The 1979 season is remembered for a clubhouse fight, a managerial firing, and the death of a captain. But buried underneath all that wreckage, the New York Yankees quietly did something that would reshape professional sports for the next half-century: they became the first Major League Baseball team to broadcast games on cable television.
A New Screen
Cable TV in 1979 was still a curiosity. Roughly 16 to 20 percent of American households had it. HBO had launched in 1972 but was still building its subscriber base. ESPN wouldn't go live until September 7, 1979. The technology was real, but most sports franchises hadn't figured out what to do with it -- or whether it was worth doing anything at all.
George Steinbrenner's front office figured it out first.
The Yankees struck a deal to put games on cable, reaching viewers across New York City and the surrounding area. At the time, it looked like a modest experiment -- an extra platform alongside the team's existing over-the-air broadcasts. In hindsight, it was the first step toward a media revenue machine that would eventually generate billions.
Why It Mattered
The math wasn't obvious in 1979. Cable subscribers were a fraction of the total TV audience, and the advertising dollars were small compared to network broadcasts. But the principle was straightforward: if you controlled your own distribution, you controlled your own revenue. You didn't need to split everything with a national network. You could go directly to the fans in your market and charge for the privilege.
That's a sentence that describes the entire regional sports network model -- the one that would dominate baseball's economics for the next four decades. And it started here, in a season most people remember for everything else.
The Steinbrenner Business Brain
Say whatever you want about Steinbrenner -- and people said plenty -- the man understood money. He bought the Yankees in 1973 for about $8.7 million. By the time the Winfield contract arrived before the 1981 season, the franchise was already operating on a different financial plane than most clubs. Cable was part of that calculation. While other owners were watching their teams on three channels and calling it good, Steinbrenner was betting that fans would pay for access -- and that the bet would compound over decades.
He was right. (He was wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about this.)
The Road to YES
The 1979 cable experiment was the first domino. SportsChannel eventually picked up Yankees broadcasts. That gave way to the MSG Network era. And in 2002, the Yankees launched the YES Network -- their own regional sports network, built on the principle that Steinbrenner's front office had identified twenty-three years earlier: own your distribution, own your destiny.
YES became one of the most valuable RSNs in the country, and the model spread across baseball and into the NBA, NHL, and beyond. Every team that broadcasts on its own cable channel owes a nod to whatever executive in the Yankees' office looked at 1979's subscriber numbers and said, "Yeah, we should do this."
The Irony
The season itself was a disaster. Gossage's thumb, Lemon's firing, Munson's death -- the on-field product was defined by loss and dysfunction. The cable broadcasts carried all of it into living rooms that previously couldn't have tuned in. New York-area fans who didn't have over-the-air access watched a dynasty crumble in real time through a brand-new medium.
There's something fitting about that. The Yankees have always been a franchise that operates on two tracks simultaneously -- the baseball and the business. In 1979, the baseball was falling apart. The business was laying the foundation for the next fifty years.
HBO Launches
Home Box Office begins cable broadcasting, proving the subscription model can work for entertainment content. Sports applications are still years away for most franchises.
Yankees Go Cable
The Yankees become the first MLB team to broadcast games on cable television, reaching viewers in New York City and the surrounding area. A small step at the time -- a seismic one in retrospect.
ESPN Launches
The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network goes live, accelerating cable's role in sports media. The Yankees were already there.
YES Network Debuts
The Yankees launch their own regional sports network, the logical conclusion of the 1979 experiment. YES becomes one of the most valuable RSNs in professional sports and a model for franchise-controlled broadcasting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Were the Yankees the first MLB team on cable television?
Yes. In 1979, the Yankees became the first Major League Baseball team to broadcast games on cable TV, reaching viewers across New York City and surrounding areas. Cable penetration was still low nationally -- roughly 16 to 20 percent of U.S. households -- making it a forward-looking bet on a technology that most sports franchises hadn't yet explored.
How did the 1979 cable broadcasts lead to the YES Network?
The 1979 cable experiment established the principle that a team could distribute its own content through paid cable channels rather than relying solely on over-the-air network TV. That principle evolved through SportsChannel and the MSG Network era before the Yankees launched the YES Network in 2002 -- their own regional sports network. YES became one of the most valuable RSNs in the country.
Why did Steinbrenner put Yankees games on cable in 1979?
Steinbrenner's front office recognized that cable television -- though still a young medium with limited subscribers -- offered a way to control broadcast distribution and generate revenue directly from fans in the New York market. While the immediate financial impact was modest, the long-term bet on cable transformed the franchise's media strategy and helped position the Yankees as one of baseball's wealthiest organizations for decades to come.
A season of tragedy and dysfunction -- and the single smartest business decision any baseball franchise made in the 1970s. The games that cable carried in 1979 are long forgotten. The model they created is still printing money.