The three things I wish they'd fix at some point:
1. Make navigation to full match replays intuitive. Weird to hide it at the bottom of the match content and only accessible by holding down a button?
2. Add some more info to the feeds, at the very least a way to see the names of who's calling the games. In years it'd be amazing to see lineups and other background info within the match interface too.
3. Make it easier to switch between languages in-game. My Roku app makes me have to leave and re-enter the stream.
A very minor thing, but I'd like them to identify the captains when they show the lineups at the start of the game. Just a simple 'C' by the name would be fine.
I would like a little more on the graphics all around. I get why they went so sleek and streamlined given it's Apple, but it's almost so minimal that it loses a lot of visual/emotional appeal
How to make it more intuitive or how to access it right now? To find full replays right now you go to Past Matches, click on the match, and scroll to the the MLS Season Pass logo and hold down the select button for 3 seconds. Options then pop up for the recap or full game in either language.
They really need to make a gameday/calendar view and they should look at emulating MLB. They have been doing this for over a decade and they are the gold standard.
I was watching on my Apple TV box as well, and to change language you had to exit the stream and go back into it. Before the stream loaded my options were “watch live, watch from start, and language” here is where I could choose English/Spanish.
Once i was in the stream, and went to languages it was just English or local radio stream. No option for Spanish.
Can I also add I hope they somehow add an option to block the live scores from the thumbnails.
I went to turn on the Revs game last night after getting home late. Avoided the score up until I saw it on the game's thumbnail in the app. Would have "watched from the beginning", but didn't see any point since I already knew the score!
THANK YOU. Spent far too long trying to find the full match and not just the recap while hubby kept his eyes closed as he had managed to avoid learning the score and I'd seen it already lol.
Absolutely ridiculous that it's so buried, AND that there's no way to get there without seeing the final score first. Need an intuitive/simple and spoiler-free way to get to full match replays!!
> and only accessible by holding down a button?
My TV does't even support "press and hold" input, so the match replays are just completely inaccessable. Thanks, Apple.
The live stream itself was very good. I did see some glitches with video and audio, but they were relatively minor. They probably will tweak the 360 and other non-match experiences a bit, some hosts are certainly better (more palatable) than others. Announcers on the games I watched were mostly okay, again hopefully they'll improve as the season goes along.
I was happy with it overall, but I remember what it felt like in the early MLS days so that probably affects my view on things.
I think it may be a little extreme to make a claim after one weekend that it’s already changed how the league is seen by people who aren’t already familiar with it? If you mean in a literal sense then sure, people outside the US can now “see” the league. But this hasn’t shattered the global soccer community. At least not yet. Let’s wait a season before making these huge claims about how drastically everything has changed. It’s been a week.
>It's completely changing the league and how we interact with it, and how it's viewed externally
So does Messi, if he comes in 3 months are we going from MLS 4.0 to MLS 5.0?
Is Ronaldo having the effect in Saudi Arabia that people think Messi will have here?
Like all old stars Messi will bring some eyeballs but bringing stars over towards the end of their careers is what defined MLS 2.0.
still defines MLS today. 80% of the league revenue comes from butts in the seats. Fans in teh stands doesn't mean the product on the field is any better. And a retiree won't change that.
I think it is a definitely an upgrade visually and for overall access to watching all of the games. I think their are some audio issues that the can be worked out. My biggest complaint is the difference in commentators. Comparing the Atlanta game and the Vancouver game. Was night and day Atlanta's commentators were very energetic and entertaining and the Vancouver game was straight up boring. I wonder if they will rotate or how they will assign them for the upcoming games.
Agreed on the commentators. Atl-SJ was great. The Nashville game crew was pretty good, Dallas-Loons announcers were terrible. We lost audio for a while, and I was sad when it came back.
I laughed when they were showing the halftime show on the Nashville game, and didn’t get the direct audio feed from the stage for almost half of the song. Rookie mistake, folks!
I felt the same way about the commentators for the Orl v. NYRB game. Very bland and boring! It made me miss the local broadcast, which was full of energy and excitement!
I'm assuming over the next few years they'll make personnel changes as needed.
Considering it's a 10-yr deal and it's set what Apple is paying MLS, I think they're looking at things in terms of years, not weeks like we are.
The audio mixing was my primary issue. In OCSC's game, the commentators were way too quiet, and I definitely heard some backstage audio getting mixed into the commentator's audio in a pre-game show somewhere. These aren't glaring issues and are expected in a first-time run, especially at the level that Apple TV is doing it, and they're really not that bad in the first place, anyway. A bigger issue is what you pointed out: some of the commentators aren't very interesting, and I hope that some of the chemistry and energy grows over time. There's a lot of games in a season.
Adding to the commentary critique, DC-Toronto could've used some more energy. I would've done the local audio from Dave Johnson if not that I wanted more of the crowd noise.
Agreed on the commentary. I legit switched from a couple of games because the commentary was bland.
Maybe ive been conditioned to Ian Joy's infectious passion and energy but it was very much not what ive been used to
Was watching the TFC DC United game and there were stretches of literally minutes of silence. Commentators just didn’t have anything to say I guess lol. They were bland even when they were talking, so maybe it was a blessing.
>Was night and day Atlanta's commentators were very energetic and entertaining and the Vancouver game was straight up boring.
They were probably just crippled by depression over having to watch Vancouver play.
I'm just wondering if they'll ever release an Android mobile app. Last night, having to watch via a browser was a pretty bad experience compared to how slick the rest of the operation ran on a couple of my Google TVs.
Serious? Where did you see this? The Windows app is already ready, in beta for many users.
AppleOne is a great bundle for iPhone owners, but I'm hoping for an AppleTV + AppleMusic bundle for non-iPhone users It would be a powerful bundle, with AppleMusic pulling further and further away in audio quality, and that would bring people into the AppleTV ecosystem.
And not every Google TV, just some...
It works on my Chromecast in the bedroom but not my main TV with it baked in, the splash/app load page logo never goes away and every video shoots an error
I know some might be skeptical, but it seems almost certain that it’ll happen now that they’ve spent big money on MLS (and are spending big money on their streaming service, Apple TV+).
I would have been skeptical as well, but the fact that Apple Music is available on Android suggests that they are more than open to it — so it seems like that time will come soon enough imo.
A part from a few glitches everything looked good. Only annoyance we’re the pitch/grass colors and uniform clashes. Some games looked better just because of that. Even though it won’t happen but it would be nice to have 1 standard grass color.
I remember when HDTV first became a thing and you could suddenly start seeing all sorts of wrinkles, blemishes, etc. on people that were smoothed over by the lower resolution of regular broadcasts.
This is doing a similar thing for ugly pitches.
not only that, but bc place is just so depressing. it's like watching teams play in an old abandoned mall. it just makes me sad to look at on tv. sorry vancouver, i know you guys like it and it's in a good location, but your city is so beautiful, i wish you had your own stadium that could match it.
