Apple TV deal means fight for relevance

Broadcast pact may result in team losing more ground recapturing the casual fan

Millions of soccer fans in North America woke up early last Sunday — before 8 a.m. ET or 5 a.m. PT — to tune in to their game of the week.

It wasn't English darlings Liverpool, it wasn't storied Real Madrid nor Napoli, it wasn't even Paris Saint-Germain, a glitterati soccer giant featuring global icons Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé.

It was Wrexham AFC.

A team on the fifth tier of English soccer — that's a semi-professional level, four tiers below the Premier League — was the most-viewed game on ESPN that day.

On Major League Soccer's Decision Day, the final day of the 2022 regular season when playoff fates are sometimes cruelly and dramatically revealed, it wasn't LAFC, NYCFC, Inter Miami, nor any other of the big-market teams that dominated the U.S. screens. It was Wrexham AFC. Vancouver's Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney spent US$2.5 million to buy the soccer minnow, invested a couple million more, and with the help of their Welcome to Wrexham documentary, which streams in Canada on Disney+, created a media and cash-spewing juggernaut. Each of the 18 episodes racked up a reported average profit of US$520,000, not to mention the profit from merchandise sales.

Reynolds and McElhenney hit on the formula: story + star power = $. It was Sunderland Till I Die turbocharged by Hollywood hype.

Never mind that the actual quality of soccer, was at best, on par with NCAA universities or the deepest part of MLS farm teams' benches. But the content was good. It resonated. It sang. Now MLS is hoping to hit the same high notes with its Apple TV deal, an agreement that will see US$2.5 billion over 10 years dropped in the league's coffers for the rights to broadcast every MLS game.

The platform that games are hosted on is slick, quick and comprehensive, with content from every single team easily accessible under individual tabs. There will be NFL Red Zone-type shows, highlights, analysis and commentary. You can watch MLS NextPro games, playoffs, Leagues Cup1 on any device capable of streaming, and in multiple languages.

The cost is $20 a month or $129 per season for non-Apple subscribers. Those with Apple TV+ already can add it on for $17/$99. Team season-ticket holders will get it for free, with the ability to share it with up to six family members.

Locally, the deal will massively increase the exposure of the Vancouver Whitecaps to the outside world, but it's still the local eyeballs that matter most.

For a variety of reasons, some not exclusive to the team, their attendance has been dipping. Last year's average of 16,399 was the lowest year in the team's MLS history, and first season they failed to sell out B.C. Place at least once (excluding the COVID-19 years).

The Whitecaps say they currently have around 9,000 season-ticket holders, a number that has hovered around the same total since 2019, but that figure encompasses everything from traditional season ticket holders to contra deals and flex passes.

The Apple TV deal could mean the team loses more ground trying to recapture the casual fan. There will be four games broadcast outside the Apple paywall per week, and at least one is guaranteed to be a Canadian team. But no agreement is in place for commercial properties — i.e. pubs and bars — to broadcast games, and while cable subscriptions are dwindling, streaming services are also facing their own “fatigue” problems.

Whitecaps CEO Axel Schuster pointed to several factors that have depressed their numbers. COVID changed many people's habits — “our biggest competitors are still the beaches, the mountains, the islands, all of that,” he said with a laugh — and erratic start times and mid-week games turned people off. And with economic difficulties impacting just about every B.C. family, many don't spend the money they used to on live events.

“Have I been super-happy with our numbers last year? Oh, of course not,” said Schuster. “Do I believe that only if we continue to perform like we have done in the second half of (last) season, we'll make everything perfect? No, I think that the world has changed too much. So it's on us. It's on us to think about how we can present a product to the people, to soccer-interested people. The problem is not that people are not aware about us or that people don't like us, the problem is that (season tickets) are maybe not the right fit anymore for the reality of life in British Columbia and Vancouver.”