The official tying of the Apple TV-F1 knot arrives with a little apprehension. Maybe it works out in bliss, but it feels like the kind of arrangement where you leave a wedding and wonder if the couple is headed for a divorce.
Maybe that won’t be the case, but marriages based mostly on money often fail. F1 took the highest offer — $140 million per year — as current rights holder ESPN didn’t move from a $90 million bid.
It is hard to believe the higher number wasn’t the decisive factor — especially considering Apple TV’s sports link-ups have not inspired confidence. With endless money and the ability to buy whatever it wants, Apple TV has played small ball.
No NFL. No NBA. No college football. No real proof of success.
But it is Apple, one of the most innovative and admired companies for more than a generation, so it is easy to see how F1 can be optimistic and, given its recent rise, why Apple may think it can help grow the sport. On a chart in an office, it adds up: A sport on the rise plus a multi-trillion dollar company would seem to equal success.
It is just all still unproven.
The F1 agreement with Apple mirrors what happened with both MLB and MLS. With MLB, the league was looking to make up the money it had lost in a bigger ESPN agreement and made a deal for exclusive regular-season doubleheaders on Friday nights for $85 million a year. With MLS, Apple took both domestic and global rights for $250 million a season (minus MLS handling production). That was far more than any other offer.
How have these two deals gone? The saying I like to use is this: The numbers are so good, neither Apple, MLB or MLS are willing to share.
To put it plainly, when there are no numbers, it almost always means they are not great.
Perhaps this is just the work of a secretive and powerful company, but it’s hard to fathom there has been a lot of growth in Apple’s live sports without proof.
As a platform, Apple TV doesn’t share its subscriber numbers, but it is common knowledge that they are far lower than those for Netflix or Amazon Prime. According to Nielsen’s most recent monthly analytics (August 2025), Netflix accounted for 8.7 percent of total TV and streaming consumption. Amazon Prime accounted for 3.9 percent. Apple TV? Listed under “Other”, with 0.35 percent. That’s three-tenths of a point behind noted original programming powerhouse Samsung TV.
MLS added Lionel Messi on Apple’s watch and, while his games are sellouts, circumstantially, there is no added buzz to watch the league games on the service. With social media making seeing a Messi highlight very easy and widespread U.S. access to better soccer leagues from around the world, it was sort of predictable that MLS would fail to take a step forward.
In fairness, it had little choice because its previous rights holders, ESPN and Fox, were offering much less to continue. Sound familiar?
The Friday night Apple baseball games are not well received – something else also entirely predictable from the day of the announcement.
A team like the Yankees can be on Apple four times a regular season, which routinely makes fans upset that they require another service to watch less than three percent of the games. When late-season big games are on Apple, there is often discussion to put them on a local carrier.
The F1 agreement has similarities to these deals, but is a bit different. F1 did take the most money it could get by far, as ESPN stuck at its $90 million offer. The network did not budge, though it had the chance to match, which may indicate that F1 still had their hearts set on their former partner.
Unlike the baseball arrangement and similar to MLS, for diehard fans, the Apple setup will be just fine. F1 will continue to produce F1 in the same high-quality way. It will be easy to find each week for the super-fans. And the picture quality will be excellent.
For existing fans, ones who are invested in the sport, this marriage will work. They will find it. But F1 is at an intriguing point in its history where it may have the ability to grow more, if only people can find it.
Maybe F1 formulates a way to do that with Apple. But, right now, there is no proof of concept.