Yankees: YES makes offer to save opener

BY MATTHEW FUTTERMAN
Star-Ledger Staff

In an effort to salvage Opening Day for millions of Yankees fans across the region, the YES Network yesterday proposed that Cablevision Systems Corp. put the team's games on for three months while the two sides plead their case to a panel of three binding arbitrators.

The one-page offer came less than 24 hours after the companies squared off in a public, mud-slinging exhibition when a tentative deal fell through just 72 hours before the Yankees open the season in Toronto tomorrow night.

Cablevision officials declined comment. However, the proposal is similar to offers Leo Hindery Jr., chief executive at YES, has made and Cablevision has rejected for the past year in which he asked Cablevision to "test drive" his network.

The collapse of the deal left Yankees fans in 2.8 million Cablevision households in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut doomed to a second consecutive season of possibly missing 130 televised games.

Hindery said yesterday's proposal was an effort "to cut through the confusion about who is responsible for the controversy. We have given a simple, straightforward, executed agreement to Cablevision."

The proposal has three main provisions:
  • Cablevision to put YES on its system beginning tomorrow.
  • Cablevision to pay the YES network the same amount Cablevision will receive from Time Warner Cable and Comcast -- about $2.12 per subscriber each month.
  • The two sides to enter a binding arbitration immediately that would force the companies to accept a decision on how much Cablevision should pay to carry the YES Network.
Hindery said he spoke with Cablevision CEO James Dolan through an intermediary yesterday and the two sides agreed on the rules that would allow the arbitrators to consider only the comparable pricing of other regional sports networks. Cablevision had wanted the arbitrators to consider how profitable YES was, but YES investors do not like the idea of opening the company's books to outsiders.