AUSTIN, Texas — The Atlanta United host the Chicago Fire on Saturday to kick off a slate of regular season MLS matches that will be live streamed on Facebook. Spanish language broadcasts on Univision Deportes will now be available on Facebook Live in English. To get an idea of why the MLS is going in this direction with a social networking site, commissioner Don Garber noted the disruptive forces he has seen — even in his hotel gym.
“I was working out this morning here at the hotel on a Lifecycle,” Garber said at the South by Southwest Conference. “I tried to get ESPN or FOX on I like to do when I work out in the morning. And before I got there, there was a button for Netflix and for Hulu, and there was a button for ESPN. When I pressed it, it didn’t go to the channel. It went to the homepage.
“When you turn on your television, it’s as easy for me to go on my Smart TV to go to Netflix as it is to go to my cable system.”
The point is, the way content is being consumed is changing rapidly. The MLS wants to get in front of this issue of cord-cutting.
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So when the MLS All-Star Game was held in San Jose last year, Garber used the trip to Silicon Valley to spend some time at Facebook with Dan Reed, the company’s head of global sports partnerships. Facebook has been striking deals with sports properties to be able to bring them to Facebook Live, and the MLS is the latest league to participate with a package of games.
“All the leagues are sort of trying to figure out how can we continue to have our games available on as many platforms as possible,” Garber said. “We were able to find a very unique way to extend Univision’s relationship with us and provide those games on Facebook in English language.
“It gives us an opportunity to really see how all these new platforms…can work for us, what will the quality of the broadcast be, will more people engage with Facebook than perhaps would engage — at least in this case — the SAP function on their traditional televisions or whatever platform they’re watching those games? And I also think it’s also a good way for Facebook to put their toe deeper in the water which as a sports league we are in the business of selling our rights.”
The MLS will keep experimenting with ways to deliver content to fans, as the league’s eight-year broadcasting deal ends in 2022. Garber said he believes that “absolutely” companies like Facebook, Google and Apple will be active bidders for sports rights at that time.
“As all this shifts and evolves, as the cable model changes, as broadcasters start thinking about what are their revenue models are going to like, where does subscription and ad revenue come together or go apart, how platforms come into play — you’ve got to be in the business,” Garber said.