There was a notable development in the Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy saga this evening. The court ruled in Major League Baseball’s favor on yesterday’s hearing regarding Diamond’s efforts to restructure a number of its local broadcasting deals.
The broadcasting conglomerate has temporarily been paying reduced rights fees (75%, according to Alden González of ESPN) to the Twins, Guardians, Diamondbacks, Reds and Rangers since filing for bankruptcy two and a half months ago. Diamond had sought a ruling that’d require the team to renegotiate their broadcasting contracts to more accurately align with the current market value of broadcasting rights — which has dropped sharply in recent years due to the rise of cord-cutting, contributing to Diamond’s bankruptcy filing.
That argument wasn’t persuasive to the court, which concluded that a change in the market “doesn’t mean the contract price is clearly unreasonable” (relayed by Evan Drellich of the Athletic). As a result, Diamond is now responsible for backpay to the five organizations it had been paying the reduced rate. According to González, the court hasn’t yet set the deadline for those payments. If Diamond fails to meet its responsibilities by whatever dates are ultimately chosen, MLB would have the ability to reclaim the broadcasting rights for those clubs from the Bally networks.
“MLB appreciates the ruling from the federal bankruptcy court in Houston requiring Diamond to pay the full contractual rate to clubs,” the league said in a statement relayed by González. “As always, we hope Diamond will continue to broadcast games and meet its contractual obligations to clubs.”
Diamond carried broadcasts for 14 major league teams entering the season. It forfeited the ability to carry Padres’ games earlier this week by opting not to meet a scheduled payment in that contract. MLB promptly took over in-market broadcasting and is making those games available both for streaming on MLB.TV and via other cable platforms. The league reiterated this evening it is prepared to do so for any other contracts which Diamond lets lapse. Today’s ruling increases the odds of Diamond abandoning other deals, though the corporation hasn’t announced any immediate plans to do so.
End blackouts. That’s all fans really care about.
Not sure how much can be done given the cable contracts. My guess is each team would have to wait for individual deals to expire. As some markets have competing providers with different end dates, it doesn’t seem feasible right now.
All I hear is “end blackouts”. Didn’t someone sue the NFL & won thus ending their blackouts? How come that same ruling doesn’t apply to baseball? How come a fan hasn’t sued? I’m curious since I don’t follow all of the is so closely due to my ability to watch anything via live streaming
Unless it was recently changed, the NFL requires a sellout 48 hours prior to kickoff for the blackout to be lifted. In many markets such is routine. Thus no blackouts. How many MLB teams sell out in advance?
We all need Diamond Joe Quimby to fix this
Diamond is hanging by their fingertips from the 99th floor of the Vaseline building. Even Diamond Joe couldn’t save them.
Diamond Joe Quimby is connected and a miracle worker
Take more than a miracle now
Stop the stupid in market blackouts! I will pay for a year of baseball not your stupid kardashians!
Cable and baseball have decided the solution to careening off a cliff is doing it together.
Diamond failed to renegotiate at 75% of the original rate. Yet MLB will only be giving the Padres 80% of what their original contract with Diamond was worth. And as always, MLB will screw the fans.
Fans can now watch the Padres on every provider they could previously be seen on and there is a press conference called for tomorrow that is expected to announce two more. I am quite sure that those TV providers are not getting Padres broadcasts for free.
The Padres are getting 52% of the single team packages that are being sold to watch them locally. As of this morning, the reports from AwfulAnnouncing and Sports Busniess Journal are that between 125,000 and 135,000 subscriptions have been sold at $19.99 a month or $74.99 for the rest of the season.
The Padres are not hurting when it comes to TV money. By the end of the season they will probably be earning more than they got from DSG.
Wow. An actual intelligent argument with research. I’m impressed. Thanks man.
From a fan who watches many games of various teams? Dumping horrid announcers just might improve viewership of some teams. I’m talking to you, Tampa Bay, Washington, miami and a few more with flat out awful announcer and color commentary in the booth.
