Apple TV+ is picking up more award nominations. Can it pick up subscribers at the same rate?

Apple is still a streaming small fry compared to Disney or Netflix but the creator of Ted Lasso is playing a different game and finding fans, writes James Moore

Ted Lasso: Apple’s zeitgeist-capturing show has garnered multiple Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations (Apple TV Plus via AP)

Look at all our awards! That was Apple’s key message concerning its Apple TV+ streaming service this month.

The company boasted of 745 million paid subscribers in total, but most of them came via the juggernaut that is the app store, whose third-party developers pay it a chunky (and contentious) cut. Outside big global figures like that, which don’t tell you very much, Apple is parsimonious with numbers. That’s unlikely to change.

However, CNBC last year reported that the company had told the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees that the streamer was at less than 20 million subs in North America in July, making it possible to pay production crews less. That, of course, could mean anything from zero to 19.9 million, so it doesn’t tell us much either. Disney Plus, which remember launched within a couple of weeks of Apple TV+, had approaching 40 million US subscribers at that point, out of a near 100 million global base, which has since expanded to 118 million.