Apple wants to change how sports broadcasts are done, Eddy Cue says
Eddy Cue, senior vice president of internet software and services at Apple Inc., attended the Allen & Co. He came to the morning session of the Media and Technology Conference.
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Apple The iPhone maker is looking to buy more sports rights, but the company needs to be able to do something “unique and special” with the broadcast, services chief Eddy Cue said.
“We don’t have to do sports this way. There are plenty of people doing it,” Cue told CNBC’s Alex Sherman at the Autosport Business Exchange NYC.
Apple TV, the company’s streaming service, currently airs Major League Baseball games on Friday nights and has a Major League Soccer package that allows subscribers to watch all MLS games.
But Apple hasn’t secured rights to major American sports like the National Football League, which sold its NFL Sunday Ticket package to Google’s YouTube, or the National Basketball Association, which has some games on Amazon Prime.
Apple Original Films released a licensed movie called “F1” this summer, which grossed over $550 million at the box office. Cue declined to say whether Apple had acquired broadcast rights to the F1 racing league.
Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, said there are a lot of things he wants to fix about sports broadcasts, including interruptions, the need to subscribe to multiple services and issues with viewers accessing broadcasts while traveling.
He said Apple TV’s way of broadcasting MLS, where viewers are not blacked out and can stream games from anywhere in the world, has “fixed” some of those issues.
“If we want people to watch games and we want all sports to grow, some of these need to be fixed,” Cue said, suggesting that leagues could require all broadcast partners to work together to enable features like picture-in-picture when multiple games are played simultaneously but on different streaming services.
Cue said that when Apple sports broadcasts, the company tries to create a “level of difference” from most broadcasts, and pointed out some of the things Apple TV does with MLB broadcasts.
He said that Apple TV has better video quality than other streamers because it does not compress its video. He also touched on a recent MLB broadcast in which Apple placed an iPhone at the foul pole for an unusual camera angle during the game.
Ultimately, Apple wants to make deals with leagues to broadcast their games in international markets, rather than secure bundles for individual games like the company currently does with MLB. Cue said Friday Night Baseball, releasing in 2022, is a “test” for Apple to figure out what it’s getting into.
“You had to start somewhere to learn a little bit about what broadcasting entailed before you decided to take on an entire league and broadcast worldwide,” Cue said.
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