\n<\/p>\n
\n\tAnyone walking through the halls of The Studios at WWE in Stamford, Connecticut on Oct. 18 would have been forgiven for thinking it was a national holiday. <\/p>\n
\n\tThe greeting of the moment was \u201cHappy Decision Day,\u201d and you would hear it walking through the halls as producers, graphics designers and crew made their way across the sprawling facility. Decorations were abound in cubicles, offices and green rooms, and snack carts were set up around almost every quarter.<\/p>\n
\n\tThere was a lot of soccer still to play.<\/p>\n
\n\tFor Major League Soccer, Decision Day is one of the most important days of the season, aside from the MLS Cup championship match. Technically the final day of the regular season, it is when all the MLS teams play games simultaneously, the final spots for the playoffs are decided, home field advantage is determined, and players get one last chance to make their case for award recognition.<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd the MLS facility in Stamford is the hub, with control rooms and studios not only delivering all the games to fans, but MLS 360<\/em>, the league\u2019s whip-around studio show, as well. And Decision Day is when MLS 360 <\/em>really shines.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s organized chaos, like this is a chaotic show, and I wouldn\u2019t have it any other way, because we can\u2019t predict what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d says Kevin Egan, one of the show\u2019s hosts. \u201cIt\u2019s eight games, 90 minutes throughout, a lot on the line, and we\u2019ve got to be traffic cops while editorializing throughout.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe WWE\u2019s new Stamford headquarters is in a building that once housed a UBS trading floor. Conveniently, says Seth Bacon, executive vp of media for MLS, the same pipes that allowed for lightning-fast trades are perfect for delivering ultra high-definition video. When the WWE decided to open its studios to outside programming, the facility was turnkey. The only thing MLS needed to do was coordinate schedules.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIf we can coordinate schedules and get staff in, we have the facilities that we need, and then it\u2019s a long term deal, it\u2019s three years,\u201d Bacon says, walking through the halls of the facility toward the MLS 360 studio. \u201cThat gives us a lot more stability and sort of certainty in what we need to produce. So that gives us the ability to produce, not only on the weekends but mid-weeks, more content.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tMLS, alongside their partners IMG (which, like the WWE are now part of TKO Group Holdings), have built what IMG senior vp Stephen Cook calls a \u201cfootball factory in America.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cOne of the challenges we face is that football, or soccer as it\u2019s known over here, isn\u2019t always at the top of people\u2019s CVs in terms of what they know,\u201d Cook says, sitting in a balloon-clad green room. \u201cSo to be able to create a young team starting from the bottom up, and be able to develop their skill sets and give them all of the tools they need in a fantastic facility like this, is what really convinced me that this was the place I needed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cGetting that virtual studio going and into that building in Stamford has made our jobs much easier to do,\u201d says Royce Dickerson, the head of sports production for Apple TV. \u201cWe\u2019ve become a lot more efficient in the way we produce our content, but working with them every day, my team with Seth\u2019s team, it\u2019s been a fun partnership, and we\u2019ve learned a lot about our customers and their customers along the way, and we\u2019re going to continue to iterate and innovate around our learnings.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tWWE headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto by John Moore\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \n\tThe MLS 360 <\/em>studio is not exactly what it seems on TV. As has become increasingly common for TV production, the studio itself is something of a mirage: Walls and floors are green screen, only the desk, the anchors and analysts are real.<\/p>\n \n\tAs Decision Day kicked off and MLS 360 showed live coverage of a match, former MLS star turned analyst Dax McCarty pointed at one of the dozens of screens within view of the host desk: He spotted a goal from the Seattle Sounders, playing against NYC FC. Seconds later, a \u201ckey play alert\u201d graphic appeared, Egan teed up the highlight, and the control room funneled the goal to viewers at home.