One wonders if anyone at Major League Soccer had the famous 1984 commercial for the Apple Macintosh playing through their mind as the league penned a $2.5bn deal to stream its games on Apple TV for the next 10 years. Indeed, the image of a sledgehammer crashing into a giant TV screen is a rather apt one to illustrate what the league has done with its new deal.
MLS hasn’t completely turned its back on traditional TV – reports claim the league is still in negotiations with linear broadcasters to show some games – but there’s no denying the significance of the decision to work with Apple, the partner Don Garber wanted all along. “When we started out this process we had a logo on the whiteboard, and that logo was the Apple logo,” said the league commissioner.
