We’re in the era of streaming sports exclusives. NFL Sunday Ticket is on YouTube and YouTube TV. Peacock has the English Premier League. Paramount+ has the Championship League. And we’re on the eve of the 2024 MLS season, whose matches can all be had on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV.
Apple is notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to any sort of numbers, whether it’s hardware or viewership But Alex Silverman at the Sports Business Journal cites two unnamed sources “with knowledge of the numbers” as saying that MLS Season Pass finished the 2023 season with more than 2 million subscribers.
It’s a little hard to put those numbers in any sort of context, though analytics firm Antenna estimated approximately the same sort of numbers for NFL Sunday Ticket by the end of September 2023. And complicating matters even more is that it includes paid subscribers, whether they watched at full price from the first match, or got in on a prorated deal further into the season. It also includes comped subscriptions, which MLS season ticket-holders receive. And T-Mobile subscribers also were able to watch for free. (We’ve been told that no such deal is in place yet for T-Mobile in 2024.)
Every game for every team is available on MLS Season Pass, with no blackouts. Some games also are available on linear television.
MLS Season Pass subscriptions for the 2024 season are available now. It costs $15 a month or $99 for the season if you don’t also subscribe to Apple TV+, or $13/$79 if you do. MLS Season Pass is available in the Apple TV app on most major streaming platforms, on Apple devices, and in a web browser.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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