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI can sit here and have a conversation with you for an hour about MLS and about all my hottest takes and about all my beliefs, and it\u2019s easy, it\u2019s like we\u2019re two guys at a bar having a conversation,\u201d McCarty says of the pressure he faces as an analyst. \u201cAs soon as that light turns on with the camera, and you have a producer in your ear telling you you have 30 seconds, telling you to wrap your point up, telling you that you need to go to break or that you need to throw it to another analyst. It\u2019s easy to get, for lack of a better word, discombobulated out there. I would equate it to a game, where you\u2019re in these really high leverage, high pressure moments, and you have to be mentally at your sharpest and at your best.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThis year\u2019s MLS Decision Day, as it happened, took place at a critical moment for Apple\u2019s sports ambitions. The day before, Apple unveiled a long-term $750 million deal for U.S. rights to Formula 1, it\u2019s most significant deal since the 10-year, $2.5 billion MLS agreement a few years earlier, and a signal that Apple is serious about sports, provided it can get the rights that it wants.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cOne of the things that we wanted to do if we were going to offer some level of sports is to be able to do it in a way that is what I think sports fans want, which is easy access, available, same location, same place,\u201d says Eddy Cue, Apple\u2019s senior vp of services, when asked by The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> about his company\u2019s goals in the sports space. \u201cYou know exactly where to get it, where it\u2019s coming from, all of the complexities that you deal with in sports and watching going away. And I think for fans that of F1 it\u2019s going to be incredibly easy. It\u2019s going to offer capabilities that they\u2019ve never had before.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThis year all of the MLS playoff games will be in front of the paywall, a move \u201cthat\u2019s going to only draw more eyes to the product, to help it grow a little bit more as we push to the end of the season,\u201d Dickerson says.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhat we\u2019ve learned is fans are loving having everything in one spot, being able to know where the matches are every Saturday, or if they play on a random Wednesday, like they do six times a year, having no blackouts are things that we\u2019ve learned that fans really love,\u201d Dickerson adds. \u201cYou can watch your team wherever you are, no matter what. There\u2019s no RSN kind of blackouts. But on the the technical side, the innovation side, what I go back to constantly is what our video quality is on Apple TV, from Friday Night Baseball to MLS, we think it is second to none in that space, and providing the customers and fans.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tApple recently used new iPhones to broadcast a Friday Night Baseball game, and Bacon says that he has had conversations about how best to use Apple tech in future MLS broadcasts (Apple Vision Pro also recently debuted its first ever live games in conjunction with the Los Angeles Lakers). Apple may be in the TV business, but it also wants to get its hardware some play too.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tLionel Messi<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto by Johnnie Izquierdo\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \n\tFor MLS specifically, the playoffs come ahead of next year\u2019s FIFA World Cup, which will be held in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, giving enormous exposure to the game, and as MLS Spanish-language host Ramses Sandoval notes, \u201cwe\u2019re in the era of Lionel Messi.\u201d Messi, arguably the greatest player in the world, signed a new contract with Inter Miami this week that will keep him on the team through 2028.<\/p>\n \n\t \u201cThat helps us so much,\u201d Sandoval says. \u201cAnybody who tells you that it doesn\u2019t, they\u2019d be lying to you.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAs Decision Day progressed, the goals came fast and furious, playoff berths were clinched, and home field advantage was secured. But for MLS, and for Apple\u2019s larger sports ambitions, it was also the start of something bigger. The new MLS facility will mean more programming and higher production quality, and the addition of F1 means a year-round sports schedule. <\/p>\n \n\tCombined with Apple\u2019s moves to make Apple TV available via Amazon, a bundle deal with Peacock, and other maneuvers, the streaming service seems ready to rev up its ambitions, and MLS may stand to benefit by being along for that ride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Anyone walking through the halls of The Studios at WWE in Stamford, Connecticut on Oct. 18 would have been forgiven for thinking it was a national holiday. The greeting of the moment was \u201cHappy Decision Day,\u201d and you would hear it walking through the halls as producers, graphics designers and crew made their way across<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[13768,3198,4430,5948,750,992],"class_list":{"0":"post-30324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-ambitions","9":"tag-apple","10":"tag-coverage","11":"tag-mls","12":"tag-playoff","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}