How Blue Jays fans are getting screwed by Apple TV at the most exciting time in close to a decade

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It has been without dispute one of the most successful and energetic stretches of Blue Jays baseball in the past nine seasons, re-awakening the passion of tens of thousands of fans of the team.

Coast-to-coast, viewers have been captivated by the team’s four-game winning streak — including three in a row over the New York Yankees heading into Thursday’s series finale — a run that has given them a share of first place in the American League East with the Bronx Bombers.

There is still an afterglow from Tuesday’s brilliant Canada Day show that not only resulted in a resounding 12-5 win over the Yankees, but featured the piece de resistance renaissance of George Springer, who hit two home runs, including a grand slam, and drove in seven.

So what better way to welcome the first true weekend of summer by tuning in to Friday night’s first of three against the Los Angeles Angels, right? Surely Sportsnet, the home of the majority of Jays broadcasts, is reading to feast on one of its highest ratings of the year, right?

Nope.

You guess it, Friday is the Jays first intrusion of Apple TV of the second half of the season, a blight that Toronto fans tend to take harder than other markets around the league.

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This will be the Jays third appearance this season on Apple TV, a semi-regular annoyance for not only the Jays fan base — which blessed with a coast-to-coast audience draws significantly bigger audiences than every team in baseball for its regular telecasts — but for Sportsnet itself.

Remember Rogers Communications owns both the Jays and the network, a synergy that is an ideal mix for both parties as the baseball team regularly draws more than a million viewers. With the team taking a 48-38 record into Thursday’s game against the Yankees, they’ve suddenly renewed the optimism that dominated in the summer of 2015 and 2016 when the team was such a hot commodity.

It’s the second occasion this season that the Apple TV show will roll into town at a terrible time for Sportsnet. The first was just two games into the season and denied the network of its first prime time telecast of the season.

It’s not a stretch to suggest that Friday’s contest against the Angels would be one of the most anticipated of the season, given the weekend slot and the events of the last week and more.

Remember that once we move through July 1, Canada becomes a captivated nation of baseball fans. The Stanley Cup has been awarded, NHL’s free agent frenzy season is mostly in the past, and it’s baseball time.

Even when the Jays are struggling, they still draw well. As last year’s season was falling off of the rails about now, Sportsnet still regularly attracted audiences north of 600,000, a huge cash cow for the network.

But with a first-place team surging in popularity and once again scoring runs to make the television that much more enjoyable to watch? Friday is a rough one, timing wise.

The Jays aren’t alone in appearing on the Apple schedule, a reality mandated by a separate national deal negotiate by Major League Baseball that gives the streaming service exclusivity. They don’t have to like it either, but given Apple is an official partner of MLB, the team and Sportsnet are discouraged from disparaging the concept publicly, or face reprimand from none other than MLB commissioner Rob Manfred.

In fairness, Apple TV is not all to blame on this, though they do make the schedule. It’s a revenue-driven initiative by MLB that gives Apple the latitude to put together the schedule as it sees fit and is inclusive of teams in every market.

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As noted in a previous column, the upside for Apple TV is the prospect of landing thousands of new subscriptions from disgruntled fans who don’t want to miss out on the action. A source familiar with the business aspect of the deal has told Airwaves that for Apple TV, Toronto and its national audience is one of the strongest markets in terms of adding new subscribers. Yes, there is a baseball hungry sucker born every summer long weekend, it seems.

Add to the fact that Friday falls on the start of a U.S. long weekend — where viewers might be looking to do other things and, well, apparently the Blue Jays looked that much more attractive.

There may be a winner in this for Apple, but definitely not for the Jays, their fans and their broadcast network that we can bet is quietly fuming about the latest interruption of their regularly scheduled programming.

Not an Apple TV subscriber and not planning to be? Hey, there’s always the Argos-Tiger Cats Friday Night Football game over on TSN.