FanSection Blog

Do you love the Yankees?  Yeah, me neither.  But for those of you that do, now you can stream your beloved penstripers’ games online.  But there is a catch…a few actually.  While the Yankees organization is breaking new ground by being the first MLB team to secure in-market streaming rights, which is no small feat considering they had to go through MLB Advanced Media to do so, users will have to jump through several hoops to actually watch the game.

The complete details can be found at NewTeeVee, but here’s the net of it.  In order to stream the games online, users must be a Cablevision broadband or cable TV subscriber in the NY area, and must have the appropriate package that includes the YES Network, the Yankees broadcasting network.  But wait, there’s more.  Users will also have to pay a premium subscription for the online games, although it’s not yet known how much.  If you’re interested in additional analysis, you can also find a great summary of the deal at PaidContent.

So to sum it up, the Yankees are breaking new ground by offering in-market live streaming, but are making it incredibly painful on viewers to actually take advantage of it.  Because of the double billing issue, it will be interesting to see what kind of take rate they get.  Then again, if Yankees fans are willing to plunk down $1000 for a random Wednesday night game, maybe they’ll be interested in double paying to watch a game online.