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Apple is considering bidding for the streaming rights to Premier League games in the United Kingdom, as well as lower league matches run by the English Football League football games, Bloomberg News reports Thursday citing “people familiar with the situation.”

Giles Turner for Bloomberg News:

Such a move would build on Apple’s recent expansion into live sports in the US, where it forged a $2.5 billion 10-year deal with Major League Soccer to show games on its TV+ platform. The company also streams Major League Baseball on Friday nights. And one of the streaming service’s most popular TV series, Ted Lasso, follows a fictional Premier League team coached by an American.

MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last July, “We have an exceedingly difficult time believing that “Ted Lasso” will only run three seasons.”

In December 2020, co-creator Bill Lawrence said that “Ted Lasso” would likely end after just season 3 because Sudeikis has a family with young children, and likely will not want to be spending half of each of these precious years in London, an ocean apart from his kids.

“Ted Lasso” is Apple TV+’s main tentpole. Apple will make a monetary offer that Sudekis cannot refuse and the rest is simple: Ted Lasso, after successfully topping the EPL, finds himself in high demand and, lured by big money in America, moves back home along with Coach Beard, Coach Kent, (and possible others) to coach a Major League Soccer team in the U.S. in Season 4. — MacDailyNews, March 7, 2022

With Apple TV+ now owning the MLS broadcast rights worldwide for the next 10 years, the tie-in potential is just too strong for us to imagine that “Ted Lasso” will wrap after Season 3. – MacDailyNews, July 20, 2022

Apple has enlisted sports media veterans Jim DeLorenzo and Frank Uddo in building its streaming platform, and they will “know the value that international football can bring to the system,” said Peter Hutton, who previously served as a media partnerships executive at Meta Platforms Inc.

Offering the games may be a more effective way to attract viewers overseas than other fare, he said.

“Apple will be looking closely at their early data on MLS and MLB experiments, but the unique ability of sport to change a predefined audience’s behavior means it’s a safer bet than entertainment content to grow the Apple TV international market,” said Hutton, who’s also the former head of the Eurosport network.

MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, an absolutely brilliant idea – even if it is about to celebrate its 10th birthday:

Cook should consider bidding for and winning NFL Sunday Ticket away from DirecTV, buying rights to Premiere League and La Liga games, etc. and making them Apple TV exclusives. Go directly to the sports leagues with boatloads of cash. — MacDailyNews, May 6, 2014

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