Apple casts a magic football & Hollywood touch for Apple TV+

Apple continues to push hard to extend its services offer and is apparently taking great interest in UK Premier League football match streaming rights and also plans to invest a billion dollars in movies for its streaming services that it will also show in cinemas worldwide.

Back of the net?

This is not the first time Apple’s desire to invest in rights to stream football games from the UK has appeared across the wires, which suggests this smoke certainly has some flame behind it. We saw prior reporting in January and fall 2022.

Now, Bloomberg reports that Apple is considering making a bid for Premier League matches, but the report seems vague when it comes to the extent of such a plan. Does it want to stream matches internationally, or just in the UK?

Evidently global rights would be more expensive but would command far more reach.

As mentioned before, the rights to stream UK football will be made available for auction in 2024. Rights are at present split between Sky Sports, BT Sports, Amazon Prime Video, and the BBC.

CODA was a great film

Hooray for Hollywood?

But it’s not just about getting balls into the net – Apple also wants to get bums on seats in cinemas, that report also explained.

The company intends spending a billion dollars each year to produce movies that will also be released to cinemas. With this in mind Apple has been speaking to film studios with a view to partner on a few titles this year and more in future.

Apple has released movies to cinema before, both “CODA” and “Cherry” saw release for a short period in 2021, but the report suggests bigger scale plans boosted by bigger movie budgets and screenings of a month or more. And bigger producers, including films from Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott.

The challenge is distribution, which is why the company is in discussion with potential partners.

MLB Friday Night begins April 7

In related news, Friday Night Baseball, a weekly show with MLB, will once again be made available to Apple TV+ subscribers globally from April 7. The series was made available free on Apple TV+ last season, but this season is only offered to paying TV+ subscribers. Apple is paying an estimated $85 million per year on the rights to offer the coverage.

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