Maybe not the same ballpark, but the same sport. Stranger Things was an absurd example to prove the point. At the end of the day, $85M isn't "massive" in this context; Season 4 of Stranger Things cost 3x that, and $30M of it is just an ad buy which they likely would have done to some extent anyway. The only reason you or others might consider one a 'nit pick' and the other perfectly sensible comes down to personal bias. As evidenced by this thread and others, where people can not even allow an article to be published on this website on the subject of Friday Night Baseball without harumphing and signaling their evolved intellect by declaring sportsball so stupid.
It's possible that Apple has made some
unforced error (pun intended

) by pursuing MLB or MLS or whatever sport they
court (

) in the future. But I think it's more likely that they believe, and have evidence, that this spend is justified by subscriber counts, marketshare increase, or just straight ROI.