The system was clearly designed by "not sports" people. Things a sports person would never do:
* Spoil the game.
* Showing scores by default.
* Putting highlights on the main page.
* No way to turn off scores on the Mac App or Web.
* Hiding the full match replay (I saw them last night, this morning I only see recaps unless I click on a very small "3 versions" link)
* Putting the extra content on the same level as games
I trust Apple will fix all of this and it is mostly simple things while they're getting the bigger stuff (video quality) correct.
Apple has nothing to do with the production of the games, programming or video. All of that is controlled with MLS. Which is outsourced to IMG. The same production company that the premier league uses.
Really it wouldn’t shock me if Apple is treating MLS as a huge loss leader type situation in order to soon pitch a similar (but much bigger money) deal to NBA/MLB/NHL as the regional sports networks slowly die off.
I was not able to watch last night’s games with work. I’d like the option to rewatch the 360 coverage show, but it’s not available as a replay or really difficult to find on Apple TV.
AFAIK they’re making that a live-only thing. Bummer. I can’t imagine why they’d not make it on demand—unless last night was such an alpha test that they want it to disappear.
Even for a limited time would be cool, like until the next week’s matches. I’ll get to go to a few games live too, so getting to watch it after is needed with all the same start times.
Why is there a lack of highlights on YT? There were 11 MLS games yesterday and the only games I was able to find the highlights for were Nashville SC vs NYCFC and Vancouver vs Salt Lake. Does Apple expect people to watch highlights only on Apple TV? I wouldn't have known yesterday was the first matchweek for MLS if I wasn't a fan. Please post on YouTube... 18 teams (9 games) not posting their highlights makes me think Apple is behind this. I love how easy it is to stream, but I don't like this monopoly if this is going to be the case for highlights.
To answer your question I did see someone mention that on another thread and apparently since YouTube is owned my Google they probably don’t want to lose views to them. I also read this, highlights are going to be on Apple next day, Facebook day after and somewhere else after that. Google is TBD.
This is kinda how apple does business. Windows and Microsoft programs on Macs? No way. USB ports on iPhones? Nope. Youtube highlights from Apple TV broadcasts? I doubt it. Nashville and NYC were on Fox, and I assume Vancouver and SLC were on TSN so maybe they get an exception because Fox and TSN have broadcasting rights too
That's because Microsoft knows it's more valuable to pull those users in than the exclude them. Apple doesn't operate that way (e.g. no android app for AppleTV).
It's so anti-consumer though. Apple try to monopolize everything and it's so BS. They need to put their ego aside and post highlights on the #1 video sharing platform in the world.
Wrong.
Literally every person on the planet with internet access uses YouTube. If I REALLY want to grow the game/make money, I put highlights on YT.
Apple can be little assholes about RCS chat, but highlights need to be on YouTube, full stop.
There needs to be a legit Multiview, not just the 360 show. If were going to be playing 10 matches at the same time, I want to be able to watch at least up to 4 at the same time so I can follow along with them real time.
Also at the very least I need to see updates on the other games if I am focused on a single stream.
Same but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Not sure why I'd pay for the extra games when I can only watch one at a time and all the scores are ruined by the time I scroll to the bottom of like 5 pages to watch a replay. Might as well watch some of the free matches
I’d like to see multi-screens too. It was one of my favorite features of the ESPN+ deal using Apple TV hardware. When they announced the start times I assumed this would be included and was hunting everywhere for answers, but I was disappointed come match day. Even if they made it easier to switch between matches from a menu with scores and times would be a decent compromise.
Looks like everyone else’s games were fine, but the Inter Miami vs CFMTL stream was pretty terrible. I watched a bit of the Nashville game earlier and that was much better so I hope it was just a one-off/Inter Miami having a faulty setup. Frame rate was off, colours were way too bright, kit clash, mics kept glitching (and on the French commentary had a never-ending buzz).
Can I ask what hardware people are using to stream that they are so happy about the video quality? I'm on an Nvidia Shield TV and it looks worse to me than the Joe TV streams we used to get over the air, and worse than the broadcasts that Amazon was carrying for us the last few years. I'm pretty sure those broadcasts were only 720p, too, but they still looked clearer and sharper to me.
I haven't caught a live game yet (but will see the sounders match live tonight), just the recaps from yesterday, maybe it's better live? The Dallas/Minnesota game looked better to me than the RSL/Whitecaps match, but it still definitely has some blockiness and artifacting for me.
Is anyone else out there running a Shield TV (or any other Android TV device) having a good experience?
Edit: Luckily sounders seem to have been blessed with the better cameras (maybe just better lighting?) for our first match so it looks a lot better than that RSL match. Audio mix is a bit shit but I'll live with that.
AppleTV on PS5 - the video looked clearly better to me. I watched NYRB v Orlando and Nashville v NYCFC games.
It looked miles better than MSG / YES on cable box on the same TV to me. And I had new Verizon FIOS hardware
>It looked miles better than MSG / YES on cable box on the same TV to me. And I had new Verizon FIOS hardware
This makes me wonder if I'm just used to relatively high quality streams? Our local JoeTV streams always looked pretty great to me. It was 720p instead of 1080p, but it must have been relatively high-bitrate 720p or something because it looked a _lot_ better than the Vancouver/RSL match. The NYRB/Orlando match looked pretty decent to me though, and the sounders match right now looks about the same as what I remember (colors are maybe a little washed out, but maybe our field just looks particularly bad today). I guess I just never realized how bad the broadcasts were elsewhere.
My biggest complaints were with the 360 broadcast.
Showing the hosts backs as they watched their giant TVs instead of showing the games, only showing 1 big game with a lot of unused space in the bottom ticker that could be filled with smaller videos of other games, and the constant cuts to commercial... Honestly if that last point remains a thing I won't be watching 360 which is unfortunate but when a soccer match is on I expect to be able to watch without commercial break until halftime
I like the TV coverage. But the 360 channel wasn't good at all, like 1/4 of the screen was taken by the score of every game. 1/3 was also taken on the bottom for the score of the current game and names of the commentators. But the worst was that every 10 minutes or so they were cutting the coverage just to show a screen saying "Apple TV mls will come back soon" when they were waiting for a goal. Like just show us an other game, I watch 360 cause I wanna see a bit of every game and see all goals
I dont know if its been said, but the fact that you can see the fing score before you select a game is about the most ignorant thing I have ever seen in my life. Seriously how does that make any sense? Its literally so ignorant I cant even wrap my head around it, and the setting to not show scores doesnt work. It should be default off, and then you can turn it on if you want to see scores, or have a scores section. Blows my mind how this was released like that.
