Smithtown’s Ben Jaekle sat down to watch the first Yankees spring training game on Feb. 20. It was only available on the Gotham Sports App.
A sure sign of spring for winter-weary Yankees fans.
“I turn on my TV and then I’m hit with the screen freezing,” Jaekle said. “It wouldn’t log me in. After trying for 20-30 minutes. I gave up.”
This, apparently, is not a unique experience for some Gotham Sports App users.
The Gotham Sports App launched just before the 2024 NHL and NBA seasons when YES Network and MSG Networks combined the YES and MSG+ apps. The app is equally co-owned by the networks. It streams every game that appears on the networks for six of the New York City area’s sports teams (the Yankees, Nets, Knicks, Rangers, Islanders and Devils, and in some markets, the Buffalo Sabres), plus other programming. It does not stream games that are not on MSG or YES.
A screenshot of the Gotham Sports App’s main menu before a Yankees spring training game.
Phil Bellomo of Massapequa, who watches Yankees and Islanders games on the app, said: “Once I’m able to actually log in, I’m confident that I can watch the game. Just getting there is the real issue. It’s like, ‘OK, I’m ready, I fed my kids, I’m done with my work. Let me sit down and I’m like, I have a little anxiety: Is this going to come on right away? Am I going to have to wait 15 minutes to reauthenticate? Am I going to have to send myself an email? Is it actually going to work this time?’ ”
Social media is full of stories like this when the app has issues.
But the app is undergoing a surge in viewership after a recent price drop, according to data provided to Newsday by MSG and YES. The app is free if you already have YES and/or MSG through a participating provider. You pay for it if you don’t, as much as $299.99 for one year after the recent price drop from $359.99, or $34.99 per month (down from $41.99).
Surge in viewership
On March 31, all seven teams had their games streamed on the app for the third time in its history. On that day, the app achieved its highest single-day total minutes streamed (23% higher than any other day) and a new single-day high in unique users (21% higher than any other day).
“I think it’s great,” said Noel Eisenberg, a Knicks fan who splits his time between Brooklyn and Mamaroneck. “I really have found it not to be that buggy and I use it frequently. I guess I’m the one.”
A screenshot view of the Knicks vs. Nets game on March 21 on the Gotham Sports App.
There must be others: According to MSG and YES, overall app viewership is up 29% year over year, minutes streamed per user is up 28%, and customer satisfaction for the 90-day period through Feb. 25 was up 67% relative to the launch period, which started in October 2024.
Even with the issues, average viewership for the Yankees’ first five spring training games on the app was up 87.6% over the entire Gotham Sports App spring training schedule from 2025.
Islanders viewership is up 99% and the Knicks are up 44%.
A screenshot of the login screen on the Gotham Sports App.
“I think it’s doing quite well,” said Matt Duarte, YES Network’s vice president for strategy and development. “I think from the business perspective, we’re seeing a ton of interest in our teams from a viewership perspective, as well as time spent, and some metrics that we’ve seen in terms of growth year over year. I think it is due to interest in the teams and in the actual viewing experience and also due to some of the features, functionality and experience that I think we’ve continue to hone since we launched the app in October 2024.”
Gary Harding, an Islanders season ticket holder from Halesite, said he sometimes watches the start of night games on the LIRR during a late commute from Manhattan.
“It’s very convenient,” he said. “Even on the train, I have no issues with the [app]. No issues with the bandwidth or anything like that. I really think the quality is good. I’m pleased with it.”
“In general, the app is decent,” said Chris Snel of Point Pleasant Borough, N.J., who watches Knicks games on it. “I’d say it works, I don’t know, three quarters of the time. Every app has its issues, right?”
One of those issues: Snel wanted to watch the Knicks play at Denver on March 6. He fired up the Gotham Sports App, and couldn’t get it to work.
“It just gave me the spinning wheel,” he said.
Since the game was a 9 p.m. start, Snel gave up and called it a night.
Sean Murphy of New City, N.Y., who watches the Yankees, Knicks and Rangers on the app, was able to cut the cord and ditch cable when it became available.
