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According to a new report from investment firm Wedbush, Apple is “actively looking” for a potential deal that would allow it to stream live sports content on its Apple TV+ streaming service to significantly boost subscriptions, MacRumors reports.
In this investor note, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said he thinks Apple’s decision to hold off on acquiring movie studios for now is a clear sign that it now sees live sports as a key part of its future success to expand its Audiences for video streaming services.
Apple has not provided details on the number of Apple TV+ subscribers since the digital streaming service began, but Wedbush estimates that out of about 45 million viewers, Apple TV+ has about 20 million paying subscribers, with the rest buying other Apple users A free trial of the product is available.
That’s a fraction of the number of subscriptions enjoyed by companies like Disney+ and Netflix. Knowing this, Apple is apparently “ready to spend billions of dollars on live sports content over the next four years” to drive future Apple TV+ growth and make it a key profit in its nascent services ecosystem Growth engine, the ecosystem earned it $80 billion in annual revenue last fiscal year.
“With Apple spending $7 billion a year on original content and with about $200 billion in cash on its balance sheet, we think the company is gearing up to bid on some upcoming sports packages to sign/in the next few years. Renewal. We note that over the next four years, Apple may be bidding on sports packages (in some capacity/semi-exclusive): NFL (Sunday Night Ticket), Big Ten, Pac 12, Big East, Big 12, Other NCAA sports packages (2024 timing), NASCAR and NBA/WNBA.”
Currently, Apple TV+ doesn’t offer support for live TV of any kind, only access to on-demand TV and movie content, so if any deal goes through, Apple will need to build a new sports-oriented live TV section.
Earlier this month, The New York Post reported that Apple has discussed a potential deal with Major League Baseball to broadcast MLB games next season, in what would be a first for the world of live sports content. Great attempt.
Currently, the lack of live sports opportunities on Apple TV remains a serious hole in Apple TV programming as rivals such as Amazon already have established deals. Amazon’s 20 live Premier League football matches, for example, will return for the 2022/23 season, and the company has signed a deal to stream Thursday Night Football starting this fall, for which it paid more than $10 billion dollars in licensing fees.
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