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MSG Sues Yankees - Again

October 18, 2000 / 8:05 PM EDT / AP

The Yankees aren't just getting ready to face the Mets, they're battling Madison Square Garden, too.

MSG sued the Yankees for the second time in two months, claiming the team put "an outlandish $2.4 billion" value on its television rights for the next 10 years.

MSG, a division of Cablevision Systems Corp., filed suit late Tuesday in New York Supreme Court, where it obtained an injunction against the Yankees in August.

After the suit was filed, the Yankees withdrew their latest television proposal, and MSG then withdrew the suit, leaving the status of the team's TV rights for next year unclear.

As part of its $486 million, 12-year contract with the MSG Network, which expires after this season, the Yankees gave the cable network the right of last refusal to its next broadcast contract.

The Yankees at first tried to create a deal with Trans World International, a division of the International Management Group, but MSG went to court last summer and obtained an injunction that stopped the deal, with Justice Barry A. Cozier ruling the deal violated MSG's right of last refusal.

On Sept. 8, the Yankees told MSG they intended to form their own network, and said Morgan Stanley Dean Witter projected the network's value to the team at $2.4 billion over 10 years, or $1.3 billion in present-day dollars, not accounting for inflation.

In its court papers, MSG said the Yankees proposed an "exorbitant, imaginary price," claiming it was an "outlandish $2.45 billion" was "merely a hypothetical value."

The Yankees had proposed that if MSG were to match the offer, it would pay $165 million in rights for 2001, a figure escalating to $311 million in 2010. MSG said the figures had "had been created out of thin air."

A Yankees official, speaking on the condition he not be identified, confirmed the team had withdrawn the proposal Tuesday night and said the Yankees would present MSG with a new offer.

MSG spokesman Barry Watkins declined comment.