DirecTV for Business has reached an agreement with Amazon Prime Video to distribute 20 Yankees games to bars, restaurants and other commercial venues across the baseball team’s home footprint.
The Yankees’ home regional territory covers New York state, Connecticut, north and central New Jersey, and northeast Pennsylvania. DirecTV for Business customers will get access to the games for the 2023 season via their existing satellite equipment. DirecTV said it will make the games, which were previously only exclusively available on Prime Video, available to “thousands of sports bars, restaurants and other public places” without disclosing a specific number.
“For decades, DirecTV has given sports fans all over the country access to their favorite teams how and where they want to watch them,” said Rob Thun, DirecTV Chief Content Officer, in a statement. "There arguably isn't a more fervent fan base in sports than that of the New York Yankees. We look forward to bringing those fans even more Yankees games to watch at their favorite local bars, restaurants and other commercial establishments where DirecTV already delivers our market-leading sports content offering."
The deal could address a pain point for Yankees fans, who last year couldn’t get access to a slate of regular season games in bars or restaurants as they were streamed exclusively on Prime Video. The streaming service is still the exclusive streaming home this season, but now with DirecTV expanded distribution to commercial venues in the Yankees’ home territory just as the regular season schedule is about to kick off.
The season on Prime Video starts today, Tuesday, April 4, when the Yankees will face off against the Philadelphia Phillies. Consumers interested in finding DirecTV bars and restaurants that might be showing the games can search via the satellite TV provider’s sports bar finder app, which is available in the App Store and Google Play Store.
Delivering the regular season Yankees games is the latest commercial location sports win for DirecTV. It already offers Amazon’s NFL Thursday Night Football, Apple’s Friday Night Baseball, and most recently the MLS Season Pass offered by Apple, with a network of more than 300,000 commercial venues, including restaurants, bars, hotel lounges, and retail shops, among others.
DirecTV could also still be in play to deliver the NFL Sunday Ticket – residential rights to which Google’s YouTube scooped up late last year – in commercial venues. Last week RedBird Capital and the NFL announced the formation of a joint venture, EverPass Media, created to hold rights and stream Sunday Ticket in those types of locations. However, DirecTV had confirmed to Fierce that it’s in talks with RedBird to continue offering the football games at bars and restaurants, as it had as the residential Sunday Ticket rights holder since 1994.
“We are in discussions with RedBird Capital to deliver NFL Sunday Ticket to our 300,000+ commercial venues as only satellite can provide a consistent and reliable experience in-venues and across locations that fans have come to expect,” a DirecTV spokesperson told Fierce last week.
As for the Yankees, the team also has another new distribution avenue this year with the launch of a YES Network direct-to-consumer subscription streaming service, offering fans in the local coverage territory direct access to the MLB team’s games, as well as the Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty. The YES Network regional sports network DTC service is priced at $24.99 per month or $239.99 for an annual subscription.