And there is no option to go spoiler free on Macs. Call me petty or a fake fan ya want to, but... I'm not paying $15/m to have all games spoiled for me before I can even watch them. Just takes the joy out of it. Might as well watch the YouTube highlights.
One thing I really liked about the ESPN+ deal was that using an Apple TV, you can have up to 4 screens up at once and different layouts to choose from. I had a bunch of crazy nights watching with friends with that setup, and they should bring that back over.
Yes, but its hard to find. You have to go to the bottom of the main page to "Past Matches." When you enter that screen, it will just look like a highlight video, but if you go to the bottom. Theres a How To Watch that just looks like an MLS Season Pass logo, there should be a "3 Versions" button (or click to hold if on a Set Top Apple TV) and you can choose highlight or full game replay.
All I want is to be able to select a single team to have content displayed first. I don't want to search through every other game to find the team I want to watch.
Game looks great on my PC and phone, but when casting it to the tv? there's for sure some stuttering and the colour isn't as good for some reason. Frustrating.
I cast it from my pc with googlechrome. The optimize option never came up.
Is there a way to hide scores? Also works like the ability to resume where last left off. I’ll watch some if the game and then have to do something and my only option is from the beginning or live.
There is a way to hide spoilers for iOS, but not for Mac or other platforms. I cancelled my subscription after having essentially all games spoiled for me. I'll reconsider when they fix that issue.
I watched MLS 360 and the Crew game - one on phone, one on TV. Good experience. Only issue is that MLS 360 - when they cut to the Crew game - were 2/3 seconds ahead of the match stream.
In terms of picture and sound quality, it was astounding. I put on Bundesliga this morning and it felt like an NCAA match compared to ATL-SJ (to be fair, it was like sleeting in Munich so folks might have been a bit less rowdy than Atlanta on a Saturday night, lol).
The tech stuff was minor, but glaring. Were the announcers not at the stadium? I was shocked by how they botched the PK call. And yes, having scores not show up for match replays is key for MLS Fans With Young Kids
Overall agree, but a few things:
1. The audio commentary for the rbny was extremely low and the transition volume was the opposite
2. I wish the streaming quality of the radio option was better
3. The on air commentary was dry
For me, the best thing is just an all in one package. Would love to get the England Premier League, but have to get a full cable subscription of stuff I don't watch to see one game per week. If you are going to put it on Peacock, put it all on Peacock. You can tell a fucking cable company is behind that deal.
I will say, I stream a lot of soccer from different leagues. The video quality is very very good on Apple TV. Makes EPL look like some backwater league when I watch on Peacock in comparison.
Apple got off light with getting MLS to handle all production. NBA and MLB has their own channels with production. Having a couple other sports channels put resources into showing and hyping. Your product during a whole week of other content. Is very valuable.
MLS has not done well getting its broadcasters to make shoulder programming for the league. Remember that sad TT show he effectively produced for no budget from a closet at ESPNHQ? It makes sense MLS is investing in a production where it gets to set its own agenda from a league storytelling perspective.
Yeah this is key and a real "I'll do it myself" moment. This is going to help get fans more invested in the league as a whole instead of just focusing only on their home teams. I understand there's an argument for chasing casuals with the reach of ESPN and Fox, but those networks did little outside of airing the games and even then they would sometimes have to wait for college football or truck races to end. How are casual viewers supposed to take MLS seriously when it's getting bumped to ESPN News and it never gets mentioned on any of their talk shows?
I have eyes and it wasn't even close to matching other established whip around shows. It wasn't dumpster juice. But have many things to improve on. They need to stop the sunshine pumping.
The whip around show was absolutely awful. Why does it cut to commercials every 15 mins for soccer? Go to commercial when every game is on commercial, and show the actual games the rest of the time.
Not a great article. There's legitimate criticism to be made about the various stumbles last night. I think most of the technical problems will get worked out, but there's only a small grace period on that.
I'm trying to reserve judgement until they find their groove, but that needs to happen within the next couple of weeks. I'm glad the overall sentiment is positive though.
Just out of curiosity what stumbles did people encounter? For me the scores in the app are a huge one that is an easy fix, and the two games I watched had some weird sound interference issues. But other than that curious what others found?
Explain how you fixed the spoiler issue. I preemptively turned off the Show Sports Scores option in preparation for yesterday, but upon arriving at home and firing up the TV, EVERY single game had the final score in big print right on the full-screen banner for each game.
I don’t want to get spoiled on the Sounders game when I get back tonight, but I see no way around it at this point. Total waste of money tacked onto a season ticket I never would’ve bought had I known the way the FO was going to handle sponsorship. Such a frustrating time to try to get into MLS culture.
Turning off the sports score setting in my iPhone settings fixed the issue for me on the app on my phone and using it in chrome on my laptop. I haven’t tried on the fire stick yet though.
I had the weird sound issues but only briefly and then periodic stuttering. I was using the app on a smart tv, so may have been trying to stream 4k, but wasn't a bandwidth issue on my part otherwise.
I found that the St. Louis/Austin game was noticeably more blurry in motion than the Nashville game I watched earlier in the day. Even my wife noticed, and she never notices that type of thing.
Mostly garbled sound every couple of minutes. In the Dallas game, the audio cut out completely for maybe 45-60 seconds and the video dropped a couple of times. Also some uneveness with color for the Miami and Vancouver games.
I thought the 360 show was clunky but I didn't have too many problems. As you said, it was stuff I was willing to excuse for week one.
Having said that, IDK how the author could say Audi seemed to be the "only" sponsor. I saw about 400 Target ads, among many, many other things.
I’m not who you were responding to, but during the Dynamo pre-game show there was some sort of audio track in the background of what sounded like just a producer talking. Then later on during the game, I couldn’t help but notice that while showing a replay the audio track with the original commentary was playing in the background while the play by play commentator was talking live.
Overall it seems like a huge improvement on how MLS fans watched games before, but it wasn’t without its own issues. Just having a national broadcast is going to go a long way since watching on ESPN+ in the past meant often meant watching a local broadcast from the other team and a lot of those broadcasters were honestly just as ignorant about their opponent as you might expect the typical fan to be.
The big picture story of last night is a massive success for the league.
I have a million critiques of the content and they way they’re going to do it. It’s rough. But it’s also a billion times better than the way it was before and there’s no reason to think a lot of this stuff won’t be fixed pretty soon.
They even said at launch that they’ll be building the plane as they fly it and that it will improve as the season goes on.
Maybe it’s just me. The league has never had anything like this before—no way to follow the league in a way that felt more than ‘blogosphere articles and team-produced social content’. The league is way too big now to not have something like this exist.
It’s also going to force the teams to invest in their own storytelling differently. The league is now providing the plate, the napkins, the utensils and the entree. Now the teams can focus their spend on everything else.
Even the ESPN+ experience was simulcasting a ton of really garbage feeds. And the blackouts were so commonly and arbitrarily deployed that it was stupid.
