New York Yankees

The YES Network and MSG Networks have formed a streaming joint venture that could one day lead to New York Yankees and New York Knicks games being housed on a single service. Gotham Advanced Media and Entertainment, or GAME, is the new 50-50 venture, which is aiming for technical and operational synergies. Like many players in the cash-intensive direct-to-consumer business, the two sports entities have found streaming to be a costly proposition.

Amazon Prime Video will begin exclusively streaming New York Yankees games later this month, with 19 of the 21 games in the package airing on Friday nights. Amazon Prime Video began streaming simulcast Yankees games with broadcasters and the YES Network in 2020,  but this is the first time it has exclusive rights for the games.

The games are produced by the Yankees’ YES Network and are all scheduled for broadcast on WPIX New York. YES said Tuesday they will be available at no additional cost to Prime members in the Yankees’ home market of New York state, Connecticut, northeast Pennsylvania, and north and central New Jersey.

Major League Baseball owners voted in November to have digital streaming rights within a team’s broadcast market revert to each club from Baseball Advanced Media starting with this season.

The Yankees may soon become a major-league thorn in the side of New York’s cable providers. The Bronx Bombers, working with tech giant Amazon, are gearing up to become the first Major League Baseball team to let fans watch games on their phones or laptops without a cable subscription — a bid to win over millennials who are cutting ties with cable TV

The New York Yankees are in talks to buy back YES Network as Disney and Twenty-First Century Fox look to clear their $71.3 billion merger. It amounts to “a foregone conclusion” the Bronx Bombers will exercise their right of first refusal to buy the 80% of YES they don’t own, according to a source familiar with the talks.