Eddy Cue has been on a media tour talking about Apple TV, sports rights, and F1, suggesting that Apple wants to differentiate itself by doing sports differently from everyone else.
On October 14, Apple's SVP of services, Eddy Cue, detailed some of Apple's media strategy on a podcast, and he's been touring since. His repeated comment is that the way sports are being handled by broadcasters today is broken, and Apple wants to do things differently.
According to a report from CNBC, Apple is on the verge of announcing a $140 million per year media rights deal with F1. Cue spoke about how Apple has approached sports and why things are so broken for sports fans today.
He says Apple has shied away from bidding on individual rights packages that would segment a portion of a sport to Apple TV. That kind of deal would only serve to further fragment the current state of sports, which requires fans to sign up for "1,200 subscriptions" to see the games they want.
Apple does only own a portion of MLB streaming, Friday Night Baseball, which it may be selling to NBC soon. That move aligns with Cue's hope for a better future in sports streaming, where there's less segmentation.
"You used to buy one subscription, your cable subscription, and you got pretty much everything they had," Cue commented. "Now there's so many different subscriptions, so I think that needs to be fixed."
For example, Apple's ownership of MLS allows the company to control how the games are shown as a whole. Users have one destination to watch every game in a season.
The F1 bid would provide a similar experience for users in the United States. Users would be able to tune into races via Apple TV without needing to worry about which race is broadcast where.
That means Apple's rights purchase would end the F1 TV streaming deal and have Apple in total control of race broadcasts. The idea fits in perfectly with Cue's desire to reunify sports while also playing perfectly into brand synergy thanks to the success of the F1 movie.
"We don't have to do sports the way that they are," Cue said. "There's plenty of people doing that. So the world doesn't need us to do that."
It will be interesting to see how Apple handles the F1 streaming rights and what it means to be different in the space.
ESPN's US broadcast rights end with the 2025 F1 season. Apple is expected to reveal its takeover of F1 and its plans for streaming the sport in the near future.
