T-Mobile takes back its offer to allow customers to get a free MLS season card subscription.
After offering it for free to T-Mobile subscribers in 2023, MLS decided to skip the offer 2024. Thankfully for T-Mobile customers, MLS Season Pass will be free from 18 February 2025, with offer offers via offers through offers T-Life app. The free offer is also available for Metro by T-Mobile customers.
With a retail price tag of $ 99 per year for consumers, the subscription service available is available for free a significant cost savings. At the same time, it is a logical way to increase the subscriber number overnight.
Although it is not as attractive as the T-Mobile Free offer, MLS also announced this week that MLS season pass will be free for all Xfinity customers from February 22 (opening day for the 2025 MLS season) to March 2. The nine-day preview is in addition to Xfinity Making MLS 360 Available for free throughout the season.
Expand distribution by offering MLS season pass free
Having MLS season card integrated into the Xfinity user interface is the bigger news here. Instead of being locked behind the pay wall in Apple TV, it is still a paywall to have MLS season card available (albeit at an extra cost for Xfinity subscribers who want to register for the entire season) still a paywall but will feel less For one for one for an extra cost most American cable TV customers who do not consider cable as a paywall in themselves.
Without a doubt, the distribution agreement through T-Mobile and Xfinity is a much needed Boost for the MLS season card subscription number. When we looked back, the last time the subscriber bill for the MLS season was available over 13 months ago. At the end of 2023, the number reportedly was 2 million, but after that MLS decided not to renew their business with T-Mobile and did not provide T-Mobile customers for free last year. Since then, managers at Apple and MLS have quietly on all updates to the subscriber number.
If the perception is that very few people watch Major League Soccer on Apple TV, it becomes a reality in many people’s minds. Out of sight, out of the mind. Therefore, the offers that MLS has secured with T-Mobile and Xfinity are crucial. It allows MLS managers, if they want, to defend themselves in 2025 by telling journalists that ML’s season is in more homes than ever before. Whether people pay for the subscription is completely another issue.
The double -edged sword to offer a product free
Offering MLS season pass free of charge is a double-edged sword for both MLS and Apple. By offering a product free you reduce its perceived value. At the same time, ML’s more eyeballs need to look at MLS 360 Whip-around show to satisfy the advertisers who run all TV advertising during breaks.
For MLS, the hope for marketers is that you get enough interest from the people who come in free that a large number of them will convert to paid customers when the offer ends. Judging by MLS’s decision to return to the free T-Mobile offer after jumping over it in 2024, that does not seem to be the case. As substantiated by former CEO of AthleticEd Malyon, as this week wrote:
“I worked an almost identical marketing with T-Mobile a few years ago and it took in a large number of subscribers. However, these subscribers were the least committed cohort in our database and almost all of them (90%+ if I remember correctly) crushed after the free period had passed. “
The question must be asked then. What is a reasonable price for MLS season pass?
It is already available free for all seasonal ticket holders, T-Mobile customers and Metro by T-Mobile subscribers. So, what price should the 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 is superior to the most expensive football flow service on the market. Yes, Apple customers have more expenditure than Android users, but fifteen dollars a month is too expensive.
Internally, MLS must feel that it can do a better job with marketing to convert the free subscribers to paid. But if it couldn’t do it in 2024 even with Lionel Messi, the world’s largest player in its league, what hope does it have to do it in 2025 and thereafter?
Depending on who you ask, the fair market price for the MLS season should vary from $ 5 to $ 10 per month. Trying to get fans to upgrade from free to five or ten dollars should not be difficult. Also, who would not unbutton MLS season cards for $ 5- $ 10/month if that price was available?
Customers can get used to release
The concern is that, unless it changes, Apple and Major League Soccer can be conditioning fans to expect the MLS season pass to be available for free every season.
Maybe MLS managers feel that if they can continue to kick in can on the road by offering MLS season pass free of charge, it will eventually see a wave of new notifications after the bounce it gets from this summer’s Club World Cup and/or FIFA World Cup 2026.
And then MLS will finally meet Pay Dirt.
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