It’s fitting that the 2024 Major League Soccer (MLS) season will kick off on February 21 with a game featuring Lionel Messi and Inter Miami. The (arguably) greatest player of all time and his pink-clad teammates face Real Salt Lake to start the second full season of MLS’ 10-year, $2.5 billion global streaming deal with Apple.
Click here to read the story at fastcompany.com.
Discussion Questions:
- What are broadcast rights?
- According to this story, how much did Apple spend on its broadcast (streaming) rights deal with MLS?
- Why would they be interested in the rights to broadcast MLS games?
- How do you think they benefited from the arrival of Lionel Messi last year?
- What is a tagline?
- Why do marketers sometimes use taglines as part of a marketing or advertising campaign?
- This year, they are aggressively promoting the MLS Season Pass package with an advertising campaign. What is the tagline?
- What message do you think they hope to communicate to fans with that tagline? Why do you think they want to communicate that message?
- What is sponsorship?
- Why do you think Apple-owned Beats would want to sponsor MLS?
- How might the introduction custom team-branded editions of Beats represent an example of sponsorship?
- Apple has also created a soccer-themed docuseries for its Apple+ streaming service. What is it called?