Apple offers Kiwis a half-price pass as Lionel Messi makes US debut

Lionel Messi at an Inter Miami training session. Photo / Getty Images

Here’s a development Sky TV will be monitoring, as it keeps tabs on the growing globalisation of sports deals.

Apple is making it cheaper and easier for football fans worldwide to access US “soccer” as superstar Lionel Messi, 36, makes his Inter Miami debut this weekend in a Leagues Cup tie against Liga MX’s Cruz in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Messi joins Inter Miami - co-owned by David Beckham - halfway through the season. And Apple is now offering an MLS pass for a mid-season price of NZ$69 for Apple TV+ subscribers, or $89 for others.

LIONEL ANDRÉS MESSI IS NOT HUMAN. pic.twitter.com/2mBDI41mLy

— Major League Soccer (@MLS) July 22, 2023

Some football fans will sniff that America’s Major League Soccer (MLS) is a retirement league - an impression not helped by the two Spanish stars joining Messi at Inter, Jordi Alba (34) and Sergio Busquets (35).

But Apple’s platform for streaming MLS games is impressively slick and Bloomberg reported in March that’s a dress rehearsal for the tech giant making a bid for global rights to the world’s top-rating competition: the English Premier League [UPDATE: And Messi proved he can still generate a wee bit of drama, producing a free-kick wonder-strike that has generated some 53 million views and counting on Twitter.]

Former Manchester United and England forward Wayne Rooney is now head coach of MLS side DC United. He also coached an MLS All Stars team that lost 5-0 in a July 20 friendly against Arsenal. Photo / Getty Images

Currently, the Premier League has a patchwork of deals, with Sky, TNT Sport (formerly BT Sport) and Amazon splitting UK rights (for a collective £4.8 billion for the three seasons to 2024/25) and 46 international deals (cumulatively worth just over £5.3b).

While the sums involved are huge, Apple is not short of lettuce. It made a US$30b net profit in the first quarter, and recently became the first company to reach a US$3 trillion market cap.

It’s spent billions creating entertainment content for Apple TV+.

While Apple’s full appetite for sports streaming has yet to be revealed, even its wetting-its-toes budget is substantial.

Last year, the tech giant inked a US$2.5b ($4b), 10-year deal to stream every MLS game to more than 100 countries, including NZ - a sum that blew competitors out of the water.

Apple is just one of the tech giants pursuing sports rights. In December, Google-owned YouTube recently paid a stunning US$14b for seven years’ streaming rights to NFL “Sunday Ticket” games, Netflix bid for ATP tennis. And Amazon paid more than £1b for a portion of English Premier League football rights over three seasons.

Does Sky TV need to be worried about Apple’s apparent ambition?

Not as much as some local rights holders. While most Premier League partners are about to enter the second season of a three-season deal, Sky is one of a handful of partners on a six-season EPL contract, which runs through to 2028.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.