T-Mobile is bringing back its offer to allow customers to get a free MLS Season Pass subscription.
After offering it for free to T-Mobile subscribers in 2023, MLS decided to skip the offer in 2024. Thankfully for T-Mobile customers, MLS Season Pass will be free beginning February 18, 2025, with offer details available through the T-Life app. The free offer is also available to Metro by T-Mobile customers.
With a retail price tag of $99 per year for consumers, making the subscription service available for free is a considerable cost savings. At the same time, it’s a logical way to boost subscriber numbers overnight.
While not as attractive as the T-Mobile free offer, MLS also announced this week that MLS Season Pass will be free to all Xfinity customers from February 22 (the opening day of the 2025 MLS season) through March 2. The nine-day preview is in addition to Xfinity making MLS 360 available for free for the entire season.
Expanding distribution by offering MLS Season Pass for free
Having MLS Season Pass integrated into the Xfinity user interface is the bigger news here. Instead of being locked behind the paywall inside Apple TV, having MLS Season Pass available within the Xfinity service (albeit at an additional cost for Xfinity subscribers who want to sign up for the whole season) is still a paywall but will feel less of one for most American cable TV customers who don’t consider cable a paywall in itself.
No doubt, the distribution deals through T-Mobile and Xfinity are a much-needed boost for MLS Season Pass subscriber numbers. Looking back, the last time the subscriber count for MLS Season Pass was made available was over 13 months ago. At the end of 2023, the number was reportedly 2 million, but after that, MLS decided not to renew its deal with T-Mobile and didn’t give T-Mobile customers the service for free last year. Since then, executives at Apple and MLS have been silent on any updates to the subscriber number.
If the perception is that very few people are watching Major League Soccer on Apple TV, it becomes a reality in the minds of many people. Out of sight, out of mind. Therefore, the deals that MLS has secured with T-Mobile and Xfinity are crucial. It allows MLS executives, if they want, to defend themselves in 2025 by telling journalists that MLS Season Pass is in more homes than ever before. Whether people are paying for the subscription is another issue entirely.
The double-edged sword of offering a product for free
Offering MLS Season Pass for free is a double-edged sword for both MLS and Apple. By offering a product for free, you reduce its perceived value. At the same time, MLS needs more eyeballs to watch the MLS 360 whip-around show to satisfy the advertisers who are running all of the TV commercials during breaks.
For MLS, the hope for marketers is that you get enough interest from the people who come in for free that a large number of them will convert to paid customers when the offer ends. Judging by MLS’ decision to return to the free T-Mobile offer after skipping it in 2024, that doesn’t appear to be the case. That is substantiated by former managing director of The Athletic, Ed Malyon, who this week wrote:
“I worked an almost identical promotion with T-Mobile a few years ago and it did bring in a large number of subscribers. Those subscribers were, however, the least-engaged cohort in our database and almost all of them (90%+ if I recall correctly) churned after the free period had elapsed.”
The question has to be asked then. What is a fair price for MLS Season Pass?
it’s already available for free to all season ticket holders, T-Mobile customers, and Metro by T-Mobile subscribers. So, what price should the general public pay if it can’t get it for free from the above offers?
At its current price of $14.99/month (or $99/year), it’s the most expensive soccer streaming service on the market, by far. Yes, Apple customers have more spending power than Android users, but fifteen bucks per month is too expensive.
Internally, MLS must feel that it can do a better job of marketing to convert the free subscribers into paid ones. But if it was unable to do so in 2024 even with Lionel Messi, the world’s greatest player in its league, what hope does it have that it can do so in 2025 and beyond?
Depending on who you ask, the fair market price for MLS Season Pass should range from $5 to $10 per month. Trying to get fans to upgrade from free to five or ten bucks shouldn’t be difficult. Furthermore, who wouldn’t snap up MLS Season Pass for $5-$10/month if that price was available?
Customers could get used to free
The concern is that, unless it changes, Apple and Major League Soccer could be conditioning fans to expect MLS Season Pass to be available for free every season.
Perhaps MLS executives feel that if they can continue kicking the can down the road by offering MLS Season Pass for free it will eventually see a wave of new signups after the bounce it receives from this summer’s Club World Cup and/or FIFA World Cup 2026.
And then at that point, MLS will finally hit pay dirt.
Loading…
