It's an age old question. Which came first: the chicken or the egg?
If one has a successful product, does one even need to market said product? Surely their massive partnership with Apple coming to an end early early and ending the separate pay package is a sign of strength for the league's broadcasting overall. Surely cutting back or eliminating written coverage, highlights, Spanish language broadcasters, English broadcasters on site, preseason coverage, etc., is the way of the future.
MLS can be "“bullish” about Apple’s ability to “drive awareness”" all it wants as the article above states, but still after two years not being able to find full replays easily from the Apple site, it remains the bane of my existence. Every single day I yearn for the old days of MLS Live, a site that was incredibly easy to navigate and had timestamps for goals and events.
But let's backup, you who are reading this from your inbox and are subscribed to fine website already know the New England Revolution start their 2026 campaign in Nashville this Saturday. You also probably know Nashville played Ottawa in the CONCACAF Champions Cup this week and won 2-0.
But do the random people who might happen to stumble upon the Revs team page over at Apple know? Would they click on the two videos added in 2026 out of curiosity? Yes, that's right – the entirety of Revs coverage on the league's broadcast partner's team page so far this year are two player profile videos on Matt Turner and Carles Gil. Videos that are paywalled behind an Apple login, despite being readily available for free on the Revs regular team site.
Greg Johnstone
I hope you can see where this is going. Wouldn't it be wiser for Apple to unlock those videos seeing as how they're already free elsewhere as free advertising for the product they spent so much money on and have so much confidence in they're giving up the rights to three years early? No, surely not, that would involve common sense, something I'm not bullish on from the league office or Apple or any other sports league at the moment in doing anything other than chasing dollars off a cliff.
Let's rephrase the question I asked at the beginning... what came first, the views for the soccer content or the soccer content? How can you get views for the content you don't make? If MLS is going to push the fact that its league is essentially Leo Messi/Miami and the two Los Angeles clubs, then they should seriously think about getting those teams into that UEFA SuperLeague I keep hearing about. Not that the 2008 SuperLiga Champions would get an invite, according to their metrics, we probably don't exist.
Now I might be literally the only person in the world that doesn't have any streaming subscriptions services currently. Unless you count basic cable – yes I'm 87 years old, deal with it. Lost in the wonder of bundling streaming services and the value of now getting F1, Ted Lasso, and as my college roommate tried to upsell me on the greatness that is Severance, is the fact that I don't want or need those things with my soccer. I'd rather have MLS Live from 10 years ago back with multiple years of archived full games, or a new and updating library of condensed games.
Broadcasting is going backwards currently. Prices are rising, value is being obscured, finding content is becoming far too complicated, and the likelihood that you need five different services to watch your favorite team or league right now is almost assured. MLS had a chance with this current partnership with Apple to take a tremendous leap forward into a world without blackout restrictions, advances in content strategy, and a central location for its product.
And it has failed so far. Spectacularly in many ways at that.
Aside from full matches, I am never on Apple. Spending a full season running its games all at the same time (7 PM and 9 PM) killed the ability to watch the majority of three or four games in a night live. There's no additional content that I swore was promised to be on Apple that was unique or different, just the same stuff from the team sites just copied and pasted to look pretty behind a paywall.
The great Matt Pollard of fallen SB Nation brethren Burgundy Wave took the league to task earlier this week with the departure of noted UConn Husky fan Matt Doyle and his Armchair Analyst column from the site. And rightly so, as MLS has chased a homogenous and streamlined product and a departure away from individual beat coverage.
MLS dot com has lost its identity. Now a shadow of its former self, once alive with Greg Lalas Anatomy of a Goal videos, Simon Borg Instant Replay referee videos, David Gass and the ExtraTime podcast, and unique insights from others gone to a myriad of basic content checking off the boxes or poorer versions of the same content on what once was a worthy site to visit multiple times a day.
If there isn't any good content on your site, then there's no reason to go to it...which means the content came before the egg. Or something...
Multiple posts for jerseys that are two months late and as always should be available for the holidays, check. Shadow dropping generic team previews under the guise and fame of an MLSsoccer Staff byline, check. Having one of your own paid studio analysts openly admit they declared a team unfit for the playoffs in the league's preseason preview without seeing them live and in person until after the article went live, check.
I don't want to throw Dax McCarty under the bus, I like Dax and he's good at what he does and he's entirely correct that it is a silly exercise trying to predict anything in this dumb, wonderful league of ours. But if MLS is going to set up its own talent to fail by not giving them the resources to their job properly, then it has no problem letting down the consumer with its product as well.
Which it is currently doing and has been for years.
I understand that Lionel Messi is going to drive the bulk of the conversation for casual fans and content strategy, but it can't be the only strategy. You have to highlight all of your teams and spread the spotlight around instead of shining it in the same four to five places. The content gets stale otherwise.
What contributors like Doyle, Gass, Bogert, etc., did for MLS dot com were far more significant that whatever suit behind the scenes determined they were expendable. In an age where MLS is arguably at the height of its power yet still searching for relevancy locally and nationally in coverage, decisions that scale back or limit coverage and eyes on the product are beyond foolish and stretching into fireable offenses.
Seth Macomber
In a world where throwball is on eighteen different networks and nine streaming services, surely a world exists where 100 MLS games can be on linear TV and it's all inclusive streaming package at the same time instead of the paltry 30-something games the league is trying to spread around a disaster of a calendar with a World Cup break. I don't care if Apple and FOX don't like each other, that's why the powers that be are making seven figure salaries to get it done.
Surely the Revs must be ecstatic for it's only national televised game to be at Atlanta in April for what seems to be the third or fifth straight time. It's always nice to put the Revs on national TV so they can lose 7-0 in a series where the road team has won only three times ever. Yes, I'm still salty about that game from back in 2017 and winning the fixture last year did not make me feel better.
Also, why teams are not mandated to stream any and all preseason games is beyond me. How can I get excited for something I can not see? I think it's worth giving opponents some game tape in the hope of driving up anticipation and hype around your product instead of being limited to mere minutes of highlight reels, not to mention doing a solid for the smaller teams helping you out. Preseason is a great chance to showcase young talent and highlight MLS's growth not just as a league but its ability to develop talent as well.
Why should I be anticipating the New England Revolution's revamped attacking lineup and apparently a red hot Leo Campana up front leading the line based on a handful of lineup tweets and literally seven total minutes of field-level preseason action currently on the Revs team site. Surely we can strive to do better and expect better than this from the league and its teams.
For the record, I am very excited for the debut of Marko Mitrovic's new and improved youthful squad, but we're going to talk about that this weekend. For now, I am very frustrated. And I don't think it's my usual curmudgeon angst either, this is genuine Taylor Twellman WHAT ARE WE DOING levels of incompetence as far as I am concerned.
Instead of going above and beyond in a World Cup year to capitalize on what should be a momentous and record breaking attendance event, it feels like the league and its broadcast partner is just going through the motions, again. We can debate whether or not the Apple deal was profitable or good for the league or if the switch to the European calendar is beneficial to anyone...but doing the bare minimum to promote your league should be universally reprehensible. It not only diminishes your product but also detracts from the efforts of the hard working people on and off the field trying to make it better every day.
Well, the ones who are still here...cause there's the majority of them don't work for the league anymore and it shows.
At least I can drown my disappointment in the joyful happiness of Ted Lasso whenever I want this year. Assuming I actually purchase an Apple subscription for this year, I haven't done that yet. I might get around to it. Season kicks off in a few days, just need to gather up the encouragement and excitement to drop $100 on a league that's trending backwards digitally and offers me far less every year.
