The story published by NYDailyNews.com is all about radio rights for the New York Yankees. The team’s current flagship is WCBS-AM, and it has another year to go on its contract. But the NYDN notes that the Yankees are not getting as much radio money as are the arch-rival Boston Red Sox – and notes that an Emmis FM station may be in the mix.
According to NYDN, WCBS is paying a cool $13M for the rights to be the Yankee’s radio flagship, leaving a significant gap between the $18M the Red Sox are reportedly getting. It is also believed that although WCBS may be willing to up the ante, they aren’t likely to want to go up that much.
So what the Yankees need is a hungry station, and NYDN thinks that station might be WEPN-AM, also known as ESPN 1050, one of Walt Disney’s ESPN Radio O&Os.
It’s loaded with major league sports. It has the football Jets, the basketball Knicks and the hockey Rangers. But when it comes to baseball, WFAN has the Mets and it has nothing.
NYDN believes it may be hungry enough to outbid WCBS.
It also believes the station’s directional signal is not up to the challenge. However, it suggests that perhaps ESPN 1050 would be interested in acquiring Emmis’s WRXP-FM 101.9 to better disseminate Yankees games. According to NYDN, the asking price for the station was $125M, but is believed to have edged down to $100M flat.
Will this scenario take place? Who knows? It just goes to show that one man’s sports rumor is another man’s possible stick value price check.
