Two years after the launch of the Gotham Sports app, YES Network and MSG Networks have decided to pull the plug on their joint streaming venture. In lieu of any further investment in the collaboration, the brands have inked a deal that will establish DAZN as the exclusive direct-to-consumer home to YES and MSG during the 2026-27 NBA and NHL seasons.In what’s being characterized as a seamless transition, the process of migrating Gotham Sports users to the DAZN platform will begin at a date that has yet to be determined. Further information on the particulars of the changeover will be made available in the coming months.Financial terms for the agreement were not disclosed.Legacy Gotham Sports accounts will be transferred to DAZN at no additional cost to subscribers. Where applicable, fans who currently access the Gotham streams by way of their authenticated pay-TV plans also will continue to receive YES and MSG content by way of DAZN’s streaming platform. “This is what DAZN does best—connecting fans to the sport they love and creating immersive digital experiences that go far beyond the game,” Shay Segev, CEO of DAZN Group, said in a statement released Wednesday morning. “It is a defining moment for us and underscores our commitment to expanding our footprint in the United States.”First announced in August 2024, the Gotham Sports app officially cleared the launch pad on Oct. 10, or about a week after the 2024-25 NHL season got underway. At the time of its unveiling, the venture was billed as an “easy access point for New York-area sporting events.” Subscribers pay $34.99 per month for the service, while a full-year plan goes for $299.99 per cycle. If the volume of social media gripes is anything to go by, the Gotham Sports app hasn’t always provided a glitch-free experience for its users. Yankees fans have been particularly vocal about various technical snafus, which range from log-in issues to the usual beefs about video quality (freezing, pixelization, buffering, etc.).For all that, Gotham usage has continued to grow over the life of the app, with viewership this spring up nearly 30% versus the year-ago period.Of course, the next tech company that figures out a way to deliver a wholly non-buggy live streaming experience will be the very first. While the legacy cable providers lose as many as 10% of their video subscribers every year, the DTC gold rush has not given rise to “five-nines availability,” operator jargon for any scenario in which a service is up and running 99.999% of the time. (Say what you will about the old-school cable bundle, but the signal comes through pretty whenever you turn on the TV.)More to the point, the cost of launching and maintaining a homegrown streaming service is prohibitively expensive, even when Yankees and Knicks revenues are funding the effort. While Comcast last week celebrated the first-ever quarterly profit at its Peacock division, the streamer’s $189 million Q2 haul remains dwarfed by a cumulative loss of over $11 billion since it launched in April 2020.Owned by billionaire Leonard Blavatnik’s Access Industries, the DAZN platform officially set up shop in the U.S. in 2018. Over the course of the last decade, Blavatnik has invested more than $7 billion into the streaming platform.Sportico and YES last spring launched a new monthly series devoted to the business of sports. The latest installment of Sportico Sports Business Presented by Endava aired earlier this week and featured UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma.