The start of 2025 kicked off with a carriage dispute between one of New York City’s biggest regional sports networks and the area’s longest-serving cable television operator.
On Wednesday, Altice USA’s Optimum — formerly Cablevision — pulled the plug on the MSG Networks multiplex of regional sports channels, leaving residents across the tri-state area with Optimum TV unable to watch games from the New York Rangers, New York Knicks, New Jersey Devils and Brooklyn Nets through that platform.
Both sides had warned sports fans about a potential dispute in late December, with MSG Networks saying Optimum was willing to deprive hockey and basketball fans of games from their local teams and Optimum claiming MSG Networks wanted a significant fee increase for continued distribution of their channels.
In a statement on Wednesday, a spokesperson for MSG Networks blamed Altice and Optimum of “trying to charge their customers more and give them less,” noting that the price of the package that previously carried MSG Networks had gone up in recent times.
Like most cable and satellite companies, Optimum and Altice USA must pay broadcasters and programmers for the right to redistribute their channels. Over the years, broadcasters have demanded higher per-subscriber fees, which are passed along to customers in the form of their bills.
Pay TV platforms have long complained that a large percentage of the retail price of their bundles are ultimately paid out to the owners of the channels that they carry. The relative low margin business of cable TV has convinced some companies to ditch TV service altogether and focus on higher-margin broadband Internet offerings, noting that most customers have the option to watch programming over streaming services if they want.
In this case, MSG Networks offers its multiplex sports channels and live sports programming via MSG Plus, a streaming service offered via the Gotham Sports app. But customers will have to shell out $30 per month to continue watching hockey and basketball games via MSG Plus, instead of getting those games as part of their service.
A spokesperson for MSG Networks said the situation could have been avoided, because the company had offered numerous proposals while negotiating toward a new distribution contract.
“We offered Altice a number of fair and reasonable proposals that called for Altice to pay us less than last year,” the spokesperson said. “Altice rejected all of them, including our offer to keep MSG Networks on the air while we continued to try to reach a deal.”
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Optimum strongly denied that MSG Networks had offered it a temporary extension that would have kept channels on its cable TV systems while negotiations continued.
“An extension was neither offered nor declined,” the Optimum spokesperson told The Desk. “With that said, Optimum wants to partner with programmers who are putting customer choice and flexibility at the center of every decision. We would be happy to agree to an extension if they approached these negotiations like partners and worked with us to find solutions that benefit our customers and their viewers. Unfortunately, that has not been their approach to date.”
When the clock struck midnight, the ball dropped in Times Square — and Optimum dropped MSG Networks from its pay TV platform in the tri-state area.
— TheDesk.net (@thedesk.net) January 1, 2025 at 6:46 PM
After the channels were dropped at midnight, Optimum followed up with a statement that characterized MSG Networks’ proposals as unfair because their approach toward distribution would have non-sports fans paying to subsidize high-cost sports programming.
“Now more than ever, especially in this economy, it is unfair for MSG Networks to demand non-viewers to pay and demand high license fees, especially when there are ways for fans to get games directly from MSG through their direct-to-consumer Gotham Sports app,” the spokesperson said.
The statement seems to suggest that Optimum would prefer to distribute MSG Networks on an a-la-carte basis, similar to how they’re offered via MSG Plus, rather than forcing customers to pay for the channels as part of a base or premium package that includes other news and entertainment networks.
In the meantime, Optimum said it was rolling out a toolkit that would ensure current TV customers can still watch the games they want, even if they’re no longer available on the traditional TV platform. That includes “offers to help offset and defray the costs of Gotham Sports and other services so they can keep watching their favorite teams,” a spokesperson affirmed, though it wasn’t entirely clear from the statement how that will work.
