MLS and Apple Broadcasting Deal

[mgarbowski]

Edit: yes, this was the eye test and I didn’t clock it. Could have easily been confirmation bias because obviously I’m bias and I don’t trust those two to be unbiased yet. And truthfully it’s a small gripe so I’m not all that upset about it. Just noticed it and found it bothersome

I Loled.
But yeah, the paradox of complaining about team coverage is you either track it like an obsessed lunatic, or you are almost inevitably prey to confirmation bias. Based on fan comments, Joe Buck is biased against every team in both baseball and football.

I was able to dig up this comment on r/mls from last year which gave me much joy. In Week 11, NYCFC and the Loons were the subject of the opening main feature in Doyle's weekly roundup article. A Portland fan asked, "Has NYCFC never not been the focus of these dumb recaps?" Gee, I wonder why a Portland fan would be subject to thinking NYCFC was league favorite?

https://www.reddit.com/r/MLS/comments/uqijwx/_/i8ronk9

So the OP went back and listed the teams featured in the opening section of every such Doyle column last year to that point. As it turned out, Portland was featured in Week 1 and NYCFC never to that point.

My opinion is I'm always wrong when I complain about these things, because even in the rare occasions where by chance I am right, I haven't enhanced my enjoyment.

Now, this team's current roster on the other hand....

 

[JCMore]

I Loled.
But yeah, the paradox of complaining about team coverage is you either track it like an obsessed lunatic, or you are almost inevitably prey to confirmation bias. Based on fan comments, Joe Buck is biased against every team in both baseball and football.

I was able to dig up this comment on r/mls from last year which gave me much joy. In Week 11, NYCFC and the Loons were the subject of the opening main feature in Doyle's weekly roundup article. A Portland fan asked, "Has NYCFC never not been the focus of these dumb recaps?" Gee, I wonder why a Portland fan would be subject to thinking NYCFC was league favorite?

https://www.reddit.com/r/MLS/comments/uqijwx/_/i8ronk9

So the OP went back and listed the teams featured in the opening section of every such Doyle column last year to that point. As it turned out, Portland was featured in Week 1 and NYCFC never to that point.

My opinion is I'm always wrong when I complain about these things, because even in the rare occasions where by chance I am right, I haven't enhanced my enjoyment.

Now, this team's current roster on the other hand....

Don’t worry, I was thinking of you the whole time I wrote that disclaimer at the bottom of my post lol

 

[mgarbowski]

Don’t worry, I was thinking of you the whole time I wrote that disclaimer at the bottom of my post lol

Oh I knew it, that's why it got to me.

 

[Shwafta]

Don’t worry, I was thinking of you the whole time I wrote that disclaimer at the bottom of my post lol

He's done his job if he's at least made us all think before we write these types of things

 

[SoupInNYC]

Yeah… watching the pregame show for our game yesterday, for four neutral hosts (with BWP and Sasha) I think they basically only talked about Nashville. They did a whole thing about the Johnny Cash Kit but didn’t even mention our kit. Hell I’m not even sure they spent a full 60 seconds of the half hour coverage on NYCFC. And yeah I get they have to talk about the whole league, apple, the new season, and have ad time. But it felt like Nashville had about 5 minutes and we got a mention

Edit: yes, this was the eye test and I didn’t clock it. Could have easily been confirmation bias because obviously I’m bias and I don’t trust those two to be unbiased yet. And truthfully it’s a small gripe so I’m not all that upset about it. Just noticed it and found it bothersome

BWP and Sacha also had a segment where they picked who they thought would win MLS Cup this year.

They did not pick who they thought was going to win the Shield this year.

 

[Shwafta]

There's a really big point I think Apple needs to address, or this is going to get sloppy for non-apple users REALLY quickly.
Apple needs to get off their "you must buy apple products to get the FULL experience" high horse.
As a non-apple user it makes it real tough to properly enjoy the experience, especially locking some featured behind "you have to use an apple device".

 

[Shwafta]

Also with regards to the score hiding - I can't even do it from the apple tv APP. I HAVE to be able to do it from an iphone. That's insane! Hopefully that's only temporary and it will be fixed soon enough.

