Under pressure from fans and the federal government, New York Yankees regional sports channel YES Network and Comcast reached what is being reported as a carriage extension Monday to keep the RSN on the cable system in the New York tai-state area, at least for now.
A terse joint statement merely said there was a deal to keep the channel on Comcast. According to Awful Announcing and other sports-media news outlets, the agreement is only an extension of the current deal, keeping YES on the cable operator’s expanded basic tier for a period that has not yet been publicly indicated.
Also the local-sports home to the NBA’s New York Nets, YES is partially owned by the Yankees (the biggest share at 26%), Main Street Sports Group (formerly Diamond Sports Group), Amazon and various private equity interest.
Comcast has recently drawn a hard line with RSN operators in licensing negotiations, forcing them to accept movement of their channels to pricier programming packages. Given that it would result in a $20 hit to its subscribers, YES has resisted that migration.
Last week, amid Major League Baseball’s broader Opening Week activities, YES and Comcast pushed the deadline for their negotiations to Monday. And over the weekend, Brendan Carr, the new, decidedly activist Republican FCC Chairman, once again took to social media to lobby threats, encouraging both sides to find “a quick and favorable resolution for the benefit of everyone.” Carr also reminded YES and Comcast that “the FCC does have authority to step in and address claims of discriminatory conduct.”
The possible local TV blackout on America’s second largest pay TV platform, in the country’s biggest media market, for the World Series runner ups was but one of several TV distribution issues MLB dealt with last week.
In the Windy City, the Chicago Sports Network, the new RSN home of the Chicago White Sox, started baseball season still unable to reach a carriage agreement with Comcast, with many of the same tiering issues in the way.
Meanwhile, the Cleveland Guardians, Minnesota Twins, Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres are refugees of RSNs that have either folded recently, or cast them away as part of bankruptcy proceedings. Their games are now being presented on new channels operated by MLB with uncertain economic futures.
Then there’s MLB TV, which endured a technical outage that kept fans from seeing eight games on Opening Day last week.
Nationally, meanwhile, MLB and ESPN made news a month ago when they jointly announced that the league was going to be ending its multiyear licensing deal with the Disney sports channel early.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has publicly complained about the limited exposure of baseball on ESPN relative to NBA and other pro leagues.
But according to the Sports Business Journal, ESPN executives are privately “optimistic” that an agreement can still be made with MLB to keep its games on the network. Asked if by SBJ if this ostensibly final season with MLB content was being treated with lame-duck affect, one ESPN source remarked, “No one is packing it in.”