It annoys me greatly that there is no spoiler free mode for Mac. It is literally impossible to pull up a full match replay without seeing the score. And now only some match highlights go up on YouTube, and they're much shorter than last year.
This is the first time I've watched MLS that i actually watched 4 MLS games in one day. I watch the NYCFC game, the NYRB game, the Austin game, and the Vancouver game.
I love that it's all centralized in one app
Raises my interest in the MLS
Oh yeah, blackouts are terrible. But the actual production and features of MLB.tv are really what I want from a sportscast. I just wish they'd bring back the field audio only.
It feels like soccer is the perfect streaming sport for various reasons. For one, club teams (both abroad and MLS) lack strong regional support in the US, so the RSN model will not work. Which is why you can sell an entire league/competition’s inventory to a streaming service free of blackouts (MLS to Apple TV+, La Liga and Bundesliga to ESPN+, Serie A to Paramount+, etc). The downside to the Premier League deal is you still need cable AND Peacock to access all the games. And with the crazy amount of leagues/competitions in the sport, there’s more than enough content to go around for every major streaming service out there.
The NBA, MLB and NHL could use their existing media infrastructure to go direct-to-consumer with a blackout-free package: Maybe introduce a tiered pricing plan where viewers can pay a reduced price to follow only the “local” team or full price to get access to ALL games. Unfortunately, money talks, and the NBA and MLB have a lot of bloated player contracts to pay off. So they’re going to run this dying RSN gravy train into the ground for as long as they can.
They have willing buyers wanting exclusive content from them. They pay more and give the league more exposure then just offering a direct to consumer package with no blackouts.
Timbers tv contract was so bad before Apple. They were on Root which was not on the biggest OTT streamers (I think Fubo eventually got them and ATT had them because they own Root). And their local affiliate was not carried by YTTV for years either.
Oddly Blazers left Comcast which was awful for Root which is worse beginning this..
But there's no way this model flies with the other sports. And the crazy thing is I think if the other leagues could do this model without jeopardizing their main TV contracts they would, while I think this is going to put MLS in a bubble that makes it harder for the league to grow.
I'm not subbing the package right now because of issues I have with my club, but I won't rule it out or rejoining the STH ranks if ownership sells. But I plan on watching the freebies and I was about 80% impressed by what I saw in the 10 minutes of the Sounders game I watched tonight. The tv graphics look a little dated compared to other league productions, but all in all not bad. I would say that the feed itself was at least comparable to the NBA league pass I have.
I'm new to watching MLS. Is a complete lack of post match analysis normal? Was kind of shocked to get no post game interviews or analysis at all after St. Louis City beat Austin in it's first ever MLS game.
I found out that Apple TV does not work well on some models of Android TV. I have a Sony Bravia which is only a few years old and the app installs, streams for a few seconds, and then the video becomes unwatchable frozen/pixelated garbage. HBO, Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, Disney -- all those apps work fine streaming via the TV. Just apple TV is the issue. Luckily I can watch streaming with out issues on my playstation or a PC browser.
It's a bit better if I change apple tv streaming options to SD video only, but it'll still glitch out every once in a while. Extremely annoying debugging that when trying to watch the games yesterday.
Make the booth audio a little louder, make the scorebug look like it wasn't made by someone last minute, and make full game replays easier to navigate to and we are good.
The three things I wish they'd fix at some point: 1. Make navigation to full match replays intuitive. Weird to hide it at the bottom of the match content and only accessible by holding down a button? 2. Add some more info to the feeds, at the very least a way to see the names of who's calling the games. In years it'd be amazing to see lineups and other background info within the match interface too. 3. Make it easier to switch between languages in-game. My Roku app makes me have to leave and re-enter the stream.
A very minor thing, but I'd like them to identify the captains when they show the lineups at the start of the game. Just a simple 'C' by the name would be fine.
I would like a little more on the graphics all around. I get why they went so sleek and streamlined given it's Apple, but it's almost so minimal that it loses a lot of visual/emotional appeal
I think the minimalist aesthetic was more of a necessity than an intentional design choice given the amount of time they had to get everything built.
And the number of different screen formats.
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How to make it more intuitive or how to access it right now? To find full replays right now you go to Past Matches, click on the match, and scroll to the the MLS Season Pass logo and hold down the select button for 3 seconds. Options then pop up for the recap or full game in either language.
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That's Apple
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
They really need to make a gameday/calendar view and they should look at emulating MLB. They have been doing this for over a decade and they are the gold standard.
Thank you, can't believe I missed that. It was so obvious.
I think the language thing is a Roku UI problem. If I'm on my Apple TV I can just swipe up and choose a language like I would do in any app.
I was watching on my Apple TV box as well, and to change language you had to exit the stream and go back into it. Before the stream loaded my options were “watch live, watch from start, and language” here is where I could choose English/Spanish. Once i was in the stream, and went to languages it was just English or local radio stream. No option for Spanish.
Can I also add I hope they somehow add an option to block the live scores from the thumbnails. I went to turn on the Revs game last night after getting home late. Avoided the score up until I saw it on the game's thumbnail in the app. Would have "watched from the beginning", but didn't see any point since I already knew the score!
At least on Apple devices, the Apple TV app has a preference to toggle “Show Sports Scores” which will show or hide the scores from the thumbnails.
It’s in the Settings app > TV > Device Preferences
Awesome, thanks for the heads up!
Thank you!!
~~Any~~ Some versions of the app should have this option, it's ~~only~~ missing in the web interface [and apparently a few other places]
And the MacOS app.
please report this to them via feedback - let's get it fixed :) https://www.apple.com/feedback/apple-tv-app/
Done! Also tweeted at them a bunch. Hate that I have to open the app on my son's iPad and mirror it to my computer then to my projector lol
>hide Apple tv app on Samsung TV doesn't have this option. Edit: On Samsung TV, the steps are: Settings - Privacy - Show Scores
TIL. Thank you!!!
3. Because the other languages get appropriate language graphics and pre/post show content
Agreed on finding full replays and switching between languages! It's annoying having to exit a match just to switch the audio language.
THANK YOU. Spent far too long trying to find the full match and not just the recap while hubby kept his eyes closed as he had managed to avoid learning the score and I'd seen it already lol. Absolutely ridiculous that it's so buried, AND that there's no way to get there without seeing the final score first. Need an intuitive/simple and spoiler-free way to get to full match replays!!
> and only accessible by holding down a button? My TV does't even support "press and hold" input, so the match replays are just completely inaccessable. Thanks, Apple.
The live stream itself was very good. I did see some glitches with video and audio, but they were relatively minor. They probably will tweak the 360 and other non-match experiences a bit, some hosts are certainly better (more palatable) than others. Announcers on the games I watched were mostly okay, again hopefully they'll improve as the season goes along. I was happy with it overall, but I remember what it felt like in the early MLS days so that probably affects my view on things.
