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Another cross-border poaching war to lure New York businesses will end with NBC Sports moving its headquarters from storied Rockefeller Center to the waterfront in Stamford, Conn.
Officials said yesterday that the sports network had agreed to move hundreds of jobs to the Nutmeg State, lured by a generous package of tax breaks and perks in excess of $35 million.
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy has made no secret of his road-show pitches inside Big Apple turf to bag a media company like NBC Sports, adding to the roster of Fortune 500 companies that have jumped to Connecticut to escape higher taxes in New York.
Connecticut’s corporate tax rate of 7.3 percent is half that of New York’s 14.6 percent, according to an Ernst & Young study released in July.
Malloy recently persuaded Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide to leave its White Plains, NY, headquarters to go to Stamford, aided by generous tax breaks.
“The governor goes out of state aggressively discussing the benefits of relocating to Connecticut and is doing it quite successfully,” Ron Angelo, Connecticut’s deputy commissioner of Economic and Community Development, told The Post.
Gov. Cuomo’s office had no comment on the relocation. Mayor Bloomberg shrugged off the move, saying the Big Apple still is the proud home of the Peacock Network and its parent company, NBC Universal, at 30 Rock Center.
“New York City is proud to be the global headquarters for NBC Universal,” said Chris Coffey of the Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment.
“Since 2004, NBC has added an additional 2,000 jobs in New York City and is expecting to add even more next year. Additionally, they recently renewed their lease at 30 Rock for another 10 years. They are terrific corporate citizens.”
The departure of the sports unit and more than 300 employees from the network headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza will free up several floors of rarely found office space at the landmark tower.
NBC Sports already has some operations in Stamford, including its Olympics group and its digital sports staff. The network’s Versus Productions Studio — part of cable giant Comcast, which acquired NBCU this year — is at a separate location there but will be folded into NBC Sports on Jan. 2.
All of the sports unit will be consolidated at a new facility being built on a 32-acre site that once housed a Clairol hair products factory. The new facility has been tentatively named the Connecticut Film Center.
NBC also uses the Rich Forum Theater in Stamford to film the Jerry Springer and Maury Povich television shows.
Mark Lazarus, head of NBC Sports, will likely have offices in both Stamford and at 30 Rock.
Expected to join NBC on the waterfront site will be rival ESPN, which already has studios in Bristol, Conn., and digital animator Blue Sky Studios, maker of “Rio” and “Ice Age.”
Cable companies such as the YES Network and A&E Television also have offices in Stamford.
“We will have a world-class media and entertainment facility that will be much friendlier to the industry than elsewhere,” said Angelo.