Apple’s streaming service finally pays off with Ted Lasso

With Emmy nominations racking up and finally some good financial news from its streamer, Apple has had a great week in the entertainment industry. Entertainment attorney Los Angeles, Brandon Blake, has more details. 




35 Emmy nominations are nothing to sneeze at for any studio, but given that Apple has been seen as something of an ‘also-ran’ in the streaming wars, it’s a massive achievement. Most of it is built on the runaway success of the freshman comedy Ted Lasso, which has been a definite win for Apple TV+


Emmy nominations are not the only Apple win for the week, either. They have had a monstrously successful quarter, one terminating in double-digit growth both domestically and globally. It’s a little difficult to disentangle exact figures for Apple TV+ from that, given the nature of Apple’s hodgepodge ‘Apple Services’ division. Yet CFO Luca Maestri weighed in with the following:

“TV+, Arcade, Fitness+ subscriptions continue to scale up and are contributing to growth. The key indicators all continue to move in the right direction.” 

As firm figures go, their paid subscriptions have breached 700 million, up 150 million from last year. He was quick to warn that we may not see this continue into the next year’s third quarter, given the effects of the pandemic and overall economic downturn.

Still, this is a promising upturn for a service that has seemed to struggle in a market where others have thrived. Much of this has been blamed on a very thin, although well-regarded, slate of originals. Will Ted Lasso be the first to break this mold and boost them to a whole new level? Having won over a wide array of new fans and award recognition, it well could be. The series is even managing to gain ground internationally, which is promising indeed, and the hype alone it has generated for the TV+ service can’t help but pay off. Current figures suggest the first episode of Season 2 netted 20x the viewers of the launch episode.

Will we finally see Apple carve itself some meaningful space in the streaming wars? We will be watching with interest.

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