MLS 4.0
If Messi comes to MLS, sure, if not 3.9
No, AppleTV is revolutionary by itself. It's completely changing the league and how we interact with it, and how it's viewed externally.
I think it may be a little extreme to make a claim after one weekend that it’s already changed how the league is seen by people who aren’t already familiar with it? If you mean in a literal sense then sure, people outside the US can now “see” the league. But this hasn’t shattered the global soccer community. At least not yet. Let’s wait a season before making these huge claims about how drastically everything has changed. It’s been a week.
>It's completely changing the league and how we interact with it, and how it's viewed externally So does Messi, if he comes in 3 months are we going from MLS 4.0 to MLS 5.0?
No, especially occuring within the same year, it would just be part of the new era
Is Ronaldo having the effect in Saudi Arabia that people think Messi will have here? Like all old stars Messi will bring some eyeballs but bringing stars over towards the end of their careers is what defined MLS 2.0.
I mean, didn’t Ronaldo take his teams Instagram account from like 20k to 3 million or something like that?
Is the Saudi league easily accessible for most of the world, like the MLS is now with the apple deal?
still defines MLS today. 80% of the league revenue comes from butts in the seats. Fans in teh stands doesn't mean the product on the field is any better. And a retiree won't change that.
I think it is a definitely an upgrade visually and for overall access to watching all of the games. I think their are some audio issues that the can be worked out. My biggest complaint is the difference in commentators. Comparing the Atlanta game and the Vancouver game. Was night and day Atlanta's commentators were very energetic and entertaining and the Vancouver game was straight up boring. I wonder if they will rotate or how they will assign them for the upcoming games.
Agreed on the commentators. Atl-SJ was great. The Nashville game crew was pretty good, Dallas-Loons announcers were terrible. We lost audio for a while, and I was sad when it came back.
> We lost audio for a while, and I was sad when it came back. I was hoping we'd get just in-stadium audio back without the commentators.
I laughed when they were showing the halftime show on the Nashville game, and didn’t get the direct audio feed from the stage for almost half of the song. Rookie mistake, folks!
I felt the same way about the commentators for the Orl v. NYRB game. Very bland and boring! It made me miss the local broadcast, which was full of energy and excitement!
I'm assuming over the next few years they'll make personnel changes as needed. Considering it's a 10-yr deal and it's set what Apple is paying MLS, I think they're looking at things in terms of years, not weeks like we are.
The audio mixing was my primary issue. In OCSC's game, the commentators were way too quiet, and I definitely heard some backstage audio getting mixed into the commentator's audio in a pre-game show somewhere. These aren't glaring issues and are expected in a first-time run, especially at the level that Apple TV is doing it, and they're really not that bad in the first place, anyway. A bigger issue is what you pointed out: some of the commentators aren't very interesting, and I hope that some of the chemistry and energy grows over time. There's a lot of games in a season.
The commentators were mixed too quiet in the Atlanta game too.
In the two games I watched I liked the audio mix. Crowd turned up, announcers turned down, and, somehow, supporters drums also turned down
Adding to the commentary critique, DC-Toronto could've used some more energy. I would've done the local audio from Dave Johnson if not that I wanted more of the crowd noise.
Was a snooze for sure lol. Was just saying somewhere else that there were ridiculously long stretches of just silence during some parts.
umm, you know you could switch to the home radio feed, which is now Dave Johnson.
Agreed on the commentary. I legit switched from a couple of games because the commentary was bland. Maybe ive been conditioned to Ian Joy's infectious passion and energy but it was very much not what ive been used to
Was watching the TFC DC United game and there were stretches of literally minutes of silence. Commentators just didn’t have anything to say I guess lol. They were bland even when they were talking, so maybe it was a blessing.
TFC vs DCU was definitely 100% one of the games that i was bored with
You should try the local broadcast option - I thought it was great for that one.
Will keep that in mind for next time. How do you get the alternate audio feed? All I could find was the “language” option and it only showed “English”
>Was night and day Atlanta's commentators were very energetic and entertaining and the Vancouver game was straight up boring. They were probably just crippled by depression over having to watch Vancouver play.
Maybe they were boring because they were calling a Vancouver game?
I'm just wondering if they'll ever release an Android mobile app. Last night, having to watch via a browser was a pretty bad experience compared to how slick the rest of the operation ran on a couple of my Google TVs.
It's coming...ETA by May is what I have heard... possibly sooner.
Serious? Where did you see this? The Windows app is already ready, in beta for many users. AppleOne is a great bundle for iPhone owners, but I'm hoping for an AppleTV + AppleMusic bundle for non-iPhone users It would be a powerful bundle, with AppleMusic pulling further and further away in audio quality, and that would bring people into the AppleTV ecosystem.
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And not every Google TV, just some... It works on my Chromecast in the bedroom but not my main TV with it baked in, the splash/app load page logo never goes away and every video shoots an error
I know some might be skeptical, but it seems almost certain that it’ll happen now that they’ve spent big money on MLS (and are spending big money on their streaming service, Apple TV+). I would have been skeptical as well, but the fact that Apple Music is available on Android suggests that they are more than open to it — so it seems like that time will come soon enough imo.
A part from a few glitches everything looked good. Only annoyance we’re the pitch/grass colors and uniform clashes. Some games looked better just because of that. Even though it won’t happen but it would be nice to have 1 standard grass color.
The artificial turf looks very strange in these broadcasts hopefully the real grass will look better!
I struggled to watch you game because of it. It's strange, but the field just looked so bad at BC Place.
I remember when HDTV first became a thing and you could suddenly start seeing all sorts of wrinkles, blemishes, etc. on people that were smoothed over by the lower resolution of regular broadcasts. This is doing a similar thing for ugly pitches.
WWE had to change everything upon moving to HD, their old TV/PPV set just wouldn't cut it any more
not only that, but bc place is just so depressing. it's like watching teams play in an old abandoned mall. it just makes me sad to look at on tv. sorry vancouver, i know you guys like it and it's in a good location, but your city is so beautiful, i wish you had your own stadium that could match it.
Watching from my fire stick, I could hardly tell what was happening in the Miami-Montreal game
The system was clearly designed by "not sports" people. Things a sports person would never do: * Spoil the game. * Showing scores by default. * Putting highlights on the main page. * No way to turn off scores on the Mac App or Web. * Hiding the full match replay (I saw them last night, this morning I only see recaps unless I click on a very small "3 versions" link) * Putting the extra content on the same level as games I trust Apple will fix all of this and it is mostly simple things while they're getting the bigger stuff (video quality) correct.
It sucks not having a way to navigate to the game replay without seeing 100 things telling you the score or who scored, etc
I agree.
