Altice United States customers shed accessibility to MSG Networks very early Wednesday due to a carriage battle in between the cable driver and James Dolan’s native sporting actions networks.
Customers of Altice United States’s Optimum cable answer shed accessibility to the NBA’s New York Knicks and the NHL’s New York Rangers, New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils very earlyWednesday The energy outage comes because the Knicks get on an eight-game win contact and are slated to play Wednesday night time.
Negotiations in between Altice United States and MSG Networks broken down due to a disagreement over costs– sometimes the scenario in these conversations. The energy outage reveals the continuing battles for native sporting actions networks as customers go away the cable bundle at a speedy clip, and drivers press again over costs.
Both Altice United States and MSG Networks every launched declarations early Wednesday regarding the battle.
“We offered Altice a number of fair and reasonable proposals that called for Altice to pay us less than last year,” in line with a MSGNetworks statement “Altice rejected all of them, including our offer to keep MSG Networks on the air while we continued to try to reach a deal. We remain ready to negotiate in good faith.”
However, Altice United States said in a statement that “MSG Networks is demanding exorbitant programming fees – which could raise our customers’ cable bills – and, to add insult to injury, MSG Networks is requiring us to make their channels available to the vast majority of Optimum video subscribers, which would force customers to pay for content they do not to watch.”
Altice United States saved in thoughts MSG Networks’ streaming options for customers that also want accessibility to their teams.
New York- primarily based Altice United States had better than 1.9 million property cable customers as of Sept. 30, after shedding regarding 77,000 contrasted to the very same quarter within the earlier 12 months.
The native sporting actions networks firm has truly been severely impacted by the client button from typical cable packages to streaming options. In 2024 Diamond Sports, the proprietor of essentially the most important profile of those networks, received court docket authorization to go away insolvency safety after it was bothered by the very same headwinds.
Like numerous different native sporting actions networks, MSG Networks launched a streaming alternative in 2023 valued at $29.99 a month. In 2024 MSG Networks coordinated with the YES Network, which incorporates neighborhood prepared the New York Yankees, for a combined providing known as the Gotham Sports software, which units you again $359.99 annually or $41.99 a month.
The excessive prices of those streaming options reveal the native sporting actions networks ought to beware to not moreover intervene with the cable design and violation agreements with suppliers. These agreements with cable drivers help maintain the billions of dollars in costs the networks pay knowledgeable sporting actions teams to broadcast their video video games.
