Sports Industry Growth & Yankees Revenues
Yankees Consumer-Supplier Model of Revenue Generation
Yankees Revenue Stream Categories & Amounts
YES Network & Cablevision Revenue Streams
Free Agency & Athlete Salaries Impact on Revenues
Controversy over Yankees’ Revenue Generation
Bud Selig’s Proposed Recommendations’ Impact on Revenues
Future Yankee Revenue Generation Plans
George Steinbrenner’s New York Yankees represent the highest revenue generating franchise is all of major league baseball (MLB). Officially known as YankeeNets LLC, the company helmed by Steinbrenner generated revenues in 2001 that were more than $150 million higher than those earned by the least revenue generating team in the MLB, the Montreal Expos. The N.Y. Yankees’ 2001 revenues and profits are listed below:
Total Revenue Total Expenses Total Profits
($Millions) ($Millions) ($Millions)
The sports industry has witnessed tremendous growth over the past two decades. This growth has been fueled by sports marketing and increasing media coverage of sporting events based on increased levels of sports popularity among viewers. Satellite TV, Sports Networks like ESPN, and the traditional Networks’ efforts to compete with them provides consumers with hundreds of thousands of hours of sports coverage annually and the N.Y. Yankees with tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Shank estimates that the sports industry generates $213-$350 billion per year in revenue, a figure the N.Y. Yankees’ generate approximately 10% of annually (6). This analysis will explore the sources of revenue stream generated by the New York Yankees baseball franchise.
The complex revenue generating structure of the N.Y. Yankees and the sports industry in general can be viewed more simply from a consumer-supplier model. Within this model there are three primary components: consumers of sport, sports products, and producers and intermediaries. T...