Due to a carriage disagreement between Optimum’s owner Altice and MSG parent Sphere Entertainment, MSG Networks—home of the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, New York Islanders, New Jersey Devils, and Buffalo Sabres—has been without Optimum’s cable packages since 12:01 a.m. on January 1.
A notable amount of public back and forth between the parties has resulted from that impasse, including support from individuals like Rangers commentator Sam Rosen. But at last, an agreement has been reached.
On Saturday, the two parties issued a joint statement.
We are happy to announce that MSG Networks and Optimum have agreed to relaunch MSG Networks on Optimum video lineups.
In order to benefit our fans and Optimum subscribers, MSG Networks and Optimum would like to express their gratitude to everyone for their patience as we worked together to reach this new agreement.
The agreement’s precise provisions were not made public.
As said, there was a great deal of public drama in this case, beginning with the events leading up to the argument and continuing beyond that. With Optimum seeking to elevate MSG to a higher tier and the regional sports network opposing that push, the main problem seems to be one that frequently arises in these conflicts.
It’s unclear how that was settled because the terms haven’t been made public yet.
However, the volume of comments made by the general public made this debate stand out from the others. In addition to conflicting statements about who withdrew from talks (and how serious different proposals were), politicians such as New York Governor Kathy Hochul and the attorney generals of New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey all took or threatened to take action. And that was prior to a number of PR initiatives, such as MSG’s commercial in which Rosen is shown switching to Verizon’s Fios TV.
Currently, renewing a carriage deal presents several difficulties, this being only one of them. Multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) generally make a concerted effort to keep costs down and resist content providers’ direct-to-consumer (DTC) initiatives (notably, MSG has partnered with YES for the Gotham Sports app in addition to their own DTC initiative). This occasionally involves attempts to place specific linear channels on higher tiers. In the meanwhile, channels—particularly RSNs—are seeking to retain or grow their tier and raise or at least flatten their per-subscriber prices.
These disagreements can occasionally result in the removal of channels since it is difficult to overcome that division. However, the agreement reached between Optimum and MSG is noteworthy. Additionally, with important portions of the NBA and NHL seasons drawing up, the timing is favorable for many fans of these teams who still have Optimum. We anticipate more RSN-MVPD conflicts of this nature elsewhere, though.
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