Yankees Intend To Buy Back YES Network In Sale Of Fox To Disney

Interesting to see how this Fox angle plays out. Curious if YES would ever be an option for parking our tier 3 rights if our SNY deal expired.

 

From what I've read UConn and SNY have a very strong relationship. I'd be surprised if anything happened there

 

We're worth less to Yes than we are to SNY, because the Yankees need less help in selling their network into the Connecticut market than the Mets do. That simple.

 

They're going to lose all the ACC stuff next year. So is NESN.

 

Speculation Biz or have you seen this somewhere? I think that was true when SNY was looking to get access, maybe less so now.

We offer good content over a number of sports, regionally strong with national brand recognition. I also think there is some value in taking content away from a regional competitor though I have no idea what the dollar value would be.

 

I didn't make this up -- there were plenty of articles on it at the time. SNY did not have the penetration into CT that YES did and this caused cable companies to be willing to pay for SNY so their customers in CT had it.

 

Understood and agree. My question is does this continues to be true now that SNY is on most Connecticut providers?

 

I don't understand your question. What is done can still be undone. There are not a large amount of Connecticut households that would pay extra to watch Mets games if the channel didn't carry something they cared more about. I can't imagine much has changed in the last ten years, other than the Mets becoming even less relevant in Connecticut.

 

No you got it. My question is does SNY gain some inertia value by already being a part of CT provider packages. My guess is that it does. I just can't quantify it. Now if CT providers were ala carte, then I 100% agree that many, and probably most CT households would toggle them off if they lost UConn content.

Your perception that CT providers would discontinue SNY if it no longer carried UConn content benefits us as it adds another reason for SNY to continue to bid high enough to keep our content.

 

Is there some inertia factor? Sure. But the bottom line remains that we are worth more to SNY than YES because YES does not need UConn's help to sell its network into Connecticut where a large percentage of the population cares about the Yankees.

 

Right now...YES airs 10 ACC football games and 23 ACC men's and select women's basketball games and Olympic sports.

As well as 10 Big East basketball games....

Altice (NYC cable) will carry the ACCN when it rolls out...while it is not clear just how that will affect YES...it seems likely to me that the ACC content will become available on the ACCN with Altice...will the content also be available for YES?

Could leave some sports programming holes to be filled.

 

YES also has the Nets which fills a lot of calendar.