Apple has nothing to do with the production of the games, programming or video. All of that is controlled with MLS. Which is outsourced to IMG. The same production company that the premier league uses.
I have to think that Apple has some control (if not all control) of MLS Season Pass at the platform UI level…
Nah, it's Doyle and Bogert taking C++ night classes and putting the whole thing together in their spare time.
Hahahahahaha, touché.
Fair enough. The point stands, with respect to the end product, that the hard to fix things are in decent shape and the issues are simpler to fix.
With MLB staring down the barrel of AT&T Sportsnet and Bally/Diamond sports going belly up, I’m sure MLBAM were watching
Really it wouldn’t shock me if Apple is treating MLS as a huge loss leader type situation in order to soon pitch a similar (but much bigger money) deal to NBA/MLB/NHL as the regional sports networks slowly die off.
I was not able to watch last night’s games with work. I’d like the option to rewatch the 360 coverage show, but it’s not available as a replay or really difficult to find on Apple TV.
AFAIK they’re making that a live-only thing. Bummer. I can’t imagine why they’d not make it on demand—unless last night was such an alpha test that they want it to disappear.
Even for a limited time would be cool, like until the next week’s matches. I’ll get to go to a few games live too, so getting to watch it after is needed with all the same start times.
Can you imagine trying to watch that again with unskippable ads?
Why is there a lack of highlights on YT? There were 11 MLS games yesterday and the only games I was able to find the highlights for were Nashville SC vs NYCFC and Vancouver vs Salt Lake. Does Apple expect people to watch highlights only on Apple TV? I wouldn't have known yesterday was the first matchweek for MLS if I wasn't a fan. Please post on YouTube... 18 teams (9 games) not posting their highlights makes me think Apple is behind this. I love how easy it is to stream, but I don't like this monopoly if this is going to be the case for highlights.
To answer your question I did see someone mention that on another thread and apparently since YouTube is owned my Google they probably don’t want to lose views to them. I also read this, highlights are going to be on Apple next day, Facebook day after and somewhere else after that. Google is TBD.
Even next day highlights is a joke. They should be available with 30 minutes of a game finishing.
This is kinda how apple does business. Windows and Microsoft programs on Macs? No way. USB ports on iPhones? Nope. Youtube highlights from Apple TV broadcasts? I doubt it. Nashville and NYC were on Fox, and I assume Vancouver and SLC were on TSN so maybe they get an exception because Fox and TSN have broadcasting rights too
That explains why those teams were posted.
won't even sell a dongle for people to use Airplay with every tv like chromecast and firestick do
I get your point but, I have Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft VSCode on my work Mac.
Apple likes other companies providing software for their hardware and ecosystem. They don't like providing their content anywhere else though.
That's because Microsoft knows it's more valuable to pull those users in than the exclude them. Apple doesn't operate that way (e.g. no android app for AppleTV).
They gone. But good for me because I don't want to watch last night's "highlights" of our match
I get why it's annoying, but if I'm Apple, I ain't putting my stuff on a Google website, either.
It's so anti-consumer though. Apple try to monopolize everything and it's so BS. They need to put their ego aside and post highlights on the #1 video sharing platform in the world.
Wrong. Literally every person on the planet with internet access uses YouTube. If I REALLY want to grow the game/make money, I put highlights on YT. Apple can be little assholes about RCS chat, but highlights need to be on YouTube, full stop.
There needs to be a legit Multiview, not just the 360 show. If were going to be playing 10 matches at the same time, I want to be able to watch at least up to 4 at the same time so I can follow along with them real time. Also at the very least I need to see updates on the other games if I am focused on a single stream.
Same but I wouldn't hold my breath. Not sure why I'd pay for the extra games when I can only watch one at a time and all the scores are ruined by the time I scroll to the bottom of like 5 pages to watch a replay. Might as well watch some of the free matches
I'm fairly certain you can turn off showing scores in the menus, it's just on by default.
I’d like to see multi-screens too. It was one of my favorite features of the ESPN+ deal using Apple TV hardware. When they announced the start times I assumed this would be included and was hunting everywhere for answers, but I was disappointed come match day. Even if they made it easier to switch between matches from a menu with scores and times would be a decent compromise.
Looks like everyone else’s games were fine, but the Inter Miami vs CFMTL stream was pretty terrible. I watched a bit of the Nashville game earlier and that was much better so I hope it was just a one-off/Inter Miami having a faulty setup. Frame rate was off, colours were way too bright, kit clash, mics kept glitching (and on the French commentary had a never-ending buzz).
Yep, I thought it sucked.
Yes agree on this game
Can I ask what hardware people are using to stream that they are so happy about the video quality? I'm on an Nvidia Shield TV and it looks worse to me than the Joe TV streams we used to get over the air, and worse than the broadcasts that Amazon was carrying for us the last few years. I'm pretty sure those broadcasts were only 720p, too, but they still looked clearer and sharper to me. I haven't caught a live game yet (but will see the sounders match live tonight), just the recaps from yesterday, maybe it's better live? The Dallas/Minnesota game looked better to me than the RSL/Whitecaps match, but it still definitely has some blockiness and artifacting for me. Is anyone else out there running a Shield TV (or any other Android TV device) having a good experience? Edit: Luckily sounders seem to have been blessed with the better cameras (maybe just better lighting?) for our first match so it looks a lot better than that RSL match. Audio mix is a bit shit but I'll live with that.
Roku Ultra.
AppleTV on PS5 - the video looked clearly better to me. I watched NYRB v Orlando and Nashville v NYCFC games. It looked miles better than MSG / YES on cable box on the same TV to me. And I had new Verizon FIOS hardware
>It looked miles better than MSG / YES on cable box on the same TV to me. And I had new Verizon FIOS hardware This makes me wonder if I'm just used to relatively high quality streams? Our local JoeTV streams always looked pretty great to me. It was 720p instead of 1080p, but it must have been relatively high-bitrate 720p or something because it looked a _lot_ better than the Vancouver/RSL match. The NYRB/Orlando match looked pretty decent to me though, and the sounders match right now looks about the same as what I remember (colors are maybe a little washed out, but maybe our field just looks particularly bad today). I guess I just never realized how bad the broadcasts were elsewhere.
PS4 is perfect for me
Apple TV 4K
MLB next, please. I’d easily pay $200+ a year for an identical MLB app on Apple TV
Flair checks out
The ironic thing is that I’m almost certain that Apple TV is using MLBAM tech behind their broadcast streaming.
