Major League Soccer will make significant changes to its regular season broadcasts on Apple TV this season, including a significant scaling back of its Spanish-language broadcast talent, five sources familiar with the league’s plans said this week. The sources spoke to the Guardian under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the league’s plans, which also include downscaling English-language offerings and sending some behind-the-scenes production to the UK.

Executives at MLS and Apple alike placed special emphasis on their Spanish-language broadcast plans when Season Pass debuted in 2023, suggesting the league would put those broadcasts on even footing with their English-language counterparts. Initially that held true, with the league sending a Spanish-language broadcast team to every match. In 2026, with MLS matches now out from behind the Season Pass paywall on Apple TV+, that will no longer be the case.

Multiple sources said this week that the league will employ about half as many two-man Spanish-language commentary teams, leaving the rest of the matches with a single play-by-play announcer. A source within the league office confirmed this news, telling the Guardian that MLS has plans to retain what it deems to be its seven best Spanish-language play-by-play and commentary pairings. A league source indicated that the pairings of Sammy Sadovnik and Diego Valeri; Ramses Sandoval and Miguel Gallardo; and Jorge Perez-Navarro and Marcelo Balboa will be among the pairings kept on.

Sources also said that the league will no longer produce a Spanish-language version of MLS 360, the whip-around style show which features live look-ins and commentary on multiple matches at once. The English-language version will remain unaffected. A league source indicated that viewership data for MLS 360 suggested that Spanish-language consumers simply prefer watching matches to in-studio programming.

“The [viewership] numbers are different between English and Spanish,” said one source involved in the league’s Spanish-language broadcasts. “But it’s hard to read the plans as anything other than the league saying they value Spanish-speaking and Latino fans less than others.”

MLS executive vice-president for media Seth Bacon pushed back against that characterization in a statement to the Guardian.

“After careful consideration and in response to fan feedback, we are evolving our Spanish-language programming to better reflect how our audience engages with the game,” the statement reads. “Our Spanish-language coverage will focus on what fans value most in shoulder programming: high-energy, live broadcasts from the stadium that bring them closer to the action through pre- and post-game shows. As part of this evolution, we are enhancing our on-site Spanish-language presence on matchdays to deliver more authentic, engaging moments straight from our stadiums.”

Season Pass’s English-language offerings will also be downsized. MLS Wrap-Up – an in-studio show airing at the end of each match night featuring analysts reviewing the day’s action – will no longer be produced in its previous state. A league source confirmed that a post-match night component will still exist, but viewers will no longer see in-studio talent on camera.

Half of live game productions move to London

The sources tell the Guardian that MLS is planning to produce about half of its matches overseas, employing IMG to do the work out of its studios in London, England.

This type of arrangement is the latest in a series of major adjustments to MLS’s production process. After starting the service with all commentators on-site, several matches last year were produced and even called remotely, with talent narrating games off monitors from the Florida studios of Vista, a longtime MLS production partner. One of the league’s broadcast personalities relocated to Florida to call those matches, but has since been let go by MLS’s Apple offering. An MLS spokesperson clarified to the Guardian that the broadcaster, Lloyd Sam, will continue covering the league through its deal through their deal with Fox.

A league source confirmed this week that MLS has adjusted its plans in that area, choosing to return to sending broadcast talent to every one of its matches, with some games produced across the Atlantic.

“It feels like it might be an absolute disaster,” said one source who works on the production side of Season Pass – a sentiment shared by several others in similar positions, who pointed out that processes for live game production can differ significantly between the US and the rest of the world. “Imagine somebody in London communicating with talent in the US in completely different lingo. I don’t think it will end well.”

Others were less concerned, with some sources going as far as to say that broadcasts may actually improve based on the level of talent employed by the British company, who are generally well-regarded and have a long history in broadcast sports.

“We are going to lean into the existing infrastructure that they have [at IMG],” Bacon told the Guardian. “All they’ll be doing is creating the clean feed – the announcers will be on site, the graphics will be created here [in the US]. The look and feel of it should be almost exactly the same as last year.”

Bacon added that MLS is in the process of training production staff at IMG to mitigate any differences in the way matches are called and produced in the US and UK. As an example, he pointed out that cameras that are not tracking the ball during MLS games are often used for angles that can assist with VAR decisions. He said the aim is to keep the look and feel of broadcasts unchanged.

Other changes

Sources said MLS is planning at least one significant expansion in its coverage: It will have pre-and-post-game crews on-site for Sunday Night Soccer, its featured match of the week. There will also be personnel changes for that broadcast: Jillian Sakovits and Antonella Gonzalez will now serve as the sideline reporters, with Andrew Wiebe moving to the same role on Saturday’s featured match, which the league is debuting this year and calling the Walmart Saturday Showdown.

MLS’s original agreement with Apple ran through 2032 but late last year the league announced the relationship would be ending prematurely, in 2029. As part of that agreement, Apple agreed to pay $107.5m for the short season preceding the league’s calendar switch, then $275m for the 2027-28 and 2028-29 seasons, according to Sportico.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber said that the league averaged about 120,000 viewers per match midway through 2025, with the league later telling Sports Business Journal that it had 3.7m “global aggregate viewers” over a full weekend slate of games.

The adjustments to its broadcast budget come ahead of the 2026 World Cup, a pivotal moment for the league and soccer as a whole in North America. Garber has repeatedly referred to the tournament as the “jet fuel” which could spur additional growth in interest in MLS.

A previous version of this story said that MLS had cut half of their Spanish-language broadcast talent and that several broadcasters had moved to Florida. It has been amended to state that the league has cut half of it’s Spanish-language two-commentator teams, or a quarter of overall talent, and that one broadcaster had moved to Florida.