As the first company to hit the $3 trillion valuation mark, it’d be understandable for Apple to just keep making computers, phones and all of the things synonymous with the Bay Area tech giant.

But as Apple has made its foray into the entertainment industry and started up Apple TV , the behemoth has slowly but surely broken into the most lucrative television market of all: live sports.

“Sports is the ultimate unscripted entertainment,” Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music, Apple TV , Sports and Beats, told SFGATE in an interview this summer. “Think about the World Cup final, think about the playoffs. It’s just amazing, and it’s the reason why most people still watch live and/or linear TV.”

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Schusser said many of Apple’s top executives are big sports fans (Apple CEO Tim Cook is a passionate fan of Auburn football), and soccer is the sport of choice for Schusser, who was born and raised in Germany. But Schusser has a rather strong opinion about the current sports world.

“If you’re a sports fan today, it kind of sucks,” Schusser told SFGATE. “First of all, for any given team or sport, you need to sign up to a bunch of different services — and I’m not saying they’re all subscription services, they’re different things, different ways to get your team’s games — and there’s very little innovation. If you look at how far we’ve come with technology and what’s possible, a lot of the sports stuff is still the same that it was 20, 30 years ago.”

Oliver Schusser, an Apple vice president, attends the European premiere of “F1: The Movie” at Cineworld, Leicester Square, on June 23, 2025, in London.

But as Apple comes up on its fifth year entering the sports broadcasting world, with a new deal with Formula 1 set to start next year, it’s trying to do something different.

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In 2022, Apple made an all-encompassing deal with Major League Soccer, the U.S.- and Canada-based soccer league in its 30th season of existence, for 10 years and $2.5 billion. The deal lets Apple broadcast MLS games to the globe via Apple TV . Both Schusser and Seth Bacon, the executive vice president of media for MLS, say a key piece of the deal is the ability to innovate and evolve during that time.

“This is not the relationship where we put some money on the table, and say, ‘I’ll see you in 10 years,’” Schusser told SFGATE. “We’re really trying to make this a win-win for both of us. And as we grow, we both win.”

On Sunday, Aug. 17, the San Jose Earthquakes hosted San Diego FC at PayPal Park, just down the road from Apple’s Cupertino home. The game was selected for the “Sunday Night Soccer” slot, a new game-of-the-week broadcast within MLS Season Pass that the league started this year in the hopes of creating a signature showcase. On that day, San Diego was in first place in the West and San Jose was battling for a playoff spot, making it a perfect moment for an MLS feature match.

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San Jose Earthquakes fans celebrate a goal during a game between San Diego FC and San Jose Earthquakes at PayPal Park on Aug. 17, 2025, in San Jose, Calif.

While a “Sunday Night Soccer” broadcast delivers fans just under 3.5 hours of content — a one-hour pregame show, a match that lasts a little over two hours and a roughly 15-minute postgame show — it requires much more of a time investment from the crew. With kickoff between the Quakes and San Diego FC set for 4 p.m., and the pregame show going live at 3 p.m., the work for the folks onsite started up around 1 p.m.

First: a production meeting. MLS and Apple intentionally put their top crews, both on-air and behind-the-scenes, on the “Sunday Night Soccer” broadcasts to help everyone build chemistry and create a better product. A key factor in effectively broadcasting a global game like soccer, though, is making sure it’s accessible to a global audience. Most MLS Season Pass broadcasts, including “Sunday Night Soccer,” run both the English- and Spanish-language telecasts simultaneously from one television truck. It requires the onsite crew to be nimble.

“Anytime we do a sponsor [read] or lead [to break], both languages have to be ready to do it,” English-language producer Brad Mertel told SFGATE. “We have shows where Spanish has a sideline reporter and we have to make sure that he’s not talking and doing his own thing so that the guy in the booth can do a promo. We monitor both of them at all times to make sure that they’re ready for everything.”

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The “Sunday Night Soccer” broadcasting team at MLS Season Pass holds its pre-match production meeting (with SFGATE sports editor Alex Simon sitting in) hours before kickoff between San Diego FC and the San Jose Earthquakes on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025, at PayPal Park in San Jose,........

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