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Friday Night Baseball Coming to Apple TV+ on April 8

The offering from Apple is free. Complaining about something free that you aren't obligate to participate seems rather ungrateful to me.

I think a lot of you would still complain if you were dying from thirst and someone gave you a 44oz glass of water without a free Apple sticker for your trouble.
 
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DaPizzaMan said:
Unless you're an investor, I don't see what the problem is. You can quite easily ignore the mediocre content (to which I agree - it's nothing enticing) and still get quality products. The money spent on media/content is not detracting from their product R&D, I assure you.

Now, as an investor (like myself), I think it is a bit wasteful, but who knows; maybe in a few years Apple TV+ will be a decent competitor to Netflix and HBO Max. The library just isn't there yet.
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Apple’s declining QC and stagnant product lineup is a problem for all users. ATV+ was driven by envy and desperation when Apple’s stock price was in the toilet…
their P/E was in the low double digits while Netflix and Amazon enjoyed triple digit P/E. But Apple’s P/E have expanded significantly once app sales, icloud, and music became a larger percentage of their overall revenues.

ATV+ was/is an unnecessary distraction and a financial drag which haven’t benefited anyone because all those shows would have appeared on any number of streaming services. I’d much rather have 10TB of iCloud storage than ATV+ as part of my Apple One plan, for example.
 
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brubeast said:
We agree about preferring a silent screensaver to ads. My point was that MLB doesn't want the viewer to watch the stadium life in between innings, because that's paid advertising time. From MLB perspective, you get ads or you get nothing (screensaver).

What I really wish is that MLB would cut the breaks between innings in half to speed up games. But again, that's ad time; and if they cut the ads there, they'd just show up somewhere else (like on jerseys, which is obviously disgusting).
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Gotcha. Fwiw, when I first got mlb.tv way back when (late 2000s), there was no screensaver nor ads on some games. They used to just show a sort of 3/4 top-down view of the whole field/stadium during the ad breaks, but also in silence. If I recall, the "commercial break in progress" screensaver crept in to more and more games over time. And then ~5 years ago they started replacing it with ads. At first the ads were blockable with a DNS blocker, but not anymore.

Honestly, I would trade ads on jerseys in exchange for cutting the breaks between innings in half. I recall watching some Asian leagues while traveling, they had ads on the jerseys and it was not so terrible.
 
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These will be produced by MLB Network. I'll have to watch and see who the announcers are and what the production quality is.

Since Fox sold off all the RSN's, MLB lost their Sugar Daddy and the RSN's are struggling from cord-cutting. A competitive OTT streaming product is the way back.
 
dannyyankou said:
I have lots of questions about this. Will there be blackout restrictions? Will they do their own broadcast or just pickup the broadcast of local networks? Will it be in 4K?
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These games are exclusives. Local RSNs will not be showing these games so there is nothing to blackout.
 
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I’m surprised by a lot of the responses.

I love that Apple is getting into sports. I’d actually like to see them do more with it. I swear I read that their goal was eventually to take on the broadcast responsibilities in the future. I’d also like to see them bring more interactivity to the live experience. Allow you to pull up stats, change camera angles, view replays etc in a nice interface. And in a dream world, if they could get the NFL contract that would be much preferred over directv. I think this is a great option and will bring additional people into the Apple TV+ area.

Im also surprised by the negativity towards Apple TV. For $5 month or part of the Apple one bundle, I feel there is some value there. And that’s really the baseline they need because of the amount of Apple users that exist. Small incentives for users to jump into the subscription service is a big time win for Apple. They don’t have the option of having existing content to throw into their catalog, so they’re going for high quality content and imo are succeeding. There was just an article in the WSJ talking about how they’re kind of a niche streaming option. One of the cheapest, but still high quality shows. I honestly feel like they’ve done really well with Apple TV+ and hope they continue to build on it. Sports could be that next step.
 
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MacRumors said:


Friday Night Baseball games are set to premiere on Apple TV+ on April 8, Apple said today. Apple earlier this month announced a deal with Major League Baseball for the 2022 season. At the time, the season was postponed due to a labor dispute between the MLB and the MLB Players Association, but it has now been resolved.

Apple-TV-plus-MLB-Friday-Night-Baseball-hero_big.jpg.medium_2x.jpg

MLB fans will be able to watch two consecutive games on Friday nights each week during the season, with pregame and postgame shows included. The games will be available for anyone through the Apple TV app or website, no Apple TV+ subscription required. Apple TV+ subscribers located in the United States and Canada will also be able to access a 24/7 livestream that features MLB game replays, news and analysis, highlights, classic games, and MLB-themed original content and programming on demand.

On April 8, Apple will broadcast the New York Mets versus the Washington Nationals at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time, and after that, it will show the Houston Astros versus the Los Angeles Angels at 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time. The games will be available to fans in eight countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. The full schedule through June is available on Apple's website.

Article Link: Friday Night Baseball Coming to Apple TV+ on April 8
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Just add basketball and F1 in the UK, that's me sorted ;)
 
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HiVolt said:
Nope, not interested. Will not sign up just for this. ATV+ is not something i subscribe to anyway, there's not enough content on it.

I only really follow my own baseball team, so the one game that's on the schedule I will listen to on the radio.

Besides its weird, why does the schedule end in June? August & September baseball with the playoff races is when it's the most exciting.
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Did you actually read the article? It says no ‌Apple TV+‌ subscription required.
 
oneMadRssn said:
My biggest question was whether, as a premium subscription service, the Apple games would come ad-free? If they're freely available to non-subscribers, it seems they will have ads. Dang.
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It’s sports… and baseball at that. Of course there’s gonna be ads. Singing Piano Man between the top and bottom of the 8th at the Mets game next Friday is something you’ll have to do on your own. ?
 
bernoulli said:
Did you actually read the article? It says no ‌Apple TV+‌ subscription required.
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It will be free for a limited time. After that it will require being a user of Apple TV+. For me, compared to other services at similar prices, Apple TV+ just isn't worth it.
 
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It seems to be taking people (me too) a while to read everything, including the limited free offer.
Baseball is a daily thing and having two games one night a week is silly.
As someone else has already said, it would be different if this wasn't baseball.
How fast is ATV+ burning through cash and is it a waste of money?
The 25 million bucks spent on CODA for example.
I'm thinking Apple Arcade is a more intelligent move on the part of Apple.
I'm okay with my San Francisco Giants but I love computer games!
I used to play the old DOS version of The Oregon Trail online for free.
 
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BuffaloTF said:
It’s sports… and baseball at that. Of course there’s gonna be ads. Singing Piano Man between the top and bottom of the 8th at the Mets game next Friday is something you’ll have to do on your own. ?
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I'll be singing Sweet Caroline during the 8th inning break thank you very much.
 
HiVolt said:
Besides its weird, why does the schedule end in June? August & September baseball with the playoff races is when it's the most exciting.
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"Apple and Major League Baseball (MLB) today announced the first half of the 2022 “Friday Night Baseball” schedule."

www.apple.com

Apple and MLB announce “Friday Night Baseball” schedule beginning April 8

“Friday Night Baseball” premieres exclusively on Apple TV+ with two big matchups: NY Mets vs. Washington Nationals, and Houston Astros vs. LA Angels.
www.apple.com

My assumption is that they set a schedule for the first half of the season and will set a different schedule for the remaining months based on the standings.
 
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