Contentinople - Steve Donohue - How YES Network's In-Market Streaming Deal Was Done

Written by Steve Donohue

Thursday, July 2. 2009 at 12:30 PM EDT 2 comments

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You would think that it would be easy for a cable channel like YES Network to deliver live baseball games on the Web to viewers in the New York area -- just run a feed from the network's TV broadcast through a Web server, and anyone can watch Yankees games on a computer, right?

Actually, there's a lot more to it, according to YES Network president and CEO Tracy Dolgin.

Figuring out who owns the new media rights to baseball games -- Major League Baseball, regional sports networks (RSNs), or individual teams -- is one challenge. And since YES and other RSNs pay tens of millions of dollars each year for broadcast rights to baseball games, finding a way to deliver the games on the Web to paying cable subscribers only may be an even bigger task.

While the league has marketed an MLB.tv streaming video package for out-of-market games since 2003, viewers in local markets have never been able to watch live games on the Web because of blackout restrictions -- until now.

On July 8, YES will be the first regional network to deliver live baseball games to Web surfers in its home market, when the Yankees face off against the Minnesota Twins in Minneapolis. The games will initially be available to Cablevision subscribers for $49.99 for the rest of the season, or $19.95 for any 30-day period.

The San Diego Padres will follow the Yankees on July 16, delivering live games to Cox Communications subscribers -- and other teams are expected to pursue their own local deals.

In an interview with Contentinople, Dolgin explains how YES was able to strike its broadband deal, and how he expects the in-market streaming video package to perform. Read the full interview here.

Tags: Advertising, Mobile, Product Launch, Sports, Streaming Video, Technology, TV

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Why would you pay Cablevisision for the Yanks Games?
johnnyj
Rank: Pasha
Thursday July 2, 2009 5:51:11 PM

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This is absolutely ridiculous! Ok, it may have been difficult to obtain all the required permissions to broadcast the game (and pay off the right people), but why would anyone pay Cablevision $50 to watch the Yanks games on their computer? I mean, first you have to be a YES subscriber, have Cablevision, and most absurdly, you have to watch it over the Cablevision Premium Online service (which you're already forking over an unjustified sum). I have a feeling that if your'e already in the Yankees service area, and you pay for the price-gouging Premium Online service, you probably have all the games you can watch on your 40+inch HDTV. Why would you want to watch it on your laptop?

http://behindthemoat.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/the-yankees-broadband-package-is-for-idiots/

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Re: Why would you pay Cablevisision for the Yanks Games?
Steve Donohue
Rank: Vizier
Monday July 6, 2009 3:23:06 PM

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It's easy for people who aren't diehard Yankees fans to say it is "absurd" to pay $50 to watch baseball games on a computer. But there are a lot of Yankees fans who would consider it a good deal if they could watch just one big game while hanging out at the beach or some other place where they don't have access to their TV running YES Network. These are the fans -- the people who will pay $300 for DirecTV's Sunday Ticket package, even though they only follow one or two teams each week -- who wouldn't think twice about paying a premium to make sure they don't miss a game. And lot of them won't complain about having to pay more for access to Yankee games on a computer, even if they're already paying for YES and a high-speed Internet package from Cablevision.

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