YES Network's Tracy Dolgin Discusses Yanks In-Market Streaming

Dolgin Has Talked With MLBAM About Streaming For Almost 10 Years

YES Network President & CEO Tracy Dolgin took part in a Q&A with MULTICHANNEL NEWS' Mike Reynolds and said that he has been talking to MLBAM about streaming in-market games live for "closing in on a decade." Dolgin said of finally reaching an agreement with MLBAM, "We tried to look for a solution that preserved the core business and at the same time actually could grow our business on top of it and that worked for our distributors, worked for our advertisers, worked for our consumers, worked for us, and worked for Major League Baseball." Reynolds noted viewers must subscribe to both Cablevision TV and broadband plans in order to gain access to in-market streaming, and Dolgin said of the dual subscriber formula, "My biggest concern was authentication." Dolgin: "It just seemed to me that having the subscriber be both a video subscriber and a broadband subscriber made authentication much simpler. And, at least in its initial incarnation, gives it a much higher probability of success. One of the most important things was to do a deal that works with the specifics of the YES Network."

GETTING THE BALL ROLLING: Dolgin said that it would have been "preferable to start with the beginning of the season" for streaming Yankees games. But he added, "We just didn't have the deal done. I wasn't comfortable that the authentication was going to work." Dolgin said YES wants to educate consumers "that there is a way to watch the game when you're not able to watch it on TV," as well as "make sure that we can do what we say we're going to do." Meanwhile, Reynolds noted the Padres and Cox Communications also have reached a deal with MLBAM for in-market streaming, and Dolgin said he "would assume you'll have more teams doing it." Dolgin: "But you're already basically running up against August this year so I can't imagine there's going to be a ton of deals coming out for this season" (MULTICHANNEL.com, 8/3).