Apple announced that its Friday Night Baseball games featuring the MLB will no longer be offered for free through its apps. The exclusive deal which Apple launched in 2022 as part of a high-profile rollout of sports rights, that included MLS as well, brought attention to Apple’s still fledgling streaming outreach that began when the company stopped holding all of its cards close to the chest by offering Apple TV+ apps on competing platforms instead of keeping the service exclusive to Apple devices. Despite one well-regarded series, Ted Lasso, Apple has not made much of a dent in the premium streaming world in comparison to HBO Max, Netflix, Amazon and Disney+.
Will people pay $7.00 per month to access the MLB games along with the rest of Apple’s original fare or is this a step too far considering how easy it is to find MLB action on multiple sports channels and RSN’s.
