SportsNet New York (SNY) is an American regional sports network owned by Sterling Entertainment Enterprises, LLC, itself a joint venture between Fred Wilpon's Sterling Equities (which owns a controlling 65% interest), Charter Communications through its acquisition of Time Warner Cable in May 2016 (which owns 27%) and Comcast, through its NBC Sports Group subsidiary (which owns 8%). The channel primarily broadcasts games and related programming involving the New York Mets, but also carries supplementary coverage of the Mets and the New York Jets as well as college sports events.
 | |
| Type | Regional sports network |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Broadcast area | New York Connecticut (except Northeastern Areas) North and Central Jersey Northeastern Pennsylvania Nationwide (via satellite) |
| Headquarters | 4 World Trade Center, Lower Manhattan, New York City |
| Programming | |
| Language(s) | English |
| Picture format | 1080i (HDTV) 480i (SDTV) |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | Sterling Entertainment Enterprises |
| Parent |
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| Sister channels | Spectrum Sports NBC Sports Regional Networks |
| History | |
| Launched | March 16, 2006; 18 years ago (2006-03-16) |
| Founder | Fred Wilpon |
| Links | |
| Website | www |
| Availability | |
| Streaming media | |
| The SNY App | sny (U.S. cable internet subscribers only; requires login from participating providers to stream content; some events may not be available due to league rights restrictions; not supported by Xfinity) |
| DirecTV Stream | Internet Protocol television |
| Hulu | Internet Protocol television |
SNY maintains business operations and studio facilities at 4 World Trade Center. SportsNet New York is available on cable and fiber optic television providers throughout the New York metropolitan area and the state of New York; it is also available nationwide on satellite via DirecTV.
SportsNet New York was launched on March 16, 2006. The network was created in order for the New York Mets to better leverage the team's television broadcasting rights, which were previously held by Cablevision for its regional sports networks MSG and FSN New York. From 1998 to 2002, Cablevision had a monopoly on the cable television rights to all local professional sports franchises in the New York City market, which resulted in the company using those rights for various business practices (some controversial among viewers and local media analysts) such as moving certain games to its MSG Metro Channels, a group of locally based services that had limited distribution on most cable providers in the New York City metropolitan area.[citation needed] In 2002, YankeeNets – then the corporate entity which owned both the New York Yankees and New Jersey Nets – ended the monopoly by launching the YES Network to serve as the local cable broadcaster of their games, leaving the Mets in the Cablevision fold until that team's contract with the company (the dominant cable provider outside of Manhattan and the adjacent boroughs) expired in 2005. Its owners at the time is Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Wilpon, CBS Sports and Dish Network.
By 2011, through its majority ownership, the Mets received $68 million in revenue from SportsNet New York for the broadcast rights to its games.[2] In 2013, Bloomberg estimated that $1.2 billion of the Mets' $2.1 billion value came from SNY.[3]
From the network's founding until 2017, its headquarters was located in the Time-Life BuildingatRockefeller Center, on the corner of Avenue of the Americas and West 51st Street in Manhattan (in the former home of the now-defunct CNN news program American Morning). In March 2017, the network relocated to 4 World Trade Center. Part of SNY's studio facility is leased to NFL Network for that network's morning show Good Morning Football.
SNY serves as the primary local broadcaster of the New York Mets. It carries at least 120 games involving the team each season not televised on a national network (Fox, TBSorESPN) or streamed exclusively through a streaming service (Apple TV+orRoku Channel). SNY also produces a smaller broadcast schedule of games for local broadcast on Nexstar's CW affiliate WPIX (channel 11), which distributes those games to other broadcast stations in the Mets' broadcast territory. Gregg Picker serves as producer for the games. Mets game telecasts and post-game shows on SNY delay other programming, such as the 11:00 p.m. edition of SportsNite, and preempt all or portions of shows starting at midnight in the event a game with a 7:00 p.m. start time runs over its scheduled time period.
In November 2005, the New York Jets signed a broadcasting agreement with SportsNet New York to carry programs relating to the NFL franchise for three years. SNY carries more than 250 hours of Jets-related content annually, including both regular season and off-season shows with access to players, coaches and management.
