The New York Yankees are in talks to buy back YES Network as Disney and 21st Century Fox look to clear their $71.3 billion merger, The Post has learned.
It amounts to “a foregone conclusion” the Bronx Bombers will exercise their right of first refusal to buy the 80 percent of YES they don’t own, according to a source familiar with the talks.
“They plan to own all 100 percent,” the source said, “and they’re already talking to strategic and financial parties about divvying up ownership again — much like the current relationship with Fox.”
The Yankees obtained their refusal right in 2014, when Fox upped its stake to 80 percent in a deal that allowed a buyback should it ever sell.
Its terms require Disney and the Yankees to agree to a YES buyback price — or accept one from an impartial third party, a source said.
YES, the “crown jewel” of the 22 regional sports networks that Disney must sell upon taking over the movie and TV assets of Fox, broadcasts games of the Yankees and Brooklyn Nets to more than five million New York-area households.
Disney already owns ESPN, which feeds sports programming to 86 million subscribers.
To resolve Justice Department antitrust concerns, Disney agreed to sell all of Fox’s RSNs within 90 days of closing on its deal for the other Fox assets. Disney has said it wants to close all the deals by early next year.
The auction for the RSNs is already underway, with co-managers Allen & Co. and JPMorgan Chase receiving bids from more than 40 parties on Nov. 8, sources said. The co-managers are expected to reduce this field to a manageable number for a second round of bidding inside of three weeks.
But then things get tricky.
One camp asserts bidders will lose interest in the 21 RSNs, with YES out of the auction, while a second camp claims higher TV ratings of RSNs in areas like Detroit, Kansas City and St. Louis give them what a source called “tremendous appeal in their individual locales.”
While sports consultant Lee Berke estimates that YES is worth more than $4 billion, Guggenheim has put a $22 billion valuation on all 22 RSNs, for an average value of $860 million on each non-YES operation.
Both camps conceded that those figures amount to a lot of money, citing the rapidly rising prices for broadcast rights demanded by team owners.
Cable companies, meanwhile, have balked at passing along sports content costs to their entire customer base — fearing a spike in revenue-gouging cord-cutting.
“RSNs are getting squeezed from both sides,” sports media consultant Brian Mulligan told The Post.
But that worry hasn’t deterred private equity firms like Apollo Capital and Silver Lake, which are expected to advance to the auction’s second round — either alone or in partnership with cable companies and TV station groups.
Other observers suspect Apple might even join the fray, noting that an RSN-filled Sports App could help justify the high price of iPhones — just as Amazon might pursue the RSNs as another inducement to subscribe to Prime.
But since Disney has so little time to unload all 22 properties, some believe disciplined bidders may simply wait — potentially forcing a fire sale of any and all RSNs still in Disney’s possession.
Fox declined to comment.