Yankees and partners purchase YES Network for $3.47 billion

The Yankees have officially partnered with Amazon, Sinclair Broadcast Company and a group of private equity investors including Blackstone to purchase YES Network from Disney for $3.47 billion.

In news that first came to light towards the end of December, the Yankees got their baby back — with a little help from friends.

And so on Friday, the Yanks teamed up with Amazon, Sinclair and a number of private equity investors to buy back YES Network from Disney for a staggering $3.47 billion. After all, in comparison, the Yankees were recently valued at $4 billion (the highest of all MLB clubs).

Due to Disney purchasing $71.3 billion worth of Fox’s film and TV assets, Disney needed to unload 22 regional sports networks (worth about $20 billion) to gain approval on the deal from the Department of Justice.

With Disney already controlling ESPN and ABC Sports, that pesky term known as a “monopoly” wasn’t going to fly. Disney still needs to find buyers for the 21 other RSNs they acquired.

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Reportedly, Major League Baseball, TEGNA, Liberty Media and Ice Cube’s Big3 basketball league and others are all interested in potentially acquiring some portion of the rights to broadcast 42 different professional teams across the NBA, NHL and MLB.

It was only in 2012 that the Yanks sold 49 percent of YES to News Corp before they spun it off to 21st Century Fox. Fox then upped their stake to 80 percent two years later.

For those wondering what Amazon’s involvement with the Yanks means, according to Forbes, MLB is set to return “direct-to-consumer control” back to its 30 teams.

Therefore, it is likely that Amazon could stream Yankee games to its 97 million Prime customers — or at the very least, to local markets that Sinclair already services.

With the Yankees keeping controlling interest of YES Network, which broadcasts not only the Bombers but the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and MLS’ New York City Football Club, the Yankee organization is expected to gross $400 million next season from their re-purchased property.