Although the local rights for New York Yankees broadcasts belong exclusively to YES Network, SNY operates a Twitter account dedicated to Yankees highlights.[4] Game highlights on the account are typically clips from the YES broadcast, sourced from the official Yankees Twitter account. SNY uploads their own recordings of post-game interviews to the account. The Yankees are also frequently covered on the primary SNY Twitter account.[5]
On October 1, 2014, SNY signed an agreement with the Fall Experimental Football League to carry some of the league's inaugural regular season games in October and November of that year.[6] On December 20, 2018, SNY and Rugby United New YorkofMajor League Rugby announced a partnership where SNY would televise nine of the team's inaugural season games.[7]
Currently SNY airs women's college basketball from the University of Connecticut, college basketball and football games from Fordham University,[8][9] college football and college basketball games from Columbia University,[10] college football and college basketball games from Stony Brook University,[11] college basketball and football from Monmouth University,[12][13] college hockey, college soccer, college football and college basketball from Long Island University,[14] and college hockey and college basketball games from Sacred Heart University[15] SNY also has a package of eight nationally televised college basketball games from the Northeast Conference[16] and annually airs the Connecticut Ice college hockey tournament.[17]
On July 23, 2008, SNY reached an agreement with Rutgers University to become "the exclusive home" of the university's athletics program; the deal includes the rights to air encore presentations of the team's football telecasts (involving games televised by ABC or any of the ESPN networks), weekly coaches shows (for both football and basketball, such as Inside Rutgers Football) and press conferences.[18]
Beginning in 2008, SNY carried football and basketball games involving the Big East Conference; the network lost the rights to Fox Sports 1 (through an agreement with Fox Sports) when that network launched in August 2013. The network also carried coaches shows focusing on the Seton Hall University and St. John's University basketball teams, both members of the old Big East.[19][20] From its launch, SNY also carried football and basketball games from the Big Ten Conference that were not scheduled to be televised on a national network; the network lost these games to the Big Ten Network when it launched in 2007. SNY also televised college basketball games from the Sun Belt Conference through ESPN Plus, later dropping these events in 2008, in order to focus its college sports coverage on the Big East Conference.
In August 2010, the University of Connecticut announced a multi-year deal with SportsNet New York to become "the official television home" of UConn Huskies football and men's basketball. SNY will feature 300 hours of Huskies-related programming annually, including 120 hours of game coverage.[21] In May 2012, SNY signed a four-year agreement with the university to become the exclusive broadcaster of the Huskies women's basketball team (assuming the regional rights from Connecticut Public Television), agreeing to air a minimum of 17 games per year.[22] However, as of 2020 only women's basketball still airs on the network.
On October 31, 2013, SportsNet New York signed a broadcasting agreement with the Atlantic 10 Conference to televise the conference's college basketball games; under the initial deal, the network carried 43 Atlantic 10 basketball games during the 2013–14 season.[23]
Until 2023, SNY also broadcast college lacrosse, college football and college basketball from Hofstra University. Those games have since moved to MSG Network.[24]
At its launch, it was originally expected that SNY would experience issues with trying to gain carriage on Cablevision, as the Mets moved their game telecasts from that company's two regional sports networks, MSG Network and FSN New York (now MSG Plus). The situation was similar to that experienced by the YES Network, the Yankees ended its broadcasting agreement with Cablevision. Cablevision filed a lawsuit against Sterling Entertainment Enterprises on the grounds that the franchise might have violated their contract, which theoretically had one year left to run, as well as the right of last refusal. However, a judge ruled in favor of Sterling Entertainment, essentially stating that the Mets had voided their deal with Cablevision entirely by paying a specified buyout fee, believed to have exceeded $50 million.
Comcast began carrying the network on its Hartford area systems on March 31, 2008. Then in July 2008, just days after the University of Connecticut signed its broadcast deal with SNY, Cox Communications began carrying SportsNet New York on channel 62 throughout its Connecticut service area. On August 29, 2011, the network launched a secondary feed for Connecticut, SNY-CT.[25]
SNY is also available on Comcast systems in Palm Beach County, Florida and nationally on Verizon FiOS. However, due to broadcasting rules imposed by Major League Baseball that restrict local telecasts to within their designated broadcast territory, Mets games televised by the network are blacked out, although pre-game and post-game shows and other non-event programming is cleared for broadcast in Palm Beach County.
Beginning in 2017, SNY made Mets games available for live Internet streaming to subscribers via its website and the NBC Sports app but has been yet to be made authorizable to Comcast Xfinity subscribers though Comcast is the owner of the NBC Sports app and is part owner of SNY.[26] In 2022, SNY launched its own app, serving much the same purpose with much the same availability.[27]
