Apple's decision to provide exclusives to some Apple TV+ subscribers sets a precedent for Apple TV+
Until today Apple TV+ was among a few streaming services not having content, discriminating policies towards their customers based on their residency.
By launching “Friday Night Baseball” tomorrow on April 8th, Apple will embrace such policies.
From the Apple press release:
When will the expansion happen and to which countries is not mentioned. By providing exclusive content to Apple TV+ subscribers of 9 countries, means that Apple TV+ subscribers in 165 countries (where Apple TV+ is marketed) are left out. Content discrimination based on residency is not new in the industry. Netflix and Amazon are the biggest to name which streaming catalog lacks content to non US customers. Exclusive content is not new either. Video game companies have been massively using exclusive content to make preordering or more expensive versions of their game more attractive. The gaming community has been very vocal and mostly dismissive on the subject. Which makes Apple's move worse in comparison to video game exclusives is that, with a video game a customer has always an access to the standard content and he/she can pay extra if he/she chooses to do so. Also exclusive content is not distributed based on residency, but everyone who is interested can purchase it. In Apple's case this content is simply unavailable to majority of Apple TV+ customers (no matter if interested or not in the content) and poured over a batch of customers (no matter if interested or not in the content). How to distribute exclusive digital content to interested customers and collect a fee for it, should not be a gigantic mystery to solve for a modern tech company. Introducing exclusives and serving some of their Apple TV+ customers better than the others will surely go unnoticed among TV+ subscribers and English speaking media as almost half of TV+ privileged countries can be considered somewhat English speaking. Apple TV+ is also a relatively small player, US baseball is not the worlds most popular sports either, so Apple gets away with this. What I can't ignore is the fact that Apple will pay $85 million annually to bring "Friday Night Baseball" to the streaming service. What it effectively means to me and the majority of Apple TV+ subscribers is that Apple TV+ content budget will lack $85 million annually. Will it be one or two less TV series to be produced or smaller budget for the rest I can't tell. To my knowledge, Apple TV+ has a single budget, otherwise we would have already seen different content produced based on regions. An argument can be made that this annual $85 million comes out of TV+ budget and the success of “Friday Night Baseball” will bring subscriber growth in selected demographics, thus making “Friday Night Baseball” to pay for itself or even help to finance other projects. I don't know and I am not sure that even Luca Maestri can give a good answer. My rant here was just to provide a different perspective about the recent news. In his essay Apple vs China, Neil Cybart from Above Avalon, empathized that Apple is not a US company but a global company - servicing its customers no matter in which country they are. While I like to think this way too, the actions of Apple speak otherwise. Disabling and enabling content based on residency is simply a fact. One can argue that TV rights have always been very region based. I regret Tim Cook and Eddy Cue failed to negotiate and make MLB understand those limitations are things of the past and it is Apple's DNA not to tier its TV+ subscribers to premiums and peasants. I am sure Apple will not lower Apple TV+ subscription cost for the peasant subscribers. All I can do as a subscriber is to monitor the trend and not make a yearly subscription if content discrimination continues."Friday Night Baseball" will be available on Apple TV+ in the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, and will expand to additional countries at a later date.