History
In 1998, the Yankees had their most successful season in modern history, winning a combined total of 125 regular season and playoff games, culminating in a World Series championship. The team was in discussions to be sold to Cablevision, who at the time owned the broadcast rights to every MLB, NBA and NHL team in the New York City Metropolitan area. The proposed deal fell through because the two sides could not come to an agreement that would include George Steinbrenner continuing to run the team for the new owners.
After the proposed sale fell through, the Yankees and Nets agreed to merge business operations, creating a combined holding company. This was done to increase the negotiating power of both teams for future television contracts and stadium and arena construction deals. The pre-merger owners would continue to control their teams, with a minority interest in the other team. This arrangement was approved by both Major League Baseball and the NBA.
YankeeNets engaged in marketing agreements with the New York Giants football team and the British football powerhouse Manchester United, which resulted in exclusive Giants and Manchester United programming on the YES Network for a period of time. The company also created an affiliate, Puck Holdings, which purchased the New Jersey Devils ice hockey team, to have relationships in all major league professional sports, and to give better leverage to the Nets in constructing a new arena – the Prudential Center, which was ultimately built as the home of the Devils without the Nets involvement – in Newark. The Devils were was later sold in 2004 to Jeffrey Vanderbeek, a minority share holder of Puck Holdings.
Read more about this topic: Yankee Global Enterprises
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)