Sunday, June 7, 2009

Another NYY first: Streaming games online

Hate the team (if you so choose), but respect their vision and acknowledge their execution of their strategy:

The New York Yankees will become the first MLB team to have its games streamed live online within its home market, thanks to a landmark carriage deal YES Network signed with Cablevision earlier this spring.

The streamed games will begin later this season and will be available via subscription to Cablevision’s TV and broadband customers who subscribe to a tier that carries the YES Network, according to several baseball and cable industry sources.
There are many other unknowns at this point, but this could be a major breakthru in the next wave of viewing baseball in your local markets.

1 comment:

Dan Whitney said...

The only caveat is that those who can receive the Yankees streaming while within the YES market area must also already subscribe to the YES network and its attending elevated tier on their cable system.

Financially, this makes sense for YES, as they (correct me if I'm wrong - I live in San Diego, and I don't have any kind of cable, so on neither the NY front or the multi-tiered cable front am I in any way a credible expert) get paid for your subscription to the cable channels and again get paid (in a somewhat roundabout way) by MLB.tv for a YES subscriber's interest in watching Yankees games on his work computer.

I think it's a fascinating development and I look forward to hearing about it going forward. If San Diego could set this up so that I could watch Channel 4 from my desk, I'd be ecstatic too, if only they eliminated the prerequisite cable subscription.