MLS Season Pass will be available on the Apple TV app for $14.99 per month during the season or $99 per season, and Apple TV+ subscribers can sign up for $12.99 per month and $79 per season.
Additionally, a subscription to MLS Season Pass will be included as part of full-season ticket packages with MLS clubs.
“We could not be more excited to bring our fans MLS Season Pass, a new home for all MLS matches and a wide variety of league and club content they can’t get anywhere else,” said MLS commissioner Don Garber. “We have the most engaged and passionate fans in sports, and now they’ll have every match everywhere with MLS Season Pass.”
The league’s move to a streaming service means it will no longer have to squeeze matches into broadcast windows for television. Instead, it will feature consistent match windows on Wednesdays and Saturdays, with pregame coverage beginning at 7 p.m. ET and games mostly kicking off at 7:30 p.m. local time.
And as previously announced, MLS Season Pass will feature a live whip-around show during matchdays that will allow fans to catch every goal from every game.
St. Louis City unveils jerseys
As part of the league’s rollout for MLS Season Pass, expansion club St. Louis City has unveiled its home jersey for its inaugural season in 2023.
The kits feature an Apple TV sleeve patch, which each of the 29 MLS clubs will feature during the 2023 season.
More details forthcoming
The league is aiming to announce more details on the agreement in the months leading up to the 2023 season.
With all local TV deals expiring at the end of the 2022 season, MLS is bringing all production in-house, meaning the league is in the process of hiring dozens of announcers and studio analysts in English, Spanish and French. Announcements of talent hires will be made in the coming weeks.
MLS is also still in talks with several networks over a deal to show an as-yet-unknown number of games on TV, with an announcement of a deal also expected in the lead-up to the 2023 season.
‘Swagger,’ a series produced by Kevin Durant, is getting a second season.
The Apple TV exclusive “Swagger” has been renewed for a second season, produced by Brooklyn Nets superstar Kevin Durant.
Durant is heavily involved in the show as it’s loosely based his experience in youth basketball including dealing with coaches and parents and chasing your dreams. His investment company Thirty Five Ventures has a media branch which has allowed him to produce the AAU based show.
The show stars O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Isaiah Hill and touches on the world of elite basketball and its corruption.
The series is produced by Boardroom, CBS Studios, Imagine Television Studios and Undisputed Cinemas.
The series released back in October and received pretty good reviews right out of the gate. On Rotten Tomatoes the show has an 84 percent critic score and a 93 percent audience score.
Director Reggie Rock Bythewood had the following to say about the upcoming season:
“In season two, they will search and discover what it means to be a champion on and off the court, and the basketball playing will continue to be groundbreaking.”
The commissioner and Apple executive Eddy Cue took time for a brief interview with Pro Soccer Wire
MLS commissioner Don Garber and Apple’s senior vice president of services Eddy Cue took time for a brief interview with Pro Soccer Wire ahead of the announcement of the league’s new 10-year media rights deal with Apple.
This interview has been lightly edited for content.
PSW: Take us through the process that you’ve gone through over the last year or so in getting this deal done. Obviously, you’ve been in talks with a number of different networks and streaming services. Could you share any details about how the talks went?
Garber: We set out on a strategy years ago to in essence, have an expiry of all of our local game agreements, rights agreements, our data agreements, our global agreements, which allowed us to start thinking about how do we put all of our rights together and go to market in a unique way that could offer a global package. Eddy has said that no other league has ever come to him and has been able to offer every game without any blackouts, without any restrictions. And that limited the number of people that could even deliver on that.
We have great longstanding partners that we’ve been in discussions with for many years. But when we were thinking about our fans, our fans are digitally native. They’re streaming sports – over 85 percent of them are watching sports on streaming devices on a weekly basis, more than any other sport anywhere in the world. It made sense for us to target the one company who can deliver for us this unique, unprecedented, global partnership that would have us being able to rethink what is a traditional rights deal … There are so many opportunities here that basically are unique to Apple. So it’s very rare when you go in and say, ‘We’ve got one company that we’re trying to get interested,’ and then you get them interested.
PSW: As part of this deal there will still be some games on linear TV. Can you share any details on how the arrangement will go, considering that Apple now has the rights for every single game? Will networks have to pay Apple to broadcast individual games?
Garber: It’s too early to give any details and it’s a limited number of games. So, we’ll have stuff to talk about in the period of time in front of us, but too early for any details right now.
PSW: One thing that really stuck out about this deal is the length. This ended up being a 10-year deal. There was some speculation that maybe the league would try to do a shorter deal and have it expire either right before or right after the 2026 World Cup to try to capitalize on the huge interest that event is going to bring. So what was the reasoning behind a relatively long deal in this case?