 

[moogoo]

There's a really big point I think Apple needs to address, or this is going to get sloppy for non-apple users REALLY quickly.
Apple needs to get off their "you must buy apple products to get the FULL experience" high horse.
As a non-apple user it makes it real tough to properly enjoy the experience, especially locking some featured behind "you have to use an apple device".

especially when they don't even tell you they are exclusive apple device features. i shouldn't have to google all over the place to figure it out. madness i tell you, MADNESS!

tbf, most companies do this for a lot of products, which I can understand. but for something like watching sports - it shouldn't be the case.

 

[Shwafta]

especially when they don't even tell you they are exclusive apple device features. i shouldn't have to google all over the place to figure it out. madness i tell you, MADNESS!

tbf, most companies do this for a lot of products, which I can understand. but for something like watching sports - it shouldn't be the case.

If you have a product you're managing for _all_ users, it shouldn't get locked behind $1000+ devices.

MLS should be the ones going to apple like "Hey, bro, make sure this is accessible to all, yeah?" - i mean it's great what apple is doing for the pub deals and pricepoint and all that, but the feature quality has to also be inclusive the same way. I hope this is just a "we haven't gotten to doing that dev work yet, but it's coming" problem.

 

[mgarbowski]

I hope this is just a "we haven't gotten to doing that dev work yet, but it's coming" problem.

That you can hide scores on ATV, iPad and iPhone but not a Mac gives me cautious optimism it’s a dev issue. As noted yesterday on all 3 items that have the feature it’s a device setting. What differentiates those devices from Macs is Macs are the only one that allows multiple users, and so you can’t just port the bones of a Device full on/off setting. Users will expect to personalize it.
I come back to my theory that this is the holdup. I don’t think it’s hard at all. But it’s different enough that they deferred it in favor of the truly simple things.
I hope. Could certainly be wrong.

 

[Keith Putnam]

Already been discussed. It's only available on apple products. which is dumb.

Just confirmed that the "hide sports scores" option is also available in the AppleTV+ app on my Samsung smart TV.

 

[joe]

Found it on the app on a Roku just now as well

 

[Shwafta]

Also, even within device (I'm on Roku currently) you can get the scores off the tiles, but not off the banners at top of feed.

ETA: I'd point this out to the feedback request on Twitter. Alas, I don't twitter.

Found it on the app on a Roku just now as well

might be like this though, joe?

 

[LionNYC]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1630252173371281408

 

[mgarbowski]

Despite no direct exposure to the Samsung smart TV or Roku setup, I'm guessing they also do not have separate user options because devices like that usually leave it to the apps like HBOMax, Netflix, etc. If so, it supports my theory above that the driving issue is Apple likes to set this preference on the device level and has not yet gotten around to figuring out how to do it on devices with multiple users.

I'm also guessing that the issue might not be technical but sort of a structural design, as in Apple might be unsure how best to implement it with multiple users. That's more of a preference issue on the what's the best most Apple-y way to do this, rather than can-we-just-get-this-done already type problem.

 

[Shwafta]

Does apple ever release viewership figures? I'd love to know what opening weekend looked like overall

 

[LionNYC]

Does apple ever release viewership figures? I'd love to know what opening weekend looked like overall

Apple doesn't. But Apple TV is now part of the Nielsen ratings.

 

[joe]

might be like this though, joe?

Maybe? It still had the Sounders score up on the landing page for the MLS tab but I don't know if that was just a case of it not updating from the initial log in. The tiles for NYCFC Nashville were fixed. Most of the other stuff was focused on the next matches, so no scores to see.

 

[mgarbowski]

I have not tested this. For all I know it signs into your bank account and transfers all your money to someone overseas. OTOH maybe it works.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MLS/comments/11epwdn

 

[Shwafta]

I have not tested this. For all I know it signs into your bank account and transfers all your money to someone overseas. OTOH maybe it works.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MLS/comments/11epwdn

This "apple extension" i's 100% legit.

It's about 11 lines of code that use CSS (webpage styling) and it puts "display: none" (don't display) to the elements that hold the scores, effectively removing them from being displayed. The "Source code" is what code is in there, that's the only thing - so I can vouch as a programmer that this is totally legit

...As for "Stylus" itself, I checked the website and did some research, here's the privacy policy: UserStyles.world
seems legit, but depends if you want to go ahead and download it, that's a personal decision. Personally I see no issue here, it's an open source repository so we can see all the code and if there's any "foul play", and it looks community-driven for making fun styles on websites.

Hope this is helpful to anyone else that looks into this!