Back in the summer of 2022, Major League Soccer faced a lot of criticism after it announced its exclusive, all-in, decade-long $2.5 billion streaming deal with Apple TV. Yes, yes, the contract offered guaranteed cash and the appearance of orthogonal thinking. But the league was also leaving traditional television to tie its fortunes to a service that felt like more of a boutique. Apple TV may be a shingle on a $4 trillion market cap company, but its low subscribership (estimated at more than 40 million), general lack of transparency, and unclear vision have long vexed the entertainment industry. On top of that, matches would largely exist behind a Season Pass paywall that cost an additional $15 per month. Not great!

MLS certainly couldn’t sneeze at around $250 million per year for a league still operating with a startup mentality—a “startup” that is now 30 years old. And the Apple partnership undeniably helped attract talent, like Lionel Messi’s watershed signing with Miami. But the deal also marked a radically different media strategy than other leagues were taking at the time. Instead of partnering with multiple media companies and streamers as a way to maximize engagement—the polytheistic approach popularized from NASCAR to the NFL to the NBA—MLS was forced to answer increasingly annoying questions: How many people were watching its games? And why hadn’t Apple ever broken out those numbers? Last month, MLS and Apple revised their partnership. The deal will end three and a half years earlier than expected, with Apple TV making all its MLS games available to all its subscribers, sans paywall, and the league moving some games back to traditional television. At first blush, it seemed as though both parties were waving their white flags in order to move forward in the best interests of their businesses. But MLS commissioner Don Garber insists that he does not see it that way. On Wednesday, during an interview at the University of Maryland, he pushed back heartily on that narrative, telling me that MLS has seen increases in revenue, team valuations, and attendance in the three years since signing its Apple deal—not bad for a league that supposedly chose money over a broad audience. Furthermore, he said, the league has experienced steady viewership growth on Apple TV. “When you do bold things that anticipate the future, you have to break some glass,” Garber told me. “The industry didn’t quite understand what we were trying to achieve.”

In Garber’s version, the Apple deal was partly an omnibus attempt to respond to the broader R.S.N. pandemic in the industry. Given that the league had previously sold around 500 games per season to local stations, Garber sensed that those buyers would dry up amid the roiling bankruptcies, grinfucking, and cliff-pathing that beset the cable business. “We saw four or five years ago what is happening now to the R.S.N.s,” Garber told me. “We needed to not just renew a hundred games. … We wanted to aggregate all [those local games] into a global package that anybody, anywhere—without blackouts—can go with the touch of a button and capture the excitement of Major League Soccer.”

Garber described Apple, and S.V.P. of services Eddy Cue, as sports media disrupters, and suggested that sports’ broader move to streaming is akin to television surpassing radio in popularity and cable outpacing broadcast. “It always disrupts, but it always settles down, and live sports is always a winner,” he said. By the time MLS is back in the market with its rights in three years, Garber expects that his early embrace of streaming services will pay off. “The vast majority of young people—and this is our audience—are watching streaming services,” Garber said. “It’s changing, and we are right in the middle of all of that in ways that have been good for us, albeit way different and certainly criticized. But we got thick skin in the soccer business. I’m bullish on Apple, and I think this new strategy they have with F1 and baseball is going to be great for them.” With the new deal, he went on, the league has more flexibility to place games on traditional linear TV—something that will undoubtedly help grow its audience. Fox, for example, will carry this weekend’s MLS final between Messi’s Miami and Vancouver. The league isn’t getting off completely pain-free, though. As part of the deal, it gave up a revenue-sharing arrangement for guaranteed rights payments—$200 million next year, $107.5 million for a shortened season in the spring of 2027, and $275 million for the following season. The deal now ends at the end of the 2028-29 season—three and a half years earlier than planned. “The shortened deal makes sense for us,” Garber said. “We had a deal that was a revenue share that’s gone away. So we gave something up, and we’re going to get something back.”

On ESPN and Lane Kiffin: “The most interesting part of the Lane Kiffin story is the media angle. ESPN worked so hard to defend him, on both College GameDay and the Egg Bowl telecast. Plus, Kiffin admitted that ESPN analyst Nick Saban effectively told him to leave. The tie-ups between Kiffin’s agent and those heavyweight voices make the whole thing ripe for conspiracy.” —An editor

On the R.S.N.s: “As you continue to put more nails in the R.S.N. coffins, you should probably mention that the digital tier hasn’t had the anticipated impact on audience for MLB, NBA, or NHL—at least when adding in streaming.” —A media exec On the Lakers’ and Dodgers’ R.S.N.s: “Would there be any equity in either of those R.S.N.s without a carriage commitment from Charter?” —A finance executive [Ed. note: It’s impossible to conceive of any R.S.N. sale that doesn’t also include a long-term carriage commitment from Charter.] On grinfucks and cliff paths: “I enjoy watching all the pearl-clutching whenever our clips have the word ‘grinfucking’ in them. Does he always curse? Can we forward this? Should we edit it? So good.” —A fan

Have a great weekend, John