Eddie Cue, senior vice president of Internet Software and Services at Apple Inc., arrives to attend the morning session of the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference on Wednesday, July 11, 2018 in Sun Valley, Idaho, USA.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
apple Services chief Eddie Cue said the iPhone maker would like to buy more sports rights, but the company needs to be able to do something “unique and special” with its broadcasts.
“We don’t have to play sports the way they are. There are a lot of people who do,” Cue told CNBC’s Alex Sherman at the Autosport Business Exchange New York.
The company’s streaming service, Apple TV, currently broadcasts Major League Baseball games on Friday nights and also offers a Major League Soccer package that allows subscribers to watch all MLS games.
But Apple has not secured rights to major U.S. sports, including the National Football League, which sold NFL Sunday Ticket packages on Google’s YouTube, and the National Basketball Association, which streams some games on Amazon Prime.
Apple Original Films released a licensed film this summer called “F1,” which grossed more than $550 million at the box office. Cue declined to say whether Apple had acquired the broadcast rights to the F1 racing league.
Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, said there are many things he wants to fix when it comes to sports broadcasts, including power outages, the need to subscribe to multiple services, and issues with viewers accessing streams while traveling.
He said Apple TV’s MLS broadcast method, which allows viewers to stream games around the world without blackouts, has “solved” some of those issues.
“If we want people to watch games and we want all sports to grow, some of these issues need to be fixed,” Cue said, suggesting the league may work with all broadcast partners to require features like picture-in-picture to be enabled when multiple games are being played on different streaming services at the same time.
When Apple broadcasts sports, the company tries to provide “a level of differentiation” from most broadcasts, Cue said, noting some of the things Apple TV is doing with MLB broadcasts.
He said Apple TV has higher video quality than other broadcasters because it doesn’t compress video. He also mentioned a recent MLB broadcast where Apple placed an iPhone on top of a foul pole to set up an unusual camera angle during a game.
Ultimately, Apple wants to strike deals with leagues to broadcast games in international markets, rather than offering secure packages of individual games, as it currently does with MLB. Cue said Friday Night Baseball, which debuted in 2022, was a “test” for Apple to understand what it was trying to do.
“We had to start by learning a little bit about what it takes to broadcast before we decided to take on the entire league and broadcast around the world,” Cue said.
Attention: Apple’s China shipments increase by 0.6%
