Apple’s streaming service is reaping the rewards of soccer superstar Lionel Messi’s arrival at Major League Soccer team Inter Miami.
Apple TV+ saw more than 110,000 sign-ups to its MLS Season Pass add-on on July 21 – the day the Argentine made his debut for Inter Miami, according to analytics firm Antenna and first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Almost half of those who bought the MLS Season Pass during this period were existing Apple TV+ subscribers, while 15% of the total were new customers who also signed up for Apple’s subscription service, per Antenna.
This marked a remarkable increase of over 1,690% from the day before. The tech giant added another 65,318 sign-ups to the MLS Season Pass on July 25, when Messi played his second game and scored two goals within the first 30 minutes.
Apple CEO Tim Cook announced his delight regarding the ‘Messi premium’ to subscription numbers last month on an earnings call, having surpassed its subscriber targets over the three months ending July 1.
“We are excited about our MLS partnership, and we’re thrilled to see Messi suiting up with Inter Miami,” the tech giant’s CEO told analysts.
“It’s clearly in the early days, but we are beating our expectation in terms of subscribers, and the fact that Messi went to Inter Miami helped us out there a bit – and so we’re very excited about it,” Cook added.
Apple sells its MLS Season Pass for $12.99 a month or $25 per season to existing Apple TV+ subscribers, and $14.99 a month or $29 per season to new customers.
The uptick in Apple TV+ subscribers could have helped to boost Apple’s stock price over the month – with the shares rising 3% through August.
In the second quarter, its service offerings grew when other sectors did not, rising by 8.2% to $21.2 billion, according to its Q2 report.
Correction: September 7, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misidentified the streaming service that saw the rise in subscriptions. The reported increase in sign-ups was for the MLS Pass add-on of Apple TV+, not for the full service.
