Beginnings YES is the product of a
holding company founded in 1999 called
YankeeNets, created out of a merger of the business operations of the Yankees and the New Jersey Nets. One of the reasons behind the operational merger was to allow both teams to gain better leverage over their own broadcast rights; each party believed that it would obtain better individual deals, if they negotiated the rights collectively. Two years earlier in 1997,
Cablevision – which at the time had owned the Nets' television broadcaster, SportsChannel New York (later known as Fox Sports Net New York, and now known as
MSG Sportsnet) – became the sole owner to the television rights of all seven Major League Baseball, NBA and
NHL teams in the New York City
market when it acquired the competing
MSG Network (previously owned by
Viacom through its 1994 purchase of the network's former parent
Paramount Communications), which had held the broadcast rights to the Yankees since 1989. This led to
monopoly-like tactics, including the shift of some games to the cable-exclusive
MSG Metro Channels, which had very limited distribution as Cablevision,
Comcast and
Time Warner Cable routinely fought over carriage agreements. Cablevision attempted to buy the Yankees outright, but could not agree to acceptable terms with
George Steinbrenner and his partners. To exit its MSG/Cablevision deal, the Yankees would have to give them the right to match any new right agreement and show a judge that a third party was willing to purchase their rights and launch a channel. Thus, new YankeeNets CEO
Harvey Schiller hired
IMG to provide a valuation for the prospective YankeeNets sport channel. IMG came back with an offer to partner on the channel with a guaranteed rights fees of $838 million. In 2000, YankeeNets and IMG proposed forming a sports channel valued as high as $2.4 billion. Cablevision sued considering its valuing as "outlandish" to block the channel. In April 2001, the suit was settled such that in June 2001, YankeeNets paid MSG to take the Yankees' TV rights in-house. IMG had been replaced by other investors,
Goldman, Sachs & Company, the
Quadrangle Group,
Leo Hindery Jr., chief executive of the network, and Amos Hostetter Jr., a billionaire cable veteran, who in total had a 40% share of the channel.
Launch of a new network 's introduction on YES' first game broadcast on March 19, 2002 The YES Network launched at noon on March 19, 2002, with a half-hour introductory show. The first game broadcast on YES was an exhibition game between the
New York Yankees and the
Cincinnati Reds at 7 PM on the same day. At its launch, YES was available on DirecTV and to subscribers of all major New York area cable providers except Cablevision which would refuse to add the network for the 2002 season (see below). The first regular season game broadcast on YES was played on April 1 against the
Baltimore Orioles. In late 2003, the Yankees and Nets decided to part ways, with the Nets being sold to a group led by
real estate developer
Bruce Ratner. The sale did not include the Nets' ownership stake in YES (NJ Holdings), which remained with the pre-merger owners of the team. As part of the sale, the Nets signed a long-term deal to keep the team's game telecasts on YES. In 2004, YankeeNets was renamed Yankee Global Enterprises, which owns the Yankees and the minority share in YES as separate companies. Therefore, the Yankees technically do not own YES. The Yankees, however, receive a rights fee from YES that is somewhat higher than MSG previously paid.
Fox ownership, FSN affiliation In 2007, Goldman Sachs' and former Nets owner Ray Chambers' share in the network was put up for sale. In November 2012,
News Corporation agreed to terms on acquiring a 49% stake in YES. As a consequence, each of the network's previous owners had their ownership stakes reduced. As a result of the sale to Fox, the Yankees agreed to keep their games on the network through 2041, which would be the network's 40th year of existence. News Corporation's interest in YES was transferred to
21st Century Fox (owned by
Rupert Murdoch, who also remained the owner of News Corporation), when the former company
spun off its U.S. entertainment holdings into a separate company in July 2013. In September 2013, rights to
Fox Sports Networks' national programming (previously held by
MSG Plus, which had previously operated as FSN New York) were transferred to YES. On January 25, 2014, 21st Century Fox became the network's majority owner by purchasing an additional 31% share of YES Network from someone, increasing the company's ownership interest from 49% to 80%. In 2014, the YES Network announced an average 223,000 households in Yankees game broadcasts. On May 14, 2017, YES Network aired
Derek Jeter's number retirement ceremony. It got an average 724,000 viewers and a 5.79 rating in the New York City area, the highest non-game program for the network.
Disney/Fox acquisition, reacquisition by the Yankees On December 14, 2017,
the Walt Disney Company (which owned
ABC owned-and operated station
WABC-TV) announced
plans to acquire 21st Century Fox following the divestiture of certain assets. While it originally included the Fox Sports Networks chain and YES Network, the
Department of Justice ordered that they be sold on antitrust grounds due to Disney's ownership of
ESPN.
Bloomberg News reported that the sale of stakes in YES to Fox contained a clause giving the Yankees rights to buy them back in the event of a change in ownership. On November 11, 2018, the
New York Post reported that the Yankees had invoked the right of first refusal to acquire YES in the event that the sale of Fox Sports Networks to was successful, formally bidding 9 days later in a joint deal with
Blackstone Group to get the 80% stake back. The Yankees also appointed the
Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan,
RedBird Capital Partners, and
Mubadala Investment Company to assist with their bid for the network.
Amazon, who was expected to bid for other FSN networks, instead bid for the 80% stake that Yankees want back, desiring to provide streaming services for the network. On March 8, 2019, Fox News reported that the Yankees had reached a deal to re-purchase Fox's share in the network for $3.5 billion, with Sinclair (who ended up being the final suitor for Fox Sports Networks, and is also collaborating with the
Chicago Cubs on a
new regional network),
Amazon, and
the Blackstone Group holding minority shares.
Mubadala Development Company, a United Arab Emirates’ sovereign wealth fund, and
RedBird Capital Partners were reported as minority investors. The deal closed on August 29, 2019. In April 2020 during the early onset of the
COVID-19 pandemic in New York City,
WCBS-TV briefly broadcast its local newscasts from the YES Network studio set due to the unavailability of the
CBS Broadcast Center. ==Programming==