MIAMI — Apple TV+ series “Severance” is midway through its second season and has already become the most viewed series on the platform. With 589 million minutes viewed in the United States, the show surpassed “Ted Lasso,’ the company disclosed to Deadline Hollywood this week.
Kendrick Lamar’s Apple Music Super Bowl halftime show broke last year’s record with 133.5 million viewers, the company said shortly after the big game.
Lionel Messi’s first MLS playoff game was Apple TV’s most watched sporting event, the company announced last December without releasing any viewership figures.
Apple has generally shied away from disclosing its viewership data, so we don’t know exactly how many people are watching soccer games. But, put it this way: If people were watching MLS games like they were watching Ted Lasso or Severance or Kendrick Lamar, they’d be sharing it with the world.
Soccer continues to fight its way in the American sports landscape among the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and a host of women’s sports leagues. But interest is at an all-time high ahead of the World Cup in 2026. Apple is working to capitalize on that with its biggest MLS push to date for the 2025 season, which begins Saturday.
NFL STATS CENTRAL: The latest NFL scores, schedules, odds, stats and more.
‘We have the best player in the world playing in the United States, playing in MLS. We’ve had games where millions of people have watched — that had never happened before in MLS. You have the World Cup coming. You have the Olympics (in Los Angeles in 2028). There’s so much momentum right now,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, told USA TODAY Sports.
MLS commissioner Don Garber has also floated the “millions” number when discussing the league’s viewers last December. Garber said MLS has seen “over a million viewers” for Saturday night games collectively and “more than that watch our playoff games.” The figure includes viewers internationally, not just the U.S.
This year, MLS and Apple have partnered with several companies so fans can readily access MLS games. DirecTV and Xfinity users can buy MLS Season Pass through their providers. T-Mobile customers can receive complimentary access to MLS Season Pass for the season. Android users can find MLS Season Pass in the Google Play Store. MLS games have also been available on Apple TV+ via Amazon Prime Video since last October. Simply put, you don’t need to have an Apple device to access MLS games.
‘We’re breaking glass with this Apple partnership,’ Garber told USA TODAY Sports. ‘The media business with sports goes through its transformations over time, whether it’s broadcast television televising sports, or the advent of cable or satellite, and now it’s the digital era. We wanted to have a global partnership that was without blackouts, where somebody in Madrid or Buenos Aires or Miami or Kansas City can watch a game on their devices, whatever those devices are — an Apple device, an Android device, they’re streaming television — and it could be basically accessible to anybody. And that was important to us.
Added Garber: “I think we’re early, and MLS has been an innovative leader from the very beginning. I’m proud of that moniker, and I think like everything else with us, … we’re learning as we go along.”
FOX analyst and former U.S. men’s national team standout Alexi Lalas shared concerns about the MLS-Apple partnership. While Lalas considered the 2024 MLS Cup final between the Los Angeles Galaxy and New York Red Bulls a dream matchup because of the two major markets involved, he felt the buildup to the final lacked some luster and visibility — especially after Messi and Inter Miami were eliminated from the playoffs in the first round. The final was available to stream on Apple, and it drew an average of 468,000 total viewers on linear TV across Fox and Fox Deportes. Before the Apple deal, national MLS games were on ESPN, ABC, FOX Sports and briefly on NBC Sports Network.
“When you are behind this subscription and this paywall and you’re tasked with going through multiple steps in order to get to MLS, you want to make it as turnkey as possible and accessible as possible,” Lalas told USA TODAY Sports. “And I think that’s a bigger conversation that has to happen right now when it comes to what Major League Soccer is. Are they sacrificing exposure, which is something that they value? And let’s be honest, they need the money that Apple is giving them. Is that a smart business? Maybe they’re seeing down the future, and maybe this is a long term type of plan, and I can certainly respect and understand that. But I don’t feel MLS the way that I have felt it in the past.”
Along with the partnerships to attract more viewers, MLS will debut “Sunday Night Soccer” — a showcase to engage and retain fans with the league’s most compelling game of the week. The Galaxy will host the league’s newest club, San Diego FC, in the first Sunday night game of the season this Sunday at 7 p.m. ET.
Another push MLS and Apple have made is “Onside: Major League Soccer” — an eight-part documentary series produced by Box 2 Box Films, the company behind Netflix’s popular “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” series, which attracted fans outside the F1 ecosystem and has the potential to do the same for soccer. But it has to happen organically.
Major events from last season will be showcased in the series, which premieres Friday. Some of those key moments include Messi, 15-year-old Cavan Sullivan’s pro debut with the Philadelphia Union, the exciting FC Cincinnati-Columbus Crew rivalry in Ohio, and Atlanta United’s push to eliminate Inter Miami in the playoffs.
Paul Martin, executive producer for ‘Drive to Survive’ and ‘Onside’ told USA TODAY Sports the F1 phenomenon after the docuseries was not planned, and that’s why it worked.
‘It wasn’t something that we were like, ‘Hey, we’re going to radically change people’s perception of a sport,” Martin said. ‘We just set out to make a good show, and we did. And it found an audience and people really reacted to it. And as a result, have really wanted to find out more about that sport. Hopefully (Onside is) something that resonates with fans — already fans of soccer, but maybe new fans that never thought about watching MLS or following any of the teams.
‘I think the best strategy is always just, we’re going to find the best characters, and we’re going to try and tell the best stories that we can that represent as much of the league as we can.”
MLS executive vice president of media Seth Bacon said last month he is bullish on the league’s partnership with Apple because of the growth they’ve seen in audiences and subscriptions. MLS Season Pass surpassed 2 million subscribers at the end of the 2023 season, Sports Business Journal reported last year.
Again, soccer’s momentum is key to MLS and Apple’s potential success. So the partners are not just capitalizing on the natural momentum happening, they’re creating some of their own — such as the MLS Season Pass ad featuring Messi, which was released immediately after the Super Bowl. Messi’s attendance at the Super Bowl drew millions of eyeballs, even two social media posts featuring him just walking into the game.
Inter Miami and the Seattle Sounders will be the only MLS teams competing in this summer’s Club World Cup alongside soccer giants like Real Madrid, Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Milan — bringing another opportunity for MLS exposure during its 30th season.
“We have so much wind in our sails right now between everything that’s happened, with the way the league has been growing, with investment from our ownership groups, the strategic direction from the commissioner, the arrival of Messi,’ Bacon told USA TODAY Sports. ‘You’ve got Club World Cup. You’ve got World Cup. Even Olympics down the road. There is going to be a lot of focus on this sport, and we are the premium domestic brand for the sport of soccer in the United States and Canada. And that is a huge opportunity for us. We are doing everything we can to make sure that we capitalize on that.’