MLS Commissioner Says Season Pass Averaging 120,000 Unique Viewers Per Match, Up Almost 50% From 2024
Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber announced at a press conference in Austin, Texas on July 23, 2025, ahead of the MLS All-Star Game, that MLS Season Pass is averaging 120,000 unique viewers per match in 2025, representing an increase of almost 50% compared to 2024. This marks the first time since Apple and MLS signed their 10-year, $2.5 billion streaming deal in June 2022 that the league has disclosed specific viewership data for matches on Apple TV+. Garber attributed the growth primarily to expanded distribution efforts, including partnerships with traditional pay-TV providers such as Comcast's Xfinity and DirecTV, which have integrated MLS games into their channel guides, as well as continued deals with T-Mobile for customer subscriptions.
The disclosure of viewership numbers has raised questions among media observers due to the use of "unique viewers" as a metric rather than the industry-standard average-minute audience measurement typically used for sports broadcasts.
According to an MLS spokesperson, a unique viewer impression is recorded whenever an end-user initiates a stream, though the league did not specify minimum duration requirements for counting a view. Garber noted that when aggregating all individual match windows during MLS's Saturday slate, the league reaches "over a million people that are unique viewers" across multiple simultaneous games. The commissioner emphasized that unlike other sports leagues that feature a single "game of the night" or "game of the week," MLS schedules most of its matches on Saturdays with all games competing against each other for viewership, making the distributed audience measurement particularly relevant for the league's broadcast model.
