Apple entered the live sports broadcast, stirring up the competitive landscape with billions of dollars in four years

Reporter | Qiao Qidi

On January 19, 2022, Beijing time, according to SportsPro Media, citing analysts from U.S. brokerage Wedbush, technology company Apple plans to increase live sports streaming in the near future, or spend billions of dollars on related transactions in the next four years.

In early January, the New York Post reported that Apple had held substantive talks with MLB, a major league baseball player, on next season's broadcast.

A deal would mark the tech giant's first on-the-spot coverage of a top sporting event. Currently, Apple TV+ does not support any type of live TV and only offers on-demand and movie content.

It is worth noting that Apple is likely to take over some of the MLB game broadcast rights that ESPN gave up.

In May 2021, ESPN, a well-known sports broadcaster in the United States, signed a seven-year long contract with MLB. But considering that it is not exclusively licensed in the local market, ESPN waived the right to sign up for Monday and Wednesday matches.

On MacRumors, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in an investor note: "Apple spends $7 billion a year on original content and has about $200 billion in cash on its balance sheet, and we think the company is preparing to bid for some of the upcoming sports broadcast contracts or renewal packages in the coming years." ”

In 2019, Apple launched its streaming subscription platform Apple TV+ for the first time, which currently has 20 million paying users and 45 million viewers.

Last fiscal year, Apple TV+ generated $80 billion in revenue for Apple.

However, in terms of fighting for sports streaming resources, Apple, which has not yet dabbled in sports live broadcasting, has been one step slower than its opponents.

In March 2021, Amazon signed a ten-year contract with major league soccer NFL, becoming the first agency in NFL history to receive all digital media rights.

Similar to MLB, the NFL adopts a different time-period distribution model, while Amazon's Amazon Prime Video is the exclusive live broadcaster of "Thursday Night Football", and the cumulative value of contracts of several broadcasters is as high as $113 billion.

Earlier, in 2018, Amazon acquired the rights to the Premier League, broadcasting 20 Premier League games per season from 2019-2020 to 2021-2022. At the time, Amazon broke sky sports and BT Sports' monopoly on premier league broadcasting for the first time.

Last July, Apple also held preliminary negotiations with the alliance over the rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket US program package.

In addition, Dan Ives said that in the next four years, Apple will also bid for a series of live sports contracts, including the University Sports Association (NCAA)'s Big Ten, Pac-12, Big East, Big 12, as well as NASCAR, NBA, WNBA and other content.

It is also reported that the MLB Alliance has also negotiated with Amazon and us-based digital media company Barstool Sports.

Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool, revealed on a show on WEEI Radio in Boston last August that there was about a ten percent chance of reaching a deal with MLB.

Different from traditional sports broadcasting platforms, technology companies enter the sports streaming track, in fact, "the meaning of drunkenness is not wine", but seek to increase the number of subscribers on the entire platform to achieve the purpose of revenue generation.

Taking Amazon as an example, the main reason for introducing sports content is to attract more Prime paid members and divert and convert to the retail business.

Sports live broadcasting platforms with a technological background are clearly impacting the monopoly pattern of traditional event broadcasters for many years.