Starting with the 2026 season, Major League Soccer is about to become one of the biggest weapons in Apple TV’s streaming arsenal. Apple and MLS have confirmed that every league match will be available to watch inside the Apple TV streaming service at no additional cost beyond the regular Apple TV subscription. 
In practice, that means the separate MLS Season Pass, which currently costs 15 dollars a month, will disappear after the 2025 season and its content will be folded into a single sports-heavy Apple TV package.
Right now, the situation is confusing and expensive for many fans. You pay around 13 dollars a month for Apple TV, and if you want MLS you stack another 15 dollars for Season Pass on top of that. There is no bundle discount and no loyalty reward for already being an Apple TV subscriber. The new model is much simpler: if you subscribe to Apple TV, you get soccer. That includes every regular-season MLS match, the Leagues Cup tournament, the MLS All-Star Game, the Campeones Cup, the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs, and assorted special fixtures, all in one place.
Apple has already been testing how far it can go with sports as a driver for subscriptions. The company made the 2025 MLS Cup Playoffs free to watch for Apple TV users, essentially a dress rehearsal for what is coming in 2026. Beyond live matches, Apple plans a full ecosystem of studio shows, pre- and post-game analysis, documentary-style features, and on-demand replays. In other words, not just a way to catch a game, but an always-on soccer hub aimed at keeping you inside the Apple TV app even when there is no live match.
Soccer is only one piece of a much bigger strategy. Apple already offers Friday Night Baseball at no extra fee to subscribers, and it recently secured exclusive rights in the United States to broadcast Formula 1 races. If you follow multiple sports, that 13-dollar subscription instantly feels more like a sports bundle than just another entertainment app. At the same time, there is an unavoidable question that many fans are already asking: instead of paying 15 dollars for MLS alone, are we just going to pay 13 dollars for everything now, right up until Apple quietly nudges that price upward?
The retirement of the standalone MLS Season Pass makes sense when you look at the bigger picture. Maintaining a separate paywall for one league while bundling baseball and Formula 1 for free would send mixed signals about value. By putting everything under a single Apple TV price, Apple simplifies the decision for customers and strengthens its pitch as a premium home for live sports. But history in streaming has taught us that when platforms add more and more costly rights, subscription prices rarely stay frozen for long.
The timing of this move is also revealing for the wider streaming landscape. The initial report surfaced via ESPN, which sits under Disney, a company currently locked in a messy dispute with YouTube TV over distribution terms. While players like Disney, YouTube, and traditional cable operators wrestle over who pays whom for what, Apple is quietly building a closed, direct-to-consumer sports ecosystem that does not depend on third-party distributors at all. You sign up with Apple, watch on Apple devices and apps, and Apple controls the entire experience.
For fans, the near future looks like a trade: less fragmentation and more sports content in one place, in exchange for accepting that the true cost of that convenience may reveal itself later on your credit card statement. For now, 2026 is shaping up to be a milestone year: MLS without a separate pass, baseball and Formula 1 included, and Apple TV positioning itself as one of the most important destinations for streaming sports in the United States.
2 comments
As a neutral fan this is huge, I might finally watch more MLS if it lives next to my shows instead of a separate pass
Bro I just cancelled cable for this exact reason and now streaming is slowly turning into cable 2.0 😭