Cue: It’s easy for me: We love creating great products and we’re going to do that together here and we’re committed to this for the long term. It’s like we’re not dating, we want a long-term relationship. What we’re trying to do together is truly innovative. We’re really comfortable and excited about the opportunity to work together and doing that over the long term. Obviously, it makes perfect sense. Why would you do anything else? So it was it was pretty easy for us.
Garber: We’re building a business together, right? Everybody in our industry has got to think about this through a different lens. It’s not just a rights deal, then you get into discussions on renewal right after that. We’re building a business together. And the best way to build a business together is to be committed for the long term, because you have ups and downs along the way and the markets are evolving. The transition over to streaming is developing and all of that has to be seen through the lens of long term.
PSW: One of the big questions with this deal, because all the local deals are expiring, is who’s going to produce these games? This is a huge investment and whether it’s Apple or MLS or a third party there’s a lot of speculation about who might be involved in the production. Do either of you have any insight to share in terms of who might be producing all these games now?
Garber: I can’t give you who yet but what I’ll tell you is that we had 30 different productions this year. Think about that. Different announcing teams, different trucks, different above the line, talent below the line. The inefficiencies of that and the lack of being able to create a consistent product from a quality perspective to a global audience just made no sense to us. So yes, we made that commitment to produce those games.
We want to be able to control the look and feel of our games, how they’re presented to fans, and then partner with a company that will elevate that in ways that we could never dream of. And I think you’ve seen some of that with [Apple’s] early days with baseball. The best days are really ahead for us sitting down with Apple and their innovative approach to technology, fan engagement, customer engagement. So lots of opportunity there.
PSW: Another thing that stuck out about this deal is that the English and the Spanish-language rights are packaged together, whereas in the past, MLS has done these deals separately. Why did it make sense to tie them together in this particular deal?
Cue: We wouldn’t have done it any other way. It’s not English and Spanish, it’s around the world. We want to do this everywhere. And so English and Spanish are obviously the first and the biggest ones, we’ve also got French in Canada. From our side it’s about every game everywhere. And language is a part of that.
Garber: We’re rethinking the way we go about presenting our content and our games to our fans. You think about in the years to come, what will that look like? We want to be able to be local on a global basis.
It will be the first time that a sports league has all of its games available in one place
Major League Soccer has announced that Apple TV will be the home to all of the league’s matches globally for 10 years, starting in 2023.
With the league’s media rights deals expiring at the end of 2022, it has been engaged in talks with several potential partners, but Apple has emerged as the league’s choice in a first-of-its-kind agreement.
Fans will be able to watch every live MLS match, in English or Spanish, by subscribing to a new MLS streaming service through the Apple TV app. No longer will there be any local TV blackouts, as every MLS team’s local television deal will expire at the end of 2022.
The deal also includes the forthcoming expanded Leagues Cup involving all MLS and Liga MX teams, as well as select MLS NEXT Pro and MLS NEXT matches.
“For the first time in the history of sports, fans will be able to access everything from a major professional sports league in one place,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services in a news release. “It’s a dream come true for MLS fans, soccer fans, and anyone who loves sports.”
NEW YORK, NY: Apple and Major League Soccer (MLS) today announced that the Apple TV app will be the exclusive destination to watch every single live MLS match beginning in 2023. L to R: MLS Commissioner Don Garber, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Apple’s senior vice president of services Eddy Cue. (Photo Credit: Apple Inc.)
The new streaming service will include a weekly live match whip-around show, providing live look-ins and goal highlights from MLS games as they happen. Details on the cost of the new service, as well as other programming, broadcast teams and what the league says are more consistent match windows are forthcoming. MLS fans with full-season ticket packages to their local team will receive the service for free.
The league has said that it will be simulcasting some games on linear television, with further details to come on those plans in the coming months. There will also be a “broad selection of MLS and Leagues Cup matches” available to Apple TV+ subscribers without the need to subscribe to the new MLS streaming service, and a select few matches will be available for free.
“Partnering with the world’s most innovative company is an unparalleled opportunity to create an entirely new home to bring more MLS content than ever directly to our fans in one place,” said MLS commissioner Don Garber. “No matter if you’re a super fan or a casual viewer, we’re making it incredibly easy to enjoy MLS matches.”
WARNING: This episode contains spoilers for Season Two, Episode 3 of Ted Lasso.
You’re going to want to stop and pay extra close attention to episode three when you’re watching the new season of Ted Lasso on Apple TV+.
It primarily focuses on the unique power of activism and protest in sports. While typically known as a lighthearted and easy-to-watch show, this episode wasn’t afraid to swing a little bit bigger on this one. The creators were inspired by the likes of Marcus Rashford, Raheem Sterling and Rio Ferdinand in the Premier League as well as folks like Colin Kaepernick in the NFL.
