The Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy continues, with a handful of new teams seeking missed payments. According to reports from Daniel Kaplan of the Athletic and Alden González of ESPN, the Rangers and Reds joined an MLB motion seeking overdue rights fees this week.
MLB first filed that motion in early April on behalf of the Twins and Guardians. Diamond, the corporation which operates the Bally Sports networks that carry local broadcasts for nearly half of major league teams, informed those clubs it wouldn’t meet its scheduled payments on April 1. The D-Backs filed a separate motion shortly thereafter seeking missed rights payments.
Diamond apparently also recently failed to meet its obligations to the Rangers and Reds. Despite the missed payments, the Bally Sports networks have continued to operate and carry local broadcasts in each market through the season’s first few weeks. Kaplan reports that the Rangers’ deal calls for Diamond to pay the team $111MM this season. The precise value of the first missed payment is unknown.
González writes that the Reds’ situation is a bit different from those of the other clubs. The Reds have an ownership stake (the precise extent of which is unreported) along with Diamond in the Bally Sports Ohio network that carries games in Cincinnati. As a result, they’re bucketed separately from the other franchises involved in the litigation. According to González, Diamond entered into a 15-day window to meet its obligations to the Reds, beginning Monday. If it fails to do so, the team would be able to get out of the deal and turn in-market local broadcasting responsibilities over to MLB.
The other clubs will have to wait a while longer for resolution. The bankruptcy court has scheduled a hearing for May 31 to consider MLB’s motion for those teams’ overdue fees. Diamond is expected to continue all broadcasts until then. The Reds’ partial ownership offers a potentially quicker endpoint in their case, though that’s only if Diamond doesn’t meet its obligations to them in the intervening two weeks.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has stated on numerous occasions that the league is prepared to take over local broadcasting for teams whose contracts are defaulted. For any local broadcasting deals that fall through, MLB would be able to make games available in-market through streaming and cable platforms free of blackout restrictions.
Whatever happened to HSE?
I don’t know, but I’m glad I don’t have to listen to Norm Hitzges every night….
Personally, I’d like to return to the days of Josh Lewin and Tom Grieve. Those games were always fun.
Ummm, you’re actually looking at it…
Home Sports Entertainment (HSE) was bought by Liberty Media in ’94, changed the name to Prime Sports Southwest in ’95, and was bought by Fox in ’96, becoming Fox Sports Southwest.
What we’re experiencing here is a failure caused by the FCC. When Disney bought the majority of Fox, there were 3 things they weren’t allowed to take ownership of for monopoly purposes: FOX broadcast network, FOX “News”, and FOX Sports.
The FOX broadcast network and FOX Sports make sense (indirectly competing with ESPN [regional vs national]), but Disney doesn’t operate a cable news channel…
The FOX Sports regional networks were sold off (not sure if by Disney or FOX) to a company that definitely didn’t have the pocketbook to cover these giant TV deals that were in place. Disney could have absorbed this with ease.
Fubo is charging me an extra $14 per month for Bally Sports Southwest. I think this is out of line, but I don’t have any other realistic options. I’d like for MLB to take over the Bally train wreck and make all of this more affordable for consumers.
It won’t get more affordable. It’ll just switch who your paymaster is.
You’re SCREWED.
SCROOOOOOED!
Well Bally has their own app which you can pay $19.99 a month, which are you going pay? either way we will all pay something extra just a matter of time. In the Twin Cities it was estimated they had lost nearly a million customers over the past few years where Ballys or Fox Sports North, had been collecting about $4+ a month through the cable companies.that went to NBA, NHL and local baseball teams via rights fees. Cord Cutting hurt them bad and they could not figure out how to survive. Maybe we will go back to the days of limited games on TV? Probably not, but how much is one willing to pay to watch?
I am willing to pay but only if I can watch all games, including home games. I’m not paying to watch half or less than half the games.
Mlb 66 dot ir.
Or crackstreams
Or mlb reddit streams
Or fbstreams dot me
Tons of websites out there for mob nfl nba even soccer Nascar
There’s ALOT of online websites that post links to the games for free. I use a firestick but you can yse your computer or something.
$111M?!!!¡!!!¡!!
Now we know why the rangers have been spending BIG
This will encompass all the RSNs run by Bally eventually. Just a manner of time and cash on hand determines the order.
It will make the local TV income revenue discrepancy between the tier of teams even worse.
They seem to be deciding who to pay based on the contracts which are losing the most money.
which is exactly what you would do with failing assets; it would make even less sense if they were dropping the deals that were making the most money, when they clearly have no money to begin with…
…and then there is MASN. You think you have it bad.
You can’t even watch a Rangers game from home for free anymore. Costs out the ass.
Hook up your computer to your TV and stream games online. Tons of free websites out there
Mlb 66 dot ir.
Or crackstreams
Or mlb reddit streams
Or fbstreams dot me
Tons of websites out there for mob nfl nba even soccer Nascar
There’s ALOT of online websites that post links to the games for free. I use a firestick but you can yse your computer or something. Long as you have internet.
Those overdue rights fees belong to the Reds.
I just hope this means the blackouts for Reds games might be lifted on mlbtv if they don’t pay within the 15 day grace period.
If you stream games online using certain websites there’s no blackouts. Plus there’s tons of free websites where ppl post links to games. Some of the websites I use are:
Mlb 66 dot ir.
Or crackstreams
Or mlb reddit streams
Or fbstreams dot me
Tons of websites out there for mob nfl nba even soccer Nascar
There’s a lot of options out there to stream games online free.
You can use a firestick the silk browser or you can use your computer and hook it up to your tv using a hdmi cord.
(Beep!)
“Hello. This is an attempt to collect a debt…”
The SOB son off Bob wants there money how about refunding the reds fans for last year and this year teams wanting there money like there broke and a team worth all most 2 billion dollars