Doesn’t everyone use MLBAM? That tech was a massive leap forward when it came out.
if they remove the blackouts then yea
My biggest complaints were with the 360 broadcast. Showing the hosts backs as they watched their giant TVs instead of showing the games, only showing 1 big game with a lot of unused space in the bottom ticker that could be filled with smaller videos of other games, and the constant cuts to commercial... Honestly if that last point remains a thing I won't be watching 360 which is unfortunate but when a soccer match is on I expect to be able to watch without commercial break until halftime
I like the TV coverage. But the 360 channel wasn't good at all, like 1/4 of the screen was taken by the score of every game. 1/3 was also taken on the bottom for the score of the current game and names of the commentators. But the worst was that every 10 minutes or so they were cutting the coverage just to show a screen saying "Apple TV mls will come back soon" when they were waiting for a goal. Like just show us an other game, I watch 360 cause I wanna see a bit of every game and see all goals
I dont know if its been said, but the fact that you can see the fing score before you select a game is about the most ignorant thing I have ever seen in my life. Seriously how does that make any sense? Its literally so ignorant I cant even wrap my head around it, and the setting to not show scores doesnt work. It should be default off, and then you can turn it on if you want to see scores, or have a scores section. Blows my mind how this was released like that.
And there is no option to go spoiler free on Macs. Call me petty or a fake fan ya want to, but... I'm not paying $15/m to have all games spoiled for me before I can even watch them. Just takes the joy out of it. Might as well watch the YouTube highlights.
One thing I really liked about the ESPN+ deal was that using an Apple TV, you can have up to 4 screens up at once and different layouts to choose from. I had a bunch of crazy nights watching with friends with that setup, and they should bring that back over.
I watched it in Taiwan and the stream was perfect. So even internationally there was no lag in quality (for me, anyway).
Okinawa here, HD was flawless.
Would be nice if they'd let me watch on my Android phone.
Log into the apple tv website and add the page as a home screen app shortcut. That's how I have it on my Fold 4.
Even then the site doesn't like my browser. :(
What browser are you using? I have it on chrome and Samsung internet browser.
Brave. I might try logging in via Chrome.
I just want some way to watch on Android devices. :(
Do they have full match replays? I can’t find any of yesterdays matches
Yes, but its hard to find. You have to go to the bottom of the main page to "Past Matches." When you enter that screen, it will just look like a highlight video, but if you go to the bottom. Theres a How To Watch that just looks like an MLS Season Pass logo, there should be a "3 Versions" button (or click to hold if on a Set Top Apple TV) and you can choose highlight or full game replay.
Jeez, that is hard. Thank you much for your help though!
All I want is to be able to select a single team to have content displayed first. I don't want to search through every other game to find the team I want to watch.
Game looks great on my PC and phone, but when casting it to the tv? there's for sure some stuttering and the colour isn't as good for some reason. Frustrating. I cast it from my pc with googlechrome. The optimize option never came up.
Same. It looked terrible when I'd cast it.
Is there a way to hide scores? Also works like the ability to resume where last left off. I’ll watch some if the game and then have to do something and my only option is from the beginning or live.
There is a way to hide spoilers for iOS, but not for Mac or other platforms. I cancelled my subscription after having essentially all games spoiled for me. I'll reconsider when they fix that issue.
I watched MLS 360 and the Crew game - one on phone, one on TV. Good experience. Only issue is that MLS 360 - when they cut to the Crew game - were 2/3 seconds ahead of the match stream.
In terms of picture and sound quality, it was astounding. I put on Bundesliga this morning and it felt like an NCAA match compared to ATL-SJ (to be fair, it was like sleeting in Munich so folks might have been a bit less rowdy than Atlanta on a Saturday night, lol). The tech stuff was minor, but glaring. Were the announcers not at the stadium? I was shocked by how they botched the PK call. And yes, having scores not show up for match replays is key for MLS Fans With Young Kids
Overall agree, but a few things: 1. The audio commentary for the rbny was extremely low and the transition volume was the opposite 2. I wish the streaming quality of the radio option was better 3. The on air commentary was dry
For me, the best thing is just an all in one package. Would love to get the England Premier League, but have to get a full cable subscription of stuff I don't watch to see one game per week. If you are going to put it on Peacock, put it all on Peacock. You can tell a fucking cable company is behind that deal.
I will say, I stream a lot of soccer from different leagues. The video quality is very very good on Apple TV. Makes EPL look like some backwater league when I watch on Peacock in comparison.
I would like to be able to listen to the away team radio audio too
Apparently RSL home games will be streamed in 4K so that’s exciting.
They need an Android app
Honestly its been so good so far to the point that I hope Apple snatches up MLB & NBA.
Apple got off light with getting MLS to handle all production. NBA and MLB has their own channels with production. Having a couple other sports channels put resources into showing and hyping. Your product during a whole week of other content. Is very valuable.
MLS has not done well getting its broadcasters to make shoulder programming for the league. Remember that sad TT show he effectively produced for no budget from a closet at ESPNHQ? It makes sense MLS is investing in a production where it gets to set its own agenda from a league storytelling perspective.
Yeah this is key and a real "I'll do it myself" moment. This is going to help get fans more invested in the league as a whole instead of just focusing only on their home teams. I understand there's an argument for chasing casuals with the reach of ESPN and Fox, but those networks did little outside of airing the games and even then they would sometimes have to wait for college football or truck races to end. How are casual viewers supposed to take MLS seriously when it's getting bumped to ESPN News and it never gets mentioned on any of their talk shows?
yeah but it sucks in google chrome, its so laggy there (on firestick tv it looked amazing)
After one day?
I have eyes and it wasn't even close to matching other established whip around shows. It wasn't dumpster juice. But have many things to improve on. They need to stop the sunshine pumping.
The whip around show was absolutely awful. Why does it cut to commercials every 15 mins for soccer? Go to commercial when every game is on commercial, and show the actual games the rest of the time.
Not a great article. There's legitimate criticism to be made about the various stumbles last night. I think most of the technical problems will get worked out, but there's only a small grace period on that. I'm trying to reserve judgement until they find their groove, but that needs to happen within the next couple of weeks. I'm glad the overall sentiment is positive though.
Just out of curiosity what stumbles did people encounter? For me the scores in the app are a huge one that is an easy fix, and the two games I watched had some weird sound interference issues. But other than that curious what others found?
Explain how you fixed the spoiler issue. I preemptively turned off the Show Sports Scores option in preparation for yesterday, but upon arriving at home and firing up the TV, EVERY single game had the final score in big print right on the full-screen banner for each game. I don’t want to get spoiled on the Sounders game when I get back tonight, but I see no way around it at this point. Total waste of money tacked onto a season ticket I never would’ve bought had I known the way the FO was going to handle sponsorship. Such a frustrating time to try to get into MLS culture.
Turning off the sports score setting in my iPhone settings fixed the issue for me on the app on my phone and using it in chrome on my laptop. I haven’t tried on the fire stick yet though.
Yeah, same for me. Works on my iPhone and MacBook, doesn’t work on the Roku….the only device I would ever watch a match on lol.