This particular episode was a one-off directed by Ezra Edelman, the Oscar-winning director of the documentary OJ: Made In America.
“He was the perfect director for this episode because he was able to help us find the nuance in what would be a valuable gesture and what would be performative allyship,” explained Brendan Hunt, a Ted Lasso writer and co-creator who also stars as Coach Beard. “We wanted to find a way that wasn’t forcing it that would reflect the current mood where athletes are using their voices more.”
Once they knew they wanted to do something in this arena, they had to decide who was protesting — and what they were upset about. They landed on a plot involving Sam Obisanya and their fictional jersey sponsor, Dubai Air.
Toheeb Jimoh, a young British actor who portrays Sam on the show and supports Manchester United in real life, was thrilled when Jason Sudeikis sent him a WhatsApp message telling him he would star in this episode.
“I’m a massive believer and a massive fan of people who use their platform to inspire change,” Jimoh said during a recent press junket for Ted Lasso. “I think political activism in sport, and in anything you do that’s public-facing, is massively important and I 100 percent stand by it.”
In the episode, Sam is given the opportunity to be the face of Dubai Air’s new ad campaign.
The showrunners settled on Dubai Air because it would have been harder to pull off making it a protest about a topic with a real-world nemesis. Ultimately, they thought it would be more powerful to have a less specific face as an antagonist while still drawing from all of the horrid, real-life consequences of corporate greed, oil spills and bribery.
Before Sam learns about any of this, though, he’s massively flattered and he wants to do the campaign. His teammates are enthusiastic about it, too, and offer him some gentle ribbing and a joke about defacing the ad with childish graffiti once it’s displayed at the tube station.
Excited as we’ve seen him on the floor, Sam shares the update with his family. But his father promptly tells him Dubai Air is owned by an oil company destroying the environment in Nigeria and making it impossible for people to live and survive there.
Apple TV+
The text from his father reads: “To see you choose to be a shill for a corporation that has ruined the lives of so many breaks my heart.”
It’s absolutely devastating to watch how quickly Sam’s energy turns from jubilant to crushed. However, it’s also what makes this episode so genuine. While the plot does tackle activism, it also keeps Sam’s arc and development at its core.
“It’s about a character dealing with new knowledge that puts him in a very uncomfortable position,” said Brett Goldstein, a writer on the show who also plays Roy Kent. “It’s a very relatable thing where — you can call it ignorance — but he didn’t know what he’d been a part of. Most people don’t. But once he has the knowledge, what do you do with that knowledge? That is a challenge we all face at some point in this life.”
The decision to have this episode focus on Sam is particularly fascinating because when we meet him in the first season, we were given little inklings of his potential leanings towards political activism.
Started watching TED LASSO. Ted gives out Army toy soldiers as inspirations to his team. The young Nigerian player Sam declines with a smile, saying, The American military doesn't inspire the same feeling in me.
In the second episode of the series Ted offers Sam a little green toy soldier as a birthday gift to keep him safe. Sam declines, however, offering a polite but very stern declaration that he doesn’t have the same appreciation for the U.S. Army or, specifically, symbols of American imperialism.
Flash forward to the second season and Sam has to make a decision on whether he can promote a company like Dubai Air — can he take their money, have their name on his chest or even play for a team that does?
Fortunately, he plays for a team with an incredibly empathetic coach. Time and time again, we’ve seen Lasso’s leadership reflected as someone who stands with the team and its goals rather than dictating what those goals should be. That allows for more nuance and acceptance than he would be afforded on most real-life pro sports teams.
“Because of the nourishment that he has gotten from Ted and the support that he’s gotten, he feels comfortable enough to make a stand,” Jimoh said. “I just think that’s great. It’s a testament to the work Ted has done with his team.”
Apple TV+
Ultimately, in a powerful moment, Sam decides to grab some black tape and cover the Dubai Air logo. He tells his teammates the horrors of the company, which turned his home into a “hellish, fiery swamp” and he will never wear their name on his chest again.
The central question of the episode then becomes whether the team would stand by him while he goes on this protest.
First, his teammates of Nigerian descent grab the tape and decide to join him. Sam tells the rest of his team they don’t have to join him but — in a charge led by, of all people, Jamie Tartt — every single player opts to participate as well.
“That’s just an important message about allyship. That’s what you need. That’s how you stand by somebody. That’s how you pull up,” Jimoh said. “I think that’s why people don’t make those big stands. They’re afraid of the backlash. They’re afraid that they’ll be shunned because there is a version of this where Sam could have done that and the team could have axed him.”
After the game, Ted allows Sam to take the mic at the press conference to address the decision.
Sam tells the media he wasn’t there to talk about the game but rather to make a desperate plea to the Nigerian government: Put an end to the decades of environmental destruction caused by the oil company that owns Dubai Air.
