MLS Season Pass returns with Multiview and more Messi – Six Colors

February 20, 20242 Mins read50 Views

So many games at once! Now on the iPad, too.

As fans of Major League Soccer are no doubt already aware, Wednesday marks the kickoff of the new season, the league’s second with Apple as its media partner. While the biggest new feature of the MLS-Apple partnership was undoubtedly last year’s mid-season addition of Lionel Messi to Inter Miami, this year Apple has added some new features of its own.

Probably most notably, Apple’s extending Multiview—its feature that allowed Apple TV users to watch up to four live games at one time—to the iPad for the first time. (Now iPad users can truly experience the wonder of the Quadbox.)

Apple has also added a MLS Season Pass item to the main navigation of the TV app, which will be visible for all users, all over the world, no matter their interest in American soccer. The MLS Season Pass page has an enhanced live schedule, now shows recently completed matches in addition to forthcoming events, and offers quick access to club-specific pages. You can jump to all clubs quickly, and select your favorite clubs to float them to the top.

The new playlist functionality allows users who are browsing a row of clips to quickly move between clips without constantly toggling between the video player and the main list of clips in a category.

As before, Apple is producing all games in both English and Spanish, with select matches also in French. All its studio shows are now produced in both English and Spanish, with the addition of a Spanish version of the MLS 360 whip-around show.

While the image quality of Apple’s broadcasts is quite good—clearly there’s some superior encoding and high bit rates going on there—they will still be in 1080 HD this year, rather than 4K. And while Apple Vision Pro users will be able to watch games, Apple hasn’t made any announcements about if any immersive or 3D content will be available.

In-game graphics have been upgraded this season with an emphasis on some new data points, including passing profiles and the distance covered by a player (either in a game or for the entire season).

While some games will be available for free, the bulk of the games will be a part of the MLS Season Pass subscription service which is $15/month or $99 for the season—$13/month or $79/season if you’re already an Apple TV+ subscriber. Full MLS season ticket holders get MLS Season Pass for free.

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