Mets fans aren’t the only ones in New York with something to complain about as more games move to streaming services. Andrew Marchand of The New York Post reports that the Yankees will make 21 games on their 2022 schedule exclusive to Amazon’s Prime Video.
Amazon has picked up the package of games that the Yankees used to put on WPIX locally. This means the games will not be available anywhere but Amazon and they will only be available in the team’s local media footprint. The first of these games will be the April 22 meeting with the Cleveland Guardians.
While YES will not carry the games, the crew will still be part of the production. Michael Kay will handle play-by-play while the network’s rotating cast of game analysts join him.
This is going to make it a little more difficult for New Yorkers that want to watch every Yankee game this season. In addition to the Amazon games, the team will feature in streaming-only deals with Apple TV+ and NBC’s Peacock.
On top of that, the Yankees play most of their games on their proprietary YES Network. That means in order to see every game, fans will need subscriptions to multiple streaming services and a cable subscription as well. This is what Chris Russo was talking about earlier this week when he called streaming deals “major league baseball screwing around.”
It’s terrible and should not be allowed.
It is not fair to people already paying a $300 cable bill to pay for a streaming service to watch a baseball game.