As they walk back to the locker room, Ted tells Sam something that summarizes the episode fairly well: “Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing.”
Overall, this episode is about Sam as a character, and Jimoh as an actor, having the courage to find their voice. When reflecting on the episode with For The Win, Jimoh couldn’t help but get emotional. He emphasized how grateful he was toward Sudeikis and the other showrunners for trusting him to handle the storyline.
“They decided it was important for them to show this and to have a young black man take on that responsibility, especially in the time we’re at now.
Roy Kent! Roy Kent! He’s here, he’s there! He’s everywhere!
Yes, you can BELIEVE it: Ted Lasso, the Apple TV+ series that shocked the world and became a beloved hit in 2020 is coming back later this week with its Season 2 premiere.
Have you ever interacted with a piece of fiction and, as you dig deeper and deeper into it, every fiber of your being begins to identify with one of the characters? Especially when the work is particularly good, this should be a familiar feeling.
That happened to Brett Goldstein the first time that he really digested the story of Apple TV’s Ted Lasso. But it felt less like he was casually taking a BuzzFeed-style personality quiz to find out which character he was most aligned with and more like something nearly cosmic.
Goldstein, a British actor and comedian, was actually working on the show when that overwhelming sensation struck him — and it hit him hard.
Apple TV+
“I was a writer. I wrote on the show,” Goldstein, who is anxiously awaiting the release of the second season of the series, recently told For The Win. “We were in the writer’s room and by about episode five, I started to think: ‘I really understand Roy Kent. I really understand Roy Kent. I think Roy Kent is within me.’”
This identification process is fairly common when someone is consuming film or literature.
But as he helped develop Roy Kent, the brutish and beloved football legend who is well past his prime by the time he gets to AFC Richmond, it kept striking closer and closer to home.
Kent is a captain on the squad during the first season of the show, though he has one foot out the door as he also thinks about his own retirement. He isn’t afraid to curse at his teammates or in front of a group of school children. While he is mostly seen as stern and stoic, he is also an extremely affable character who can be warm — especially to his young niece.
Apple TV+
As Goldstein kept writing for Kent, he knew that this draw to the character was much stronger than just a passing feeling. But he ran the risk of stepping on someone’s toes if he suggested himself for the part.
“I was so grateful to be writing on the show. It’s so special,” explained Goldstein. “I didn’t want to jeopardize that. I didn’t want to make people uncomfortable by going: ‘Hey, I reckon I could play Roy!’ It would suddenly be, like, I don’t think so man. Then everyone would still have to look at me every day.”
Although reluctant, Goldstein’s previous experience as an actor as a regular on shows like Derek with Ricky Gervais or as a guest star on Drunk History UK and Doctor Who made him qualified for the role.
Goldstein is also known in the UK for his indie superhero comedy SuperBob (2015) and he also was awarded Best Supporting Actor at the 2016 British Independent Film Award for his role in Rachel Tunnard’s Adult Life Skills (2016).
Finally, however, he worked up the courage to explain to not only Jason Sudeikis but the entire production team why it was imperative that he be at least in consideration once casting rolled around.
Apple TV+
“I saved it until the very end of the writer’s room,” said Goldstein. “I didn’t tell anyone but I made a self-tape. I did five scenes as Roy. I emailed it when I left. I said: ‘Look, I’ve had a wonderful time. I’ve been thinking that I think I can play Roy. I think I really get it.
“But if this makes you at all uncomfortable or if this video is shit and if you’re at all embarrassed for me, then just pretend you never got it. I will never ask if you got it. We can still be friends.”
The decision was left up to Sudeikis and the team on the show but Goldstein didn’t have to wait long. No one else ever auditioned for the role.
“Thankfully, they couldn’t be bothered to look any harder,” said Goldstein, with a sardonic dry tone that mirrored Roy’s. “So I got the part.”
Goldstein has taken the opportunity and run with it and has since received an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.
As a testament to the fact that he knew Kent was within him all along, when he accepted the nomination, he sent an email that read nearly exactly the way it would if Kent himself had sent it:
“Holy f***ing s***. What an incredible honor. Proper dream come true s***.
Every part of this show has felt like magic to me. To have the privilege to work on it, to get to make something with this incredible team and now for us to be nominated as a team is just too lovely. Extra special tahnks to Jason and Bill for inviting me to be part of this. What a thing…
As a cynical English guy I’m struggling to deal with all this wonderfulness. I’m not crying, you’re crying. F*** off! You’re crying. You ****.”
Experts including Lynn Elber from the Associated Press as well as Libby Hill and Ben Travers from IndieWire all believe that Goldstein will take home the trophy, per GoldDerby.com.
“It was truly a magical thing for me. In hindsight, I cannot express to you how passionately I felt that I had to be Roy. It was like a calling. It really was.”
