase for an expensive sports package that not everyone wants? I don't give one hoot about sports. Part of the reason I canceled cable was because I was tired of paying the ridiculous price for it when a large part of what I was paying for was the sports channels in which I have no interest.
ATV+ is worth $5/month to me. It's not worth more than that to me if an increase is to justify a very expensive thing that I won't watch.