So glad to see Chip Carey go to STL. Don’t tell Oli and pitching staff he’s the reason and not Willson.
You just won a World Series in Atlanta with Chip. So your point makes no sense. Chip took the Cards job because it was his dream job, and he’s definitely an improvement. Always thought the Cards booth was boring… until now. Even if Chip is prone to errors, he’s got alot of enthusiasm like his grandfather. Skip was analytical but kinda boring. But he’s a big part of Braves legacy and deservedly so.
Chip didn’t win or lose any games, but taking the job in St Louis was as much about seeing the writing on the wall as a desire to reconnect with his legacy,
The Braves/Bally broadcast teams were completely revamped this year, with Kelly Crull and Jeff Francoeur the only remaining members from the previous three seasons.
I’ve followed the Braves for 33 years and baseball twice as long, I’ve listened to announcers with a variety of styles, but Chip’s in a class of his own, and that’s not a compliment. He broadcasts like an uninformed fan who, after 30 years in the job, doesn’t know a routine fly ball from a 450 homer, doesn’t understand statistics, and doesn’t care if he makes egregious mistakes.
TBS hired Chip for the 2008 postseason and just as quickly. Writing for the New York Times, William Leitch spelled out the reasons for the quick ax.
“. . . mostly because he was horrible. Caray’s mistake-laden, wait-is-he-actually-watching-these-games? work during the baseball playoffs humiliated both him and the network, and it was so bad that you almost had to feel for him. Almost.”
Deadspin was less kind.
“Chip, the nepotistic unemployable who was so bad in Tuesday’s tiebreaker that he momentarily made baseball fans forget that the Tigers were totally jobbed.”
Times sports media writer Richard Sandomir was eloquent in his description of Caray’s performance,
Every announcer makes mistakes, but “Caray’s lips form a pattern of an announcer out of his element. The producer, Glenn Diamond; the director, Lonnie Dale; and the statistician are either failing him or he is spurning their advice and support.”
Any reasonable individual receiving such public criticism and being unceremoniously fired from a prestigious job would take a step back and look to improve, but Caray was as bad after being fired as he was before.
Awful Announcing regularly named Chip one of the game’s worst, but he was Skip’s son. and the Braves kept him on board.
Broadcasters typically move to keep their team together, but Caray’s contract ended without an offer on the table, and he pivoted to the old homestead idea, signing to announce Cardinals games.
By all accounts, Chip’s a nice guy, but historically, he’s not been good at his job. For the sake of Cardinal fans, I hope he’s finally decided to make changes.
Chip is so bad. It is too bad anyone hired him.
So glad to see Chip go! Now we just need to get Darren O’Day on a full-time basis. That dude is awesome.
Huh? Dwayne Staats and Brian Anderson are a great team. I also watch all the Bally Sports, Root, AT&T, etc, and there are some bad ones but the Rays team is very good.
Absolutely seconded. I’ve never heard anyone slag off the Rays booth. If anything the opposite. I’ve seen people hate the Devil Rays, hate Tropicana Field, hate that they exist… but complement the TV booth as one of the best in the business.
This is a joke right? Chip is one of the worst announcers in sports
Huh? Tampa Bay has one of the best booths in baseball. Miami is great when it’s Paul & Tommy. When it’s Rod or Gaby… no. It was decent when it was Paul & Todd Hollandsworth. It was great when it was Rich Waltz & Tommy Hutton. That was a fantastic pair. Why they broke that up, I dunno.
Rich Walz and Tommy Hutton was the best pair the Fish have had in the booth, yet both were let go a cpl years apart. Hutton for daring to critisize mistakes made on the field by M’s players and Walz for no idea. Walz was his terrific, same self this past winter during WBC play and surprised no team has picked him up to do PBP for them.
As for Staats and Anderson in Tampa? Everything is seen through “Rays” colored lenses. Tampa has never made mistakes and never do. It’s always the fault of something (or someone) else. THAT has always, to me been how NOT to build on a new base of fans.
