Madison Square Garden has sued New York Yankees owner George
Steinbrenner, saying Steinbrenner reneged on a promise to make him a
major part of the Yankees-operated television network after he
suggested creating it more than a decade ago.
Robert Gutkowski accused the
principal owner of the Yankees of breach of contract, fraud and unjust
enrichment. He asked for at least $43 million in damages in a lawsuit
filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Gutkowski said in the lawsuit that he
urged Steinbrenner in 1996 to create a Yankees television network and
that his work helped lead to the creation of the Yankees Entertainment
and Sports Network in March 2002, when it was valued at $845 million.
The network, known as YES, has more than tripled in value, said the lawsuit, which calls Gutkowski its "conceptual architect."
Steinbrenner spokesman Howard J.
Rubenstein called the allegations "false and frivolous." He said
Gutkowski had nothing to do with the initiation of the idea for a
regional sports network and no role in the establishment and success of
it.
"He was never promised that he would
be the CEO of the network, nor was he promised any high-level position
at the network," Rubenstein said in a statement.
Gutkowski was president of Madison
Square Garden Corp., which owns and operates the MSG arena, from 1991
through 1994. He said he told Steinbrenner that the Yankees needed to
create the network or they would be left with "very little leverage" in
local television broadcast and cable rights negotiations.
Gutkowski was the architect of a $486
million, 12-year contract to telecast Yankees games from 1989 through
2000, according to the lawsuit. He was president of the MSG Network, a
cable TV and radio network that broadcasts games of New York City teams
including the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers, from 1985
through 1991.
According to the lawsuit, Gutkowski
told Steinbrenner that cable executives had vowed to crush Steinbrenner
when the rights to Yankees television broadcasts were renegotiated in
2000.
The lawsuit alleged that
Steinbrenner promised Gutkowski that he would be responsible for
building the Yankees' network if it were created and would be
compensated for his efforts or have a role in the network as long as it
existed.
The lawsuit said Gutkowski was hired only occasionally as an outside consultant.
Gutkowski, of Cold Spring Harbor,
N.Y., is a former director of programming at ESPN and from 1995 through
1999 was a member of a sports and entertainment production, marketing
and representation firm that he co-founded, the lawsuit said.
MSG is owned by Cablevision Systems Corp., based in Bethpage, N.Y.