Anish Moonka@anishmoonka
Jason Sudeikis made around $300,000 per episode in season 1 of Ted Lasso. By season 3, Apple had bumped him to about $1 million per episode. Tim Cook just announced season 4 lands August 5, after a three-year break that looked like the end.
The rest of the cast got similar raises. Hannah Waddingham, Brett Goldstein, Juno Temple, and Brendan Hunt all moved from the $50,000 to $75,000 per episode range to the $125,000 to $150,000 range. When production costs kept rising, Apple agreed to absorb them so Warner Bros. would keep producing the show. Most streaming companies wouldn't have signed that deal. Apple did. The reason has very little to do with making good TV.
Apple TV+ has roughly 45 million paying subscribers. Netflix has 325 million, more than seven times as many. Apple captures less than 1% of all US streaming time, while Netflix takes 8.2%. Apple TV+ has been losing over a billion dollars a year, according to a March 2025 report from The Information. None of that is going to change Apple's plans.
In the three months ending December 2025, Apple made $143.8 billion in revenue and $42 billion in profit. That works out to more than $400 million in profit every single day. The whole annual Apple TV+ loss is less than three days of Apple's profit. To Apple, the streaming service barely registers.
Ted Lasso is the show that made people sign up for Apple TV+ in the first place. When it launched in August 2020, Apple TV+ was less than a year old and barely on the cultural radar. Ted Lasso won 13 Emmys, including Outstanding Comedy in its first two seasons. Suddenly Apple TV+ was the home of a show people couldn't stop talking about.
That kind of cultural moment is worth more to Apple than any money the streaming service loses. Ted Lasso fans buy more Apple products. They stay subscribed longer. They tell their friends, who sign up too. Each new fan becomes another monthly check to Apple, and another reason to keep their iPhone instead of switching. The character started as a 5-minute NBC Sports commercial in 2013, where Sudeikis played a clueless American football coach trying to manage a Premier League team. Thirteen years later, that same character has become one of the most expensive ways Apple has ever found to sell iPhones. On August 5, the most expensive iPhone ad ever made premieres as a TV show.
