Courtesy Sports Business Journal

(February 16, 2010) The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees have taken their rivalry from the field to the boardroom, with the teams’ regional sports networks battling about which one is more popular.

Trading bats and balls for press releases and e-mails, NESN and YES Network each staked their claims last month as the country’s top RSN in 2009.

The talking points were as follows:

* YES Network reached more viewers in 2009 than any other RSN.

* A higher percentage of local residents watched NESN than any other RSN in 2009.

The off-field spin started Jan. 14 when YES Network sent out a press release that highlighted its advantage over NESN. Ranking the RSNs by the average number of prime-time viewers, YES finished first for the year with an average of 82,000 homes tuning into the network each night. NESN finished second with 76,000 homes.

But when ranked by local ratings, NESN wound up first, with a 3.16 average prime-time mark. YES tied for 14th at 1.10.

The numbers represent the entire year of programming and include Nets games on YES and Bruins games on NESN. But the numbers are driven mainly by the Yankees and Red Sox, which bring the highest ratings, by far, to both.

NESN has held the mantle as the country’s highest-rated RSN since 2004; YES Network has been the country’s most-watched RSN for the past seven years. But not until this year did the two sides started sniping at each other.

“We watched YES make this same claim for the past three or four years,” said Joel Feld, NESN’s vice president of programming and executive producer. “It was time for us to step up.”

Feld says that YES’ lead in total household viewership is nothing more than a result of New York’s total market size. New York is the top DMA in the country, with nearly 7.5 million total homes. Boston has 2.4 million.

Feld believes a rating number that computes an average number of homes watching is more indicative of a network’s popularity than coming up with total number of viewers, which is dependent on market size.

“We sell off of our ratings number. That’s how we measure our success,” he said.

YES Network did not make any of its executives available to comment for this column.

So who’s right? Most industry executives I talked to sided with YES Network, arguing that the bigger overall number of viewers leads to more revenue.

Of course, most of the industry executives I talked to are Yankees fans.

“I care more about the eyeballs,” said Yankees fan Larry Novenstern of Optimedia. “If you’re trying to reach eyeballs, you want the most impressions. It’s more bang for the buck.”

Another Yankees fan, longtime media consultant Neal Pilson, also sided with YES Network.

“You sell demos and total number of viewers,” Pilson said. “The economy of the New York market is so much greater than Boston. That’s why the Yankees can have a bigger payroll.”

The final word goes to media consultant Mike Trager, who is an Orioles fan.

“You know what the answer is? They’re both right,” he said.

For the record, the Orioles’ main RSN is MASN, which posted a 0.65 rating/7,000 homes during prime time in 2009. Just like in the standings for the past decade, that mark lags well behind the Yankees and Red Sox. Orioles fans can only hope to see improvements in both ratings and in the standings in the days ahead.

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