Brooklyn Nets have struggled over the years getting a local audience to view Nets games on the YES Network. The Nets have the worst local television ratings per capita in the entire NBA. In the 2014-15 campaign, the Nets – who were fighting for a playoff spot for a majority of the second half of the season – drew 0.55 percent of the New York market to watch their games on the YES Network, which was down 29 percent from the year before.
With the growing popularity of the NBA and a new national TV mega-deal coming in the upcoming years, it appears that the Nets and YES are gaining traction on a new deal that could see Brooklyn have one of the most lucrative local TV deals in the NBA.
Following from John Ourand & John Lombardo of the Sports Business Journal.
The Nets used a contractual “reset” that occurs every five years to get YES Network’s majority owner Fox Sports to increase its rights fee to an annual average of around $40 million, starting with 2017-18 season, according to sources.
The proposed deal would include both broadcast and digital rights between the two sides and it would also shorten the deal. The current agreement goes through the 2031-32 season, with options beyond that. The new deal is shorter but still runs well into the next decade, says SBJ.
Although no date has been set for closing the deal, there is a deadline both sides would like to avoid. If there’s no deal by December, the two would go to arbitration. The issue is, the Nets ratings may not get better as it appears that the team has taken a step back in the talent department.
Their former franchise point guard Deron Williams was bought out and he’s gone to Dallas, they got rid of Mason Plumlee to get younger and they didn’t make any huge moves in the offseason to bring in new talent as they’re just simply trying to wait out one more year of Joe Johnson before they can even think about spending any serious money. For the YES Network, when baseball season goes away for the winter, the only major programming the network has are Nets’ games until the New York Yankees come back for spring training.
It appears that this might be a new trend in the NBA with teams and their local markets striking new deals as the Los Angeles Clippers are trying to get a new contract with their local market but it doesn’t appear to be working out to this point.
