Can Apple save Major League Soccer? Our first answer was a hard no. A streaming deal can put soccer in front of people, but it cannot give a single club a reason to fear failure. That is the whole promotion and relegation debate in MLS: distribution grows an audience, while consequences give that audience a reason to care. Still, a dedicated home for MLS is a real foundation. The question is what the league builds on it, and whether it builds anything at all.
Update, October 2026: The deal has moved since this was first written. Awful Announcing reported in November 2025 that the Apple agreement, originally a ten-year contract struck in 2022, would end after the 2028-29 season, about three and a half years early. Front Office Sports reported that the separate MLS Season Pass was folded into the main Apple TV subscription for 2026. And in July 2026, Commissioner Don Garber said promotion and relegation does not make sense for MLS for now.
Prefer to watch? Here is our video take on why Apple cannot fix MLS on its own.
Apple Can Solve a Real Access Problem
Fans have to find the product before they can care about it. Hardcore supporters will hunt down a match. Casual fans and curious newcomers will not do the work. A single destination makes the invitation simple: here is where the soccer is. When matches are easy to locate, the league and its media partner both have a reason to promote them. It is a mutually beneficial relationship, partnership, friendship, some kind of ship. Pick one.
Consistent match windows help, too. Other sports train fans to show up on particular days at particular times, and MLS can build the same habit instead of making people decode a schedule every week.
The 2026 change took out one more barrier. Before it, the standalone Season Pass ran $14.99 a month, $99 a season, or $79 on top of an Apple TV subscription, according to Front Office Sports. Putting every match in the base subscription means nobody needs a second product to watch a team they already like.
Monthly price before the 2026 change
What a Media Deal Lets Clubs Do
Visibility is one benefit. Revenue is the other. With more money, clubs have the chance to build better teams and win over local supporters, and stronger teams make for better competition and more reasons for outsiders to tune in.
None of that happens by magic. Clubs have to spend the money well, and the shortened contract puts a clock on it: on the reported terms, the partnership has until 2029 to show results. In our view, a media deal hands clubs the tools, and the only people who can use them are the ones who feel something is at stake.
Where the Promotion and Relegation Debate Gets Serious
Here is what a streaming platform cannot sell: the threat of going down. In an open pyramid, relegation asks a club one blunt question. Do you want to stay up? If the answer is yes, every decision about the squad and the direction of the club carries a consequence nobody can ignore. That pressure does not guarantee smart management, but it makes good management hard to skip.
MLS has no such consequence. A club can have a dreadful season and still be back next year. It is a closed league of 30 teams, and Garber has said heavy stadium investment by owners is one reason promotion and relegation does not fit now. He also said investors are not demanding it, per the July 2026 report.
The wider American picture is moving, though. The same report says the United Soccer League plans to launch USL Premier in 2028 as a top tier with promotion and relegation linked to the USL Championship and League One. It will give MLS an open-pyramid comparison inside its own country.
Our View
In our view, this is the part MLS keeps dodging. Apple can help people find the league, and the Season Pass change makes that easier than ever. It cannot force a comfortable club to make hard decisions, because nothing in the structure punishes a comfortable club. Access is the easy problem and incentive is the hard one, and only one of them makes a match matter. A league that wants fans to feel the stakes has to build some, and its commissioner has said it will not for now.
VDG Sports, where Vince Douglas Gregory writes about the business and culture of sports, will keep following how the Apple deal and the promotion and relegation question develop.
Vince Douglas Gregory is the ‘petulant puppet master’ of a sports media landscape addicted to scripted rage and performance art. As the architect of VDG Sports, he bypasses the corporate talking heads to expose the unfiltered truth behind the narratives.
An unstable thinker and astute scholar, Vince thrives on dismantling the mediocre click-bait addicts who trade reality for engagement. If you want boring stats, go elsewhere. If you want the raw reality of the game, you’re in the right place. Consider yourself warned.