Baseball fans in New York are soon going to have a different game experience on television. ESPN is planning for direct content broadcast to consumers. YES and SNY are also likely to follow.
These changes are going to impact fans of both the Yankees and the Mets.
Sports writer Andrew Marchand, who works with the New York Post, was the first to reveal about the impending changes by Walt Disney-owned ESPN. With direct-to-consumer content, the cost of watching baseball may go up. Marchand thinks that “a stand-alone ESPN, with everything it has to offer, would cost between .
99 and $29.99 per month.”
ESPN renewed its $3.5 billion, seven-year deal with MLB in 2021. It gives the sports channel right to telecast 30 regular-season games, including Home Run Derby and All-Star might, and all wild-card games for $550 million a year through 2028. The list includes Opening Night, 25 Sunday nights, and MLB Little League Classic.
Meanwhile, YES and SNY hold exclusive rights for the Yankees and the Mets home games respectively.
John Ourand of Sports Business Journal expects that it will take two years for ESPN to introduce the planned changes.
Marchand claims that at that price, ESPN would be cheaper than NESN, the cable network that is home to the Boston Red Sox and has a direct-to-consumer product that costs $30 per month. And this is where Marchand’s report becomes interesting to read.
He writes:
“I bet YES and SNY will have their own by the start of the next baseball season, and I think they will be priced similarly to NESN’s. These networks have much smaller potential audiences to draw on, compared to ESPN, but those audiences of diehard Red Sox, Yankees, and Mets fans are very loyal, making it a sticky product. … The RSNs (regional sports networks) are going to move in this direction quickly, and ESPN is going to be right there with them.”
Will TV viewers have to dole out more to watch the Yankees in action?
