A piece of Amazon’s sports aspirations is now on hold as plans to stream 21 New York Yankees games have been nixed as a result of the shortened MLB season. Amazon was expected to simulcast Yankee games airing locally on channels like WPIX, but that was scrapped when YES Network decided to keep all non-national broadcasts during the 60-game season.
MLB changed its rules regarding in-market streaming prior to this season – one tweak allows teams to potentially sell the digital rights to games not appearing on their local RSNs to another platform. However, the terms of each team’s RSN deal would determine if that was possible. The Yankees, Sinclair, and Amazon bought Walt Disney Co.’s 80% stake in YES last August in a deal that valued the network at $3.47 billion.
This development is a slight hiccup in Amazon’s rapidly expanding sports streaming portfolio that includes:
- NFL Thursday Night Games
- English Premier League games streamed in the U.K.
- A new sports category on Twitch that includes channels from several European soccer teams and existing accounts from NBA, the NHL, and NWSL.
- Seeking localized sports content and podcasts to invest in.
