MLS commissioner Don Garber provided a rare window into the league’s viewership on Apple TV.
At a press conference ahead of Wednesday’s MLS All-Star Game, Garber said MLS matches on MLS Season Pass this season are averaging 120,000 unique viewers, an increase of 50 percent from last year, according to multiple reporters in attendance. It was not clear whether that figure is an average minute audience — which would be directly comparable to the viewership figures reported on this site and elsewhere — and if so, whether it is for each individual match or each individual window.
According to reporters at the press conference, Garber credited the 50 percent rise in viewership to an increase in distribution. For the first time this season, MLS Season Pass is available outside of the Apple TV app through providers like Xfinity and DIRECTV.
Since MLS began its run with Apple TV in 2023, viewership for the league has been elusive. As Apple TV does not publicize viewership figures, the only numbers reported have been for the handful of matches that air on Fox Sports — and those numbers, particularly for last year’s MLS Cup, have not been sterling.
Apple TV is far from alone. While NFL games on Amazon Prime Video, Peacock and ESPN+ have all been Nielsen rated, as has NASCAR on Prime Video, it is otherwise rare to see any viewership figure for a streaming-exclusive sporting event.
If the figure announced by Garber is indeed an average minute audience, it would unsurprisingly lag behind what MLS was averaging in its prior rights deal. During the 2022 season, the ESPN networks averaged 343,000 viewers for MLS matches, their highest average since 2007. The last MLS All-Star Game on linear television, the 2022 game on ESPN and Univision, had a combined audience of 1.53 million viewers. The last MLS Cup to air exclusively on linear, the 2022 game on FOX and Univision, averaged 2.16 million — the most-watched in 25 (now 28) years.
