Apple Raises Apple TV+ Monthly Pricing by 30%, More Guerrilla Marketing Surfaces for Severance, Apple Reportedly Wants Out of MLB
Hello everyone. Welcome to a new week.
We will jump into things by venturing into Apple TV+ land.
Apple Raises Apple TV+ Monthly Pricing by 30%
In a press statement issued last Thursday, here’s Apple:
“The monthly subscription price for Apple TV+ will increase in the U.S. and select international markets for new subscribers beginning today, August 21. In the U.S., the monthly price is now $12.99 (up from $9.99). Existing subscribers will see the change 30 days after their next renewal date. The annual subscription price remains unchanged, as does pricing for Apple One, which is the easiest way to enjoy all of Apple’s subscription services in one plan at the best value.
Since its launch, Apple TV+ has expanded its deep library of hundreds of exclusive Apple Originals, with thousands of hours of premium programming across genres and brand new releases weekly — all ad-free.”
The following exhibit shows stated Apple TV+ monthly pricing since the 2019 launch including this newest 30% increase. The two prior increases were 40% (2022) and 43% (2023).
This latest price increase is different from the others as Apple did not alter Apple TV+ pricing for annual and Apple One subscriptions.
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Eddy Cue on Apple’s Sports Strategy, Apple’s Challenges With Sports, Meta Layoffs Hit Custom Silicon Unit
Hello everyone. Let's jump right into today's discussion.
Eddy Cue on Apple’s Sports Strategy
In a 3,900-word GQ Sports profile titled “Inside Apple’s Plan to Change the Way We Watch Sports,” here’s Sam Schube:
“The man leading Apple’s push into the wild, lucrative world of live sports broadcasting is Eddy Cue. Cue has worked at Apple since 1989, and cuts an interesting figure at a company defined by its low-key, minimalist culture. He is plainspoken, and quick to joke. He is also an enormous sports fan, frequently popping up at the biggest games on the planet. Perhaps most importantly, he is the guy Apple has tasked with an increasingly important piece of its future: as the senior vice president of the company’s services division, his portfolio includes just about everything Apple sells that isn’t a piece of hardware…
One critical part of Cue's portfolio is Apple TV+, the company’s entrant in the streaming wars. And in this war, sports have emerged as a vital weapon. In our ever-more-fractured entertainment landscape, live sports represent perhaps the last best way for distributors—both tech companies like Apple and cable stalwarts like ESPN—to convene a large, reliable audience. Per Nielsen, 94 of the 100 most-watched US TV broadcasts in 2022 were sporting events, with NFL accounting for 82 of those, and 19 of the top 20.
It is Cue’s belief that sports represents an enormous opportunity for the company—and that, with a few tried-and-true Apple tweaks, the right sport can be made to feel more like a rounded-edges, design-forward Apple product. ‘We spend a lot of money, a lot of time on finding the best unscripted drama in the world. That's what we try to create in some of our shows that we do for TV+,’ he told me in the first of a few conversations this spring and summer. ‘Sports is that in spades. It's the greatest unscripted drama there is.’”
GQ offers the most in-depth look to date into Apple’s thinking regarding live sports programming. Much of this is due to the writer relying on Apple’s $2.5B 10-year deal with MLS (U.S. soccer) for examples of how Apple is approaching sports. The article, somewhat inadvertently, also raised some warning signs regarding Apple’s sports play. We will get to those shortly.
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