As Apple reportedly nears the announcement of a $140 million yearly deal for the US rights of F1, the company’s senior vice president of Services has been on a bit of a press tour to talk about Apple TV, and the state of sports streaming in general.

’ bundling’

Following his appearance on Matt Beloni’s Hollywood podcast The Town earlier this week, Cue participated yesterday in a panel at Motorsport Network’s Autosport Business Exchange NYC, where he also spoke with CNBC’s Alex Sherman.

At the panel, Cue criticized the current sports streaming landscape, compared to the cable era:

“We’ve gone backwards. (…) You used to buy one subscription, your cable subscription, and you got pretty much everything they had. Now, there’s so many different subscriptions, so I think that needs to be fixed.”

Although Cue stopped short of announcing Apple’s solution to the problem, he did note that it involves “more bundling.” Less than 24 hours later, Apple would go on to announce a new Apple TV and Peacock bundlewhich, despite not being sports-centric, does reflect what Cue had hinted at.

Cue also discussed the opportunities that advances in streaming technology could unlock, but that the industry has yet to take advantage of:

“If I’m a league, and I have two partners, for example, it should be very easy for me to go between them and do all kinds of things between them and do picture-in-picture, but I can’t. And so I think that there are definitely solutions to some of these. It’s harder, but that’s why we’re all here”

’We do love F1’

When the topic turned to F1, Cue reportedly “told the panel the movie is the highest-grossing sports film of all time at the box office,” and “didn’t shy away from the imminent F1 rights deal. ‘We do love F1,’ said Cue,” according to CNBC.

Apple is reportedly close to announcing its long-rumored Formula 1 streaming package, which Puck’s John Ourand says could be unveiled as soon as this weekend at the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin.

One of the terms of the deal might involve the discontinuation of the standalone F1.TV streaming service in the U.S., which could be what Cue was referring to when talking about reducing fragmentation in streaming.

Do you think Apple will announce its F1 deal this weekend? Let us know in the comments.

Apple TV is available for $12.99 per month and features hit TV shows and movies like Severance, The Studio, The Morning Show, Shrinking and Silo.

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