“That was a huge savings,” Murphy said, “because [sports] was the only reason I had cable . . . I think it’s great. I think it’s seamless. I’m able to pick whatever game that I want to watch and it takes me right there and it’s pretty seamless. As far as lag time or anything, I don’t have any issues. I would for sure recommend it.”
Reviews are mixed
The app is an ambitious step in housing direct-to-consumer live sports in one place.
On Feb. 20, the companies introduced lower-priced YES-only packages with special offers through April 15. Six days later, the app was added for purchase through Amazon’s Prime Video service, expanding its reach.
In theory, the Gotham Sports App should make life easier for New York sports fans who want most of their favorite team or teams’ games available in one place.
And it is. When it works.
When it doesn’t work, its customers have a litany of complaints.
“It crashes,” Jaekle said. “It constantly kicks you out and forces you to log back in. Even when you are in, the screen will freeze, so there’ll be a delay if you’re watching like a live game and maybe you want to rewind. It freezes up and locks up with that. In short, just very, very poor performance.”
A screenshot of an error page on the Gotham Sports App. Credit: Phil Bellomo
Daniel Kelly II, the associate dean and clinical professor at the Preston Robert Tisch Institute for Global Sport at NYU School of Professional Studies, isn’t just an expert. He watches the Knicks on the app.
“I think overall, it is ambitious,” he said. “It’s a highly intuitive and comprehensive effort to move from traditional cable over to digital, live streaming. I love it. I love the concept. I love everything about it. For me as someone who cut the cord proverbially and moved over from subscriptions and cable over to live streaming, this falls in alignment to the way I consume sport.
“The glitchiness is a part of it. I’ve had glitchy issues with live streaming sports. So I think that for me, that’s a part of the experience. The price point is a bit high. I think that’s kind of where, if I’m paying this price point, I do want the service to be at the level it was before with cable.”
App store reviews are mixed. As of April 1, the app had a rating of 4.2 out of five stars on the Apple App Store (just under 8,000 reviews).
But as of that date 49 of the 55 listed reviews from March were one star (the lowest rating possible), four were two stars, and two were five stars.
The five-star ones had the subject lines, “Much much better” and “I love it.”
The one-star ones had subject lines such as, “Just frustrating,” “Terrible App,” “Worst App Ever” and “Current version does not work.”
The app had 2 stars on Google Play in far fewer reviews (just under 2,000).
Every review was answered by a Gotham Sports App representative inviting the customer to reach out via phone or email for support if needed.
“Whether it’s the app stores,” Duarte said, “whether it’s social media, whether it’s direct phone calls, chat, emails, we are extraordinarily diligent — our live ops team, I should say, giving them the credit — in terms of responding, being responsive and trying to learn and understand what’s going wrong.
“At the end of the day, it’s hard, right? Streaming in sports, it’s a hard business that we’re continuing to improve upon, and we want to understand what we can be doing better and how to address it.”
Improving the app
Two days after Jaekle had to give up on watching the Yankees’ spring opener, a blizzard hit New York with more than 30 inches falling in some places on Long Island.
The Yankees were playing the Mets in another Gotham Sports App exclusive. It drew the highest spring training streaming audience in YES history (including the YES App) with a 59% increase over the previous record.
The very next day: Another Gotham Sports App exclusive Yankees spring training game. But the app was so glitchy that day that YES issued a statement on social media that read, “We are aware of a technical issue affecting The Gotham Sports App. Thank you for your patience while we work to resolve the issue.”
An error message appears on the Gotham Sports App.
That post on X had 300 replies. None of them were kind.
“I think we’re in a much better place than we had been from the start of when we launched,” Duarte said.
“What we’ve done over the last year and a half since we launched was be very attentive to improving the overall product itself as well as the customer experience and really being attentive to users and fans outreach.
“I think we’ve made great strides and we’ll continue to do so because I think the most important thing for our fans is to deliver a best-in-class product experience that is kind of commensurate with the teams that we partner with.”
Anthony Rieber covers sports media and business and professional sports (you know, games and trades and things). He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since Jan. 1, 2026.