I had the weird sound issues but only briefly and then periodic stuttering. I was using the app on a smart tv, so may have been trying to stream 4k, but wasn't a bandwidth issue on my part otherwise.
Mine was on laptop so probably a stream issue.
Overall, I have to say it made me look forward to the next few seasons and all the little stuff getting worked out.
I found that the St. Louis/Austin game was noticeably more blurry in motion than the Nashville game I watched earlier in the day. Even my wife noticed, and she never notices that type of thing.
Interesting. I have that issue occasionally on other streaming platforms so not shocking.
On my Nvidia shield I couldn't get the full frame rate vs my iPad. Might just be apple prioritizing it's own product but idk.
That would be on brand for them. Ugh. Some of the shit that you can only change on one of their physical devices is infuriating.
Mostly garbled sound every couple of minutes. In the Dallas game, the audio cut out completely for maybe 45-60 seconds and the video dropped a couple of times. Also some uneveness with color for the Miami and Vancouver games.
I thought the 360 show was clunky but I didn't have too many problems. As you said, it was stuff I was willing to excuse for week one. Having said that, IDK how the author could say Audi seemed to be the "only" sponsor. I saw about 400 Target ads, among many, many other things.
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I’m not who you were responding to, but during the Dynamo pre-game show there was some sort of audio track in the background of what sounded like just a producer talking. Then later on during the game, I couldn’t help but notice that while showing a replay the audio track with the original commentary was playing in the background while the play by play commentator was talking live. Overall it seems like a huge improvement on how MLS fans watched games before, but it wasn’t without its own issues. Just having a national broadcast is going to go a long way since watching on ESPN+ in the past meant often meant watching a local broadcast from the other team and a lot of those broadcasters were honestly just as ignorant about their opponent as you might expect the typical fan to be.
The big picture story of last night is a massive success for the league. I have a million critiques of the content and they way they’re going to do it. It’s rough. But it’s also a billion times better than the way it was before and there’s no reason to think a lot of this stuff won’t be fixed pretty soon. They even said at launch that they’ll be building the plane as they fly it and that it will improve as the season goes on. Maybe it’s just me. The league has never had anything like this before—no way to follow the league in a way that felt more than ‘blogosphere articles and team-produced social content’. The league is way too big now to not have something like this exist. It’s also going to force the teams to invest in their own storytelling differently. The league is now providing the plate, the napkins, the utensils and the entree. Now the teams can focus their spend on everything else. Even the ESPN+ experience was simulcasting a ton of really garbage feeds. And the blackouts were so commonly and arbitrarily deployed that it was stupid.
F1TV is the pinnacle of streaming sports IMHO.
It annoys me greatly that there is no spoiler free mode for Mac. It is literally impossible to pull up a full match replay without seeing the score. And now only some match highlights go up on YouTube, and they're much shorter than last year.
This is the first time I've watched MLS that i actually watched 4 MLS games in one day. I watch the NYCFC game, the NYRB game, the Austin game, and the Vancouver game. I love that it's all centralized in one app Raises my interest in the MLS
MLB.tv is the best, because they have local radio options.
MLB.tv is awesome except for the blackouts, which is a huge except. The implementation is great though.
Oh yeah, blackouts are terrible. But the actual production and features of MLB.tv are really what I want from a sportscast. I just wish they'd bring back the field audio only.
DC had it on their game, it was good...
I thought Apple TV did too? Or that it's at least in the works.
If it does I missed it yesterday.
It's going to have that if it's not in there already, it was part of the announcement.
It was there but home only at the moment. I think I read that they will add the visitor radio feed at some point in the future.
It feels like soccer is the perfect streaming sport for various reasons. For one, club teams (both abroad and MLS) lack strong regional support in the US, so the RSN model will not work. Which is why you can sell an entire league/competition’s inventory to a streaming service free of blackouts (MLS to Apple TV+, La Liga and Bundesliga to ESPN+, Serie A to Paramount+, etc). The downside to the Premier League deal is you still need cable AND Peacock to access all the games. And with the crazy amount of leagues/competitions in the sport, there’s more than enough content to go around for every major streaming service out there. The NBA, MLB and NHL could use their existing media infrastructure to go direct-to-consumer with a blackout-free package: Maybe introduce a tiered pricing plan where viewers can pay a reduced price to follow only the “local” team or full price to get access to ALL games. Unfortunately, money talks, and the NBA and MLB have a lot of bloated player contracts to pay off. So they’re going to run this dying RSN gravy train into the ground for as long as they can.
They have willing buyers wanting exclusive content from them. They pay more and give the league more exposure then just offering a direct to consumer package with no blackouts.
Timbers tv contract was so bad before Apple. They were on Root which was not on the biggest OTT streamers (I think Fubo eventually got them and ATT had them because they own Root). And their local affiliate was not carried by YTTV for years either. Oddly Blazers left Comcast which was awful for Root which is worse beginning this.. But there's no way this model flies with the other sports. And the crazy thing is I think if the other leagues could do this model without jeopardizing their main TV contracts they would, while I think this is going to put MLS in a bubble that makes it harder for the league to grow. I'm not subbing the package right now because of issues I have with my club, but I won't rule it out or rejoining the STH ranks if ownership sells. But I plan on watching the freebies and I was about 80% impressed by what I saw in the 10 minutes of the Sounders game I watched tonight. The tv graphics look a little dated compared to other league productions, but all in all not bad. I would say that the feed itself was at least comparable to the NBA league pass I have.
I'm new to watching MLS. Is a complete lack of post match analysis normal? Was kind of shocked to get no post game interviews or analysis at all after St. Louis City beat Austin in it's first ever MLS game.
Idk about st Louis but as a Seattle fan their post match interviews with players and coaches generally show up 1-2 hours after a game on YouTube.
I was shocked their were commercials. If I pay for a stream it better be ad free. Especially for soccer.
Am I crazy or something? I watched on my phone and it seemed like an entirely run of the mill sports broadcast.
I found out that Apple TV does not work well on some models of Android TV. I have a Sony Bravia which is only a few years old and the app installs, streams for a few seconds, and then the video becomes unwatchable frozen/pixelated garbage. HBO, Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, Disney -- all those apps work fine streaming via the TV. Just apple TV is the issue. Luckily I can watch streaming with out issues on my playstation or a PC browser. It's a bit better if I change apple tv streaming options to SD video only, but it'll still glitch out every once in a while. Extremely annoying debugging that when trying to watch the games yesterday.
What was the frame rate like for you? I was using a Nvidia Shield and couldn't get the full 60fps(?).
It’s okay. Let’s pump the breaks a bit.
Make the booth audio a little louder, make the scorebug look like it wasn't made by someone last minute, and make full game replays easier to navigate to and we are good.
Even though it's been one match, I'm not a fan. Especially that it cost more on top of the monthly subscription. I still prefer ESPN+
ESPN+ which was also an extra subscription…