We have a bad habit in this country. We equate financial success with intelligence. We do it with people and with companies. Elon Musk is a billionaire! Apple is the most valuable company in the world! Surely each one got there through their cunning and know-how.
For the better part of the last three months, we have watched as it has become more and more obvious that Elon Musk has no real business plan for Twitter. That’s the easy example. People are talking about it outside of media circles.
Apple is the one that hits closer to home in our business. It is clear that in the push to make Apple TV+ essential for sports fans, the company has gotten out over its skis. A limited package of Major League Baseball games is manageable. The entire slate of games for the MLS, a league with niche appeal? Totally in the company’s wheelhouse.
Putting together a deal for NFL Sunday Ticket proved much harder though. Apple went chasing waterfalls when it should have stuck to the rivers and the lakes that it’s used to.
Roger Goodell did his best to control the narrative last week. The NFL Commissioner wants the story to be that Sunday Ticket is so valuable that the league would rather wait and get the right deal done than jump into bed with the company that produced the largest check the fastest.
The value of the league’s out-of-market TV package cannot be disputed. But there has been plenty of reporting on the fact that not only was Apple the frontrunner in the bidding process but that the NFL really wanted to partner with the tech giant.
What has become clear in recent months, at least to me, is that there may be a lot that Apple does well, but when it comes to sports, it doesn’t do anything well enough to make the NFL believe it is worth sacrificing the quality of what is one of its signature media products.
David Kaplan of The Athletic did an excellent job of documenting the complete lack of knowledge that Apple brought to these negotiations. The MLS and MLB need Apple. Those leagues did not have a centerpiece in their respective streaming strategies before doing a deal with Apple TV+.
The NFL isn’t in that boat and doesn’t have to play ball. The people representing Apple in these negotiations aren’t used to having terms dictated to them. Is that the reason the company has reportedly backed out of negotiations for Sunday Ticket?
According to Kaplan’s sources, Apple assumed a lot going into negotiations. It assumed the NFL would placate their demands. It assumed the NFL was comfortable with some unspoken agreements to go along with written contracts. In short, Apple had never done business with the most valuable entity in American television before and didn’t realize what its starting point was.
Don’t mistake the news that negotiations are over for now for them being completely dead in the water. A deal could very much still get done. If and when it does, both sides can spin this any way they want and deny that they were ever at an impasse.
Not many companies would have had Apple’s problem because not many companies have the luxury of being in the position Apple is used to. It has been decades since the company has ever come into a negotiation not holding all of the cards.
The NFL has established value. It is used to success in media negotiations.
Actually, it may not be because the NFL may not be used to having to negotiate. When your product is routinely responsible for 75% of the biggest television audiences each year, you tend to be able to dictate terms to the people that want to do business with you.
Sunday Ticket’s value is understood in the industry. The NFL already has streaming partners. Alternatives were lined up ready to pounce if and when things fell apart with Tim Cook and company. The NFL may have wanted Apple, but it never needed Apple.
Wealth skews reality, whether that means we can be fooled into thinking wealthy people and companies are more intelligent than they really are or the wealthy themselves can overestimate their own importance. It seems like that is what has happened here. There is just no other believable reason that Apple would not have sealed the deal for Sunday Ticket when it is what the league wanted from the jump.
Demetri Ravanos is a former columnist and editor for Barrett Media. He is the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host of the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
MLB didn’t need Apple. They just wanted more income and Apple obliged.