Look at the good ones (now announcing) around the league a few games and notice how they can make light sometimes of poor play, or have the knack of critisizing their own without trying to constantly pander to the small, hard core fan base which will not draw in more and I mean David Simms in Seattle, Don Orsillo in San Diego, Todd Kalas in Houston, the entire team in SF.. Krukow, Kuiper, Miller.. Few more, but get the idea.
Listened to the Miami broadcast for part of the Padres game when Bally was having issues and they were good.
This is crazy where the Pads for instance have run up a pretty massive payroll on the back of having this revenue incoming so this could get really tricky if it isnt made up with the MLB plan. If i were a tea, with an expiring deal I would go for a short term deal and hope inflation and the economy look better in a couple years.
Poor Pads. My heart breaks for them.
The Padres were getting paid on a 20 year/$1.2 billion TV deal of which the previous owner walked away with $200 million of that $1.2 billion. The $60 million they were reportedly getting this season in no way covers their payroll. Not even close.
It’s got nothing to do with inflation and the economy is basically fine. It’s got to do with how people do at-home entertainment anymore. They just don’t have cable.
The economy is just fine. Everything costs far more than it used to and the average wage for the average person has not increased in a meaningful way in over a decade. Everything is fine.
Nationwide, cable and satellite TV subscriptions have fallen by 25 million households since 2012. During that time frame live TV streaming services like FUBO, YouTube TV, Hulu+, Philo, and othersm plus streaming services from major carriers like DIRECTV Stream, Sling from Dish have gained 27 million subscribers
The number of people watching live TV has not fallen, they have just changed how and where they access it. I watch as much live TV on my tablet sitting by the pool or on a computer monitor as I work as I do on a TV. I am watching Bloomberg live as I type right now.
This could be horrible for the older generation that still have cable tv. Now they will end up possibly paying an additional $20 a month and you know the cable company won’t lower the price either.
It’s time. Even with cable, you’ve had to have Special packages on top of Special packages to even receive. Only in recent years did MLB Extra Innings come down in price. I remember paying nearly $200 extra on top of satellite packages 10 years ago to watch the Cubs once WGN cut back so far on broadcasting games giving way to Comcast SportsNet Chicago. It’s far better now, with far more value to just use MLB.tv. Older people just need to get with it in this case. It’ll actually save them money in the long run. Blackouts might be confusing for them tho.
I’m not sure what the definition of “old” is anymore, but I do fine with watching almost every game on my desktop.
The Padres are still available on all the cable providers they were available on before. Its just a different channel.
This is fantastic news.
yeah I saw the price of gas and drinking water as “clearly unreasonable.” Judge didn’t agree with me either when he put me on probation
Brewers? They are paying the Brewers in full or are they just forgotten in these articles?
Apparently they’re paying the Brewers and 7 other teams the full contract amounts…so far.
MLB should offer free no-frills OTA coverage for all markets road games, and charge premium fees for home games. Those who want bells and whistles can pay a streaming fee.Accessible to most, profitable for all.
What bells and whistles can they offer? Would no-frills be a single camera angle with no audio? I’m genuinely wondering how this would look.
It wouldn’t look at all. You have to have a broadcast station in each market in order to provide OTA services.
Make the audio free and allowing fans to see the games for $20 a month will grow baseball interest again
Dude… Braves radio broadcast the other day talked about snorting hot sauce to get rid of head colds! Are you talking about that kind of baseball interest? … because I don’t know what was going on as far as the play by play goes at the time… that was insane.
That’s a good idea
Did they really say that? Too funny. I guess that is better than bleach to get rid of COVID.
MLB and it’s teams executives are basically the only people walking the earth, who didn’t forsee the changing landscape of viewership away from the old cable model. Now, despite getting the ruling their way, they still have legal fees, and are forced to get money out of a bankrupting company.
Stevie Wonder knew streaming would be the dominant media form pretty quickly, yet MLB still allowed it’s teams to lock themselves into massive contracts that may end up not being worth the paper they’re written on.
