Apple is poised to spend billions of dollars on live sports content over the next four years

According to a new report from investment firm Wedbush, Apple is actively looking for potential deals to enable it to stream live sports content on Apple's TV+ streaming service to boost subscribers. In a new investor note seen by MacRumors, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said he believes Apple's decision not to buy the studio for the time being is a clear indication that it now sees live sports programming as a key part of its future success to expand the audience of its video streaming service.

Apple hasn't provided details about the number of Apple TV+ users since the digital streaming service began, but Wedbush estimates that of the roughly 45 million viewers, Apple TV+ has about 20 million paying users, with the rest being the free trials they see when buying other Apple products. That's just a fraction of the number of subscriptions enjoyed by companies like Disney+ and Netflix.

Apple is clearly poised to spend billions of dollars on live sports content over the next four years to drive future growth for Apple TV+ and make it a key monetization engine in its emerging services ecosystem, which earned it $80 billion in annual revenue last fiscal year. With Apple spending $7 billion a year on original content and has about $200 billion in cash on its balance sheet, the company is believed to be preparing to bid for some upcoming sports packages to sign/renew in the coming years.

Over the next four years, Apple is likely to compete in the following sports packages: NFL (Sunday Night Ticket), Big Ten, Pac 12, Big East, Big 12, other NCAA sports packages, NASCAR and NBA/WNBA. Currently, Apple TV+ doesn't offer any form of live TV support, only access to on-demand TV and movie content, so if any deal is completed, Apple will need to build a new live TV section for sports.

Earlier this month, the New York Post reported that Apple had discussed a potential deal with Major League Baseball, where the company will broadcast MLB games next season, which would be a major attempt at the world of live sports content. For now, Apple TV lacks the opportunity to stream sports, which remains a serious loophole in Apple TV programming, as competitors such as Amazon already have established deals. For example, Amazon's 20 live Premier League football matches will return in the 2022/23 season, and the company has signed a deal to broadcast "Thursday Football Night" matches starting this fall, for which it has paid more than $1 billion.