As Yankees Open Season, YES Network Is Still A No For Comcast

When the New York Yankees take the field Tuesday for the first game of their 2016 baseball season, there will be thousands of Yankee fans in New Jersey tuning in to watch.

Comcast subscribers, however, will not be among them.

Four and a half months after Comcast dropped the YES Network from its channel lineup in a dispute over the cost to carry the regional sports network, a resolution remains elusive.

Comcast, in an ad published in New York area newspapers last week, said the YES Network was seeking a 33 percent increase in its rate.

"The price increase they refer to happened in February 2015," YES Network CEO Tracy Dolgin said in phone interview last week. "The 'now' they are referring to happened over a year ago and they paid it until Nov. 17."

John Demming of Comcast Corporate Communications puts the blame on FOX, which owns 80 percent of YES.

"They were using YES to benefit other FOX networks," Demming said. "FOX was insisting on Comcast carrying other FOX networks."

"That wasn't something we were going to agree to," Demming said. Demming wouldn't say which channels FOX was insisting that Comcast carry. Comcast is owned by NBC Universal and has several regional sports networks. FOX also has regional sports networks as well as FOX Sports 1, its soccer-focused sports network.

A key part of the dispute is viewership numbers. Dolgin said Nielsen ratings show YES was the No. 1 cable network in the New York market and No. 3 overall on the nights last season when YES televised Yankees games. Last season, in the New York DMA, YES was the #1 cable network and the #3 network overall on the nights that YES televised Yankees games, and that YES’s Yankees ratings were higher than SNY’s Mets ratings despite the fact that the Mets went to the World Series.

Demming, however, said information Comcast has gathered internally, from its customers via the usage of their cable boxes, shows that YES is "very lightly watched among our customers."

"We are not in the core New York market," Demming said.

Dolgin, however, said Comcast is ignoring the fact that the Yankees' popularity is not limited to the New York market.

"The Yankees are a unique team," Dolgin said. "They are as popular to the tips of our territory as they are in New York City."

In Comcast's territory, 37 percent of people identify themselves as Yankees fans, according to Nielsen, with only the NFL's Giants coming in higher at 42 percent.

Dolgin said Comcast's claims that YES is the most expensive regional network is based on a study that Dolgin said is simply not true. The study, by SNL Kagan, says YES is $5.36 per subscriber in average affiliate revenue per subscriber.

"I don't know where Kagan gets its information" on the cost, Dolgin said. "They don't call us."

Dolgin also pointed out Comcast has ownership or part ownership in several of the competing regional sports networks, including SNY.

He said Comcast has argued it won't agree to the higher rates -- rates that Dolgin said were reached in negotiations with the larger programming providers in the area and rates Comcast had paid from Feb. 1, 2015 until the day it cut off YES in November -- to keep customer costs down, but has continued to raise its customers' rates.

Customers who spoke with the Patch said their bills have gone up significantly since November, as much as $40 per month for the company's "Triple Play" package of cable, phone and internet, in some cases. The regional sports network fee that Comcast charges its customers tripled, from $1 in November to $3.

Demming said the regional sports network fee did rise, but said the fee only covers a small portion of what the regional sports networks actually cost.

"If you add up the costs of the regional networks" based on the per-subscriber averages provided by SNL Kagan, Demming said, the regional sports networks are costing $13 more per subscriber even without the YES Network than what Comcast is charging.

Overall bills are rising because the cost of programming is rising, Demming said.

"We have 225-250 channels in market," he said. "In 2015 we spent $10 billion on programming and the programming costs rose 7 percent." But he said Comcast only increased customers' charges an average of 3.9 percent.

"We're not passing along all the programming increases to our customers," Demming said. "We have absorbed those costs."

Dolgin said Comcast is demanding a lower rate for YES than other providers in the market when it is smaller than those providers.

"They know we can't do that," Dolgin said. Dolgin said the rate is negotiated with the largest providers, including Time Warner and Cablevision, (Comcast is No. 4 in the market) and all of the providers pay the same costs. Smaller providers don't get offered a lower price than the largest ones, Dolgin said, adding that YES gave Comcast that price while it was in the midst of trying to merge with Time Warner, and said YES did so to keep from disrupting that deal, which eventually fell through.

"Nobody at Comcast did this (dropping YES) thinking we would lower the price," Dolgin said. "They full well know we can't lower the price to them."

"Why is that our problem?" Demming said, in response Dolgin's statement that the price is negotiated with the largest carriers and is the same for all. "We've tried to find ways to bridge the value gap. They turned it down."

Demming said other programming providers have dropped YES due to costs. Dolgin noted that DISH Network, which Demming cited on the phone and which Comcast has repeatedly cited during the debate as one that won't carry YES because of the cost, does not and has not carried any regional sports networks from the start.

"Comcast has 900,000 customers in our region," Dolgin said. "This isn't a big market to them."

"FOX wanted to say if they gave us a lower rate, we would have to carry other FOX networks," Demming said. "What FOX was doing is they were using the Yankees to benefit other FOX networks. That wasn't something we were going to agree to."

Demming said Comcast subscribers will be able to see about 40 Yankees games via other networks this season.

Dolgin said Comcast has been misleading in its ads and its responses from the start.

"They put Opening Day's game is on ESPN," Dolgin said, "but it's on ESPN everywhere except in YES Network territory. They wouldn't take that off even when it was pointed out it was wrong."

Dolgin said that is why YES continues to urge Yankee fans to switch providers.

"We know it's not easy, and we know it's not painless," Dolgin said.

"They (Comcast) claim they are saying no to a higher price, but they said yes and actually paid it," Dolgin said.