MLB owns the largest streaming company in the world. They have been prepared for this for a long time,
If the teams don’t get paid by DSG immediately, they will be awarded that money in the discharge of the bankruptcy. They are guaranteed to get that money. The other thing they get is their broadcast rights back. Its a win-win for the teams if DSG defaults and a lose-lose for DSG.
*Owned. They sold all their stakes, if you’re referring to the original BAM
MLB sold a small part of MLB Advanced Media that they had spun off into BAMtech in 2015. It streamed ESPN, FOX Sports 1 &2, MLS, Riot Games,and BAMTech Europe
They still own the part which streams MLB and NHL games, PGA and LPGA, plus many other clients in and out of sports.
Still own. They spun off BAMtech as a subsidiary in February 2015, but continue to hold streaming rights to MLB, NHL, PGA Golf, and several other properties.
They sold their stake in BAMTech.
They’re also not guaranteed to get that money. A judicial ruling in bankruptcy doesn’t automatically make the payee solvent enough to cover their legal liabilities. Even secured creditors can be out of pocket in bankruptcy proceedings – when it gets awarded, it’s still not even paper money unless the company is liquidated wirg enough to pay out with.
Waiting on other companies to go bankrupt, isn’t smart planning. MLB has been behind the 8-ball on this stuff for a long time.
DSG filed for reorganization not dissolvement. That means they do have the funds to cover some obligations if not all obligations. Time frame for paying on those obligations is what this bankruptcy is about.
#1 on that list of obligations they will have to pay is the broadcasting rights for MLB and other sports. They preceded the loans SINCLAIR/DSG took out to buy the RSNs and the judge has already ruled that they take precedent.
If they don’t pay, the judge will disallow their other requests in bankruptcy proceedings.
Then they will have to file for liquidation bankruptcy and DSG will be no more. All those RSNs will be gone. The MLB and other sports will get paid 1st from the proceeds of that liquidation and the people holding the notes against the company will lose billions.
MLB has shown that they were prepared for this.
MLB Advanced Media spun off Bamtech in 2015. BAMtech did not do the MLB or minor league streaming and did not hold the rights to NHL or PGA streaming deals. It was basically ESPN+, HBO Now, WWE, and BAMtech Europe. They sold it to Disney because it was not baseball or live sports related.
In a reorganization bankruptcy like DSG filed, creditors are paid. The timeline for those payments changes. Sometimes the interest rates or contractual penalties for late payments are changed.
DSG said and its quoted in one of the articles on MLBTR that they had the money to pay. They just don’t want to because the loans they took out to buy the 14 RSNs is coming due and they f’d up on the purchase by not seeing the changing landscape of broadcast TV.
MLB is in the cat bird’s seat. Either DSG will default and they will get their broadcast rights back without having to buy failing RSNs or DSG will pay full price.
The irony is if you look at the court transcriptions, it’s as if some how DSG and Sinclair make Rob Manfred and MLB look like sympathetic figures. Which is almost impossible to do, but they did.
They essentially tried to blackmail MLB into giving them all the extra streaming rights they didn’t already posses — which is most of them, and certainly most likely the ones with higher value — and MLB wasn’t biting.
They’ll be hiccups with all this to be sure, but once this all clears through — and it will to some degree — MLB will package everything together and let folks watch it all.
The bigger RSNs are going to have to get a bigger cut — they’re numbers are far bigger than most of the others — for this to work however. NESN, YES, Dodgers SportsNet, etc. have huge valuations compared to most of the BSNs. Theres a few that do well, but not like that.
Appeal
It’s ridiculous that DSG bid full price to buy the stations holding the rights knowing that cord cutting was happening and was going to get worse. Then they turn around and argue they shouldn’t have to pay what they outbid others for. No wonder the judge didn’t buy their lame argument.
They bid far over market price at $9.6 billion and then took out $8.3 billion in loans to complete the purchase.
When Disney made the purchase of Fox, the RSNs were valued at less than half of what Sinclair paid for them.
MLB’s goal is to attract younger fans. As such, they hide their product and especially their playoff product on platforms not used and undesirable to younger fans.
