Apple TV subscribers will be able to watch all Major League Soccer matches without an additional subscription beginning next year.
During the first three years of MLS' 10-year, $2.5 billion agreement with Apple, a standalone Season Pass subscription was needed to access all matches. During this season, over 200 matches were simulcast on both MLS Season Pass and Apple TV, including the league's “Sunday Night Soccer” package. Dropping the separate subscription was announced Thursday at an owners' meeting.
Apple has made its Friday night Major League Baseball doubleheaders available to all subscribers since its start in 2022. It recently secured U.S. rights to Formula 1 for five years which will also be available beginning next season.
Making the MLS games more accessible also comes as the United States hosts the World Cup next year and the league switches to a late summer to spring calendar matching the European model in 2027. The current season runs from late February to early December,
MLS deputy commissioner Gary Stevenson said Apple approached MLS early this year about the possibility of moving all of its matches to Apple TV.
“We had been testing ‘Sunday Night Soccer’ on Apple TV and we got a really good reception to it. Then we talked to them about the potential schedule change and they thought that made sense. So it all kind of seemed like the perfect evolution to what we started and we think that the fans are going to find the experience and the value to be significantly better,” Stevenson said.
MLS season-ticket holders will receive Apple TV subscriptions after previously receiving MLS Season Pass.
MLS said it averaged 3.7 million gross live match viewers per week across streaming and linear platforms for its 15 weekly matches, a 29% increase over 2024.
Apple has worldwide rights to MLS, which have benefitted them in South America after Lionel Messi joined Inter Miami in 2023. The league has also seen an influx of Asian viewers after Son Heung-Min began playing for LAFC in August. Messi and Son had the top two jersey sales in the league this season.
Messi and Son's clubs have both advanced to the league quarterfinals. LAFC is at Vancouver on Nov. 22 while Inter Miami travels to Cincinnati on Nov. 23.
AP MLS: https://apnews.com/hub/major-league-soccer
Celebrations take place before Los Angeles FC and Austin FC compete in Game 2 in the first round of MLS soccer's Western Conference playoffs Sunday, Nov. 2, 2025, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Stephen Spillman)
Inter Miami forward Lionel Messi, left, celebrates after scoring in front of Nashville SC midfielder Andy Najar, right, during the first half of Game 3 in the first round of MLS soccer's Western Conference playoffs in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Nov. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Laughlin)
VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski arrived for an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, direct from a dentist appointment.
The 63-year-old veteran human rights advocate was experiencing a return to daily life after more than four years behind bars in Belarus. He was suddenly released on Saturday.
Medical assistance in the penal colony where he served his 10-year sentence was very limited, he said in his first sit-down interview after release. There was only one option of treating dental problems behind bars — pulling teeth out, he said.
Bialiatski recalled how in the early hours of Saturday he was in an overcrowded prison cell in the Penal Colony no. 9 in eastern Belarus when suddenly he was ordered to pack his things. Blindfolded, he was driven somewhere: “They put a blindfold over my eyes. I was looking occasionally where we were headed, but only understood that we’re heading toward west.”
In Vilnius, he hugged his wife for the first time in years.
“When I crossed the border, it was as if I emerged from the bottom of the sea and onto the surface of the water. You have lots of air, sun, and back there you were in a completely different situation — under pressure,” he told the AP.
Bialiatski was one of 123 prisoners released by Belarus in exchange for the U.S. lifting sanctions imposed on the Belarusian potash sector, crucial for the country’s economy.
A close ally of Russia, Belarus has faced Western isolation and sanctions for years. Its authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko has ruled the nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist for more than three decades, and the country has been repeatedly sanctioned by the West for its crackdown on human rights and for allowing Moscow to use its territory in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
In an effort at a rapprochement with the West, Belarus has released hundreds of prisoners since July 2024.
Bialiatski won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 along with the prominent Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties. Awarded the prize while in jail awaiting trial, he was later convicted of smuggling and financing actions that violated the public order — charges widely denounced as politically motivated — and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The veteran advocate, who founded Belarus’ oldest and most prominent human rights group, Viasna, was imprisoned at a penal colony in Gorki in a facility notorious for beatings and hard labor.
He told AP that he wasn’t beaten behind bars — his status as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, perhaps, protected him from physical violence, he said.
But he said he went through much of what all political prisoners in Belarus go through: solitary confinement, arbitrary punishment for minor infractions, not being able to see your loved ones, rarely being able to receive letters.
“We can definitely talk about inhumane treatment, about creating conditions that violate your integrity and some kind of human dignity,” he said.
Bialiatski is concerned about two of his Viasna colleagues, Marfa Rabkova and Valiantsin Stefanovic, who remain imprisoned, and about all 1,110 political prisoners still behind bars, according to Viasna.
“Despite the fact that prisoners are being freed right now, new people regularly end up behind bars. Some kind of schizofrenia is taking place: with one hand, the authorities release Belarusian political prisoners, and with the other they take in more prisoners to trade, to maintain this abnormal situation in Belarus,” he said.
The advocate vows to continue to fight for the release of all political prisoners, adding: “There is no point in freeing old ones if you're taking in new ones.”
He intends to use his status as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate — of which he learned in prison and couldn't initially believe it — to help Belarusians “who chose freedom.”
“This prize was given not to me as a person, but to me as a representative of the Belarusian civil society, of the millions of Belarusians who expressed will and desire for democracy, for freedom, for human rights, for changing this stale situation in Belarus,” he told AP.
“And it was a signal to the Belarusian authorities, too, that it's time to change something in the life of the Belarusians.”
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, one of the Belarusian prisoners released on Saturday, smiles during an interview with the Associated Press in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, one of the Belarusian prisoners released on Saturday, gestures during an interview with the Associated Press in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, one of the Belarusian prisoners released on Saturday, gestures during an interview with the Associated Press in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, one of the Belarusian prisoners released on Saturday, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)
