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How it started
In 2022, Apple won an Oscar. The company behind the Mac and iPhone made a splash by winning Best Picture with the indie darling CODA, a remake of a French-Belgian film about the only hearing member of a family with a struggling fishing business. It was created with a modest budget reported around $10 million, and yet despite its relatively humble beginnings, for a time the movie was a showpiece for one of the world’s most valuable companies and its fledgling push into the realms of film and television.
The success of CODA is indicative of Apple’s streaming service as a whole. While it earned accolades and respect, it wasn’t exactly a mainstream hit. Awards don’t necessarily equal viewership. And while Apple TV has had several acclaimed shows and films, it hasn’t yet translated to a major piece of the streaming market.
Since it debuted in 2019, Apple TV has largely been a curiosity, an effort focused more on prestige than scale and profits. While other streamers duke it out for market share, Apple has seemed content on using its streaming service to bolster its image. The result is that for years the service had few major hits, and has also been plagued by a dearth of content compared to its competitors. Unlike Netflix or Disney, Apple hasn’t tried to boost its library by bidding on the streaming rights to sure-thing hits like Friends or The Office. Instead it has focused primarily on original programming you can’t get anywhere else.
It took several years of more misses than hits to get where Apple is now: a comparatively small streaming service that nonetheless boasts a solid lineup. For TV that has primarily meant prestige dramas, particularly in the realm of science fiction, with splashy adaptations like the space epic Foundation, beloved hits like the surreal mystery box Severance, and more recent successes like the end-of-the-world drama Pluribus from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan. Its film slate, meanwhile, has included the likes of CODA alongside new films from iconic and influential directors including Spike Lee, Sofia Coppola, and Martin Scorsese (who also made a memorable appearance in Apple’s Hollywood satire The Studio, which dominated the Emmys this year). There have been some duds, sure (see: The Gorge and Argylle), but the focus on quality above metrics has helped Apple at least carve out a distinct place in a very crowded space.
How it’s going
But that could be changing. Perhaps buoyed by the mainstream success of Ted Lasso, or a push from the top brass for a higher return on investment, Apple has been making some moves of late that seem pretty clearly aimed at bringing its streaming service to a much larger audience.
Perhaps more illustrative of this newfound push is a pair of deals Apple recently announced. Starting in October you can get the service bundled with Peacock, which on the surface is a strange combination. On the Apple side you have prestige dramas like the spy thriller Slow Horses, and with Peacock you have reality TV like Love Island. But in reality it’s a smart play. Instead of filling in the supposed gaps in its library by licensing network TV shows, Apple is teaming up with another streamer that offers many things it doesn’t. It’s like subscribing to cable for both HBO and NBC.
But the five-year deal with F1 is a much bigger play, because it means exclusive rights to the highest level of a particular sport (sorry, MLS fans). And just like MLS in 2026, F1 will be available as part of the standard service, sitting alongside Hijack and Shrinking. (The partnership also follows Apple’s biggest film success so far, the Brad Pitt vehicle F1 The Movie. Synergy!)
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