The Yankees and their Gotham Sports App are testing fans’ patience in all the wrong ways this spring.
Monday’s exhibition game against the Pirates was supposed to stream exclusively on the app, but technical issues left many fans staring at error messages instead of baseball. Not exactly the impression you want to make during spring training.
We are aware of a technical issue affecting The Gotham Sports App. Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve the issue.
That’s the tweet YES Network sent out while fans scrambled to find a way to watch their team. Instead of live baseball, YES aired a replay of Sunday night’s Nets game.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Monday’s blizzard kept plenty of people home from work – the perfect setup for settling in with some spring training baseball. Instead, they got technical difficulties.
This isn’t the first time the app has struggled either. The Gotham Sports App launched as a way to combine streaming for several New York teams, including the Knicks and Rangers. But the execution has been rocky, and fans are taking notice.
New York Post’s Mike Vaccaro didn’t mince words on X Monday: “It’s hard to properly describe what a continuing fiasco the Gotham Sports App is. YES, and MSG need to go back to what they were doing before. This never gets better. It’s inexcusable.”
The app model makes sense on paper – consolidate New York sports under one streaming platform. But if fans can’t actually watch the games, what’s the point?
Spring training is supposed to build excitement for the season ahead. Technical glitches during a snowstorm when fans are stuck at home? That’s not the kind of buzz the Yankees were looking for.
With more app-exclusive games coming throughout spring training, they’ll need to figure this out fast. Patience is already wearing thin, and the season hasn’t even started yet.
