Friday night’s MLB slate featured a pair of Apple TV+ exclusives with the Milwaukee Brewers hosting the Chicago Cubs and the Pittsburgh Pirates hosting the San Diego Padres. In both cases, the streams of the game left a lot to be desired.
At roughly the same time, viewers of both games began to complain of glitches, both visual and audio, in the broadcast.
This Apple TV+ broadcast of Cubs-Brewers has turned into some kind of performance art. Black screen. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?! pic.twitter.com/pE1PqNZ3cw
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) May 3, 2025
Apple TV is so bad. The MLB sucks for this. Can’t even watch the Cubs vs Brewers because it keeps spazzing out.
— Caleb Williams Fan Club (@CalebFC18) May 3, 2025
The Padres AppleTV broadcast is trash.
Tons of glitches and black screens.
Horrible service.
— Padres & Boise State (@PerformanceGuru) May 3, 2025
Thanks @mlb for making us watch the Padres on @AppleTV and good job Apple on losing the stream after 3 innings super happy I’m paying so much to watch this shit
— Dan (@Dan_Barad) May 3, 2025
Once again, @AppleTV forces me to “watch” the Cubs on their service instead of on @MLBTV. The screen has been black for over five minutes. Great job, Apple! pic.twitter.com/Y03J7ZGEGo
— SERENITY NOW 🏍️ (@insanitylater4) May 3, 2025
Apple TV+ after broadcasting half of a Pirates game pic.twitter.com/t0gSSjX6Uq
— Steel City Sports Report (@SteelCitySR) May 3, 2025
Glitches happen. It’s annoying, but things like that are going to happen on occasion. That said, this is a particularly bad problem — for a couple of reasons.
One, sports fans in general are already leery of the increase in streaming services needed to watch their teams — to a point where the matter will soon be discussed in the United States Senate. Whether that produces any meaningful results remains to be seen (and as a word to the wise, we’ll encourage you not to hold your breath), but it points to a level of frustration. Having technical issues with games that are exclusively available on a streaming service is only going to raise that frustration.
Two, baseball fans tend to be particularly loyal to their local announcers. This is particularly true here, as fans ranked three of these four announce crews (Padres, Cubs and Brewers) in the top 10 of MLB announcer rankings in 2024. So, when they’re watching a game when those announcers are taken away from them, they’re already frustrated.
Ugh. Why are the Padres on Apple TV…I wanted to hear Mud and @DonOrsillo seriously. I love our broadcasters MUCH better!!
— Karina ✈️❤️💙💛✌🏼🇦🇷🇺🇦 (@FlyinHP) May 3, 2025
When the broadcast they watch also doesn’t work, the anger is only going to grow.