Sports fans across nearly 1 million Comcast-wired homes will see the YES Network go dark at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday.
Talks to hammer out a new carriage agreement between the cable giant and the Fox Sports-owned regional sports network broke down, leading Comcast to pull the plug on the channel that airs the games of the New York Yankees, Brooklyn Nets and the NYC Football Club.
Comcast’s footprint covers roughly 900,000 homes in New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. The first game affected will be the Nets’ Wednesday night game against Charlotte.
YES, one of the largest RSNs in the country, was asking for a 33 percent fee increase, sources close to the talks told The Post. Comcast, without disclosing the price that was being sought, called the demand by YES “not acceptable.”
“YES Network carried approximately 130 baseball games this past season and well over 90 percent of our 900,000-plus customers who receive YES Network didn’t watch the equivalent of even one quarter of those games during the season, even while the Yankees were in the hunt for a playoff berth,” Comcast said in a statement.
“Viewership of the network in the baseball off-season is even lower,” the cable company added.
YES fired back, saying it and Comcast “reached an agreement in principle on the key points of a new contract many months ago” but that the cable company decided to reach “a new low by yanking YES without any notice” to its customers.
Comcast is seeking “special treatment and anti-competitive terms,” YES said in a statement.
It is unclear what those terms are, though Comcast is most likely looking for streaming rights and could be looking for a so-called “most favored nation” clause, which would guarantee it the lowest price versus the competition.
Fox owns 80 percent of YES — the Yankees own the rest.
The carriage deal between the two ended in February, but the two parties continued talking and YES continued to be carried by Comcast — until now.
The YES Network streams some of its shows via the Fox Sports Go app, while the Yankees games fall under the aegis of MLB’s streaming-media deals.
YES Network continues to be available on Time Warner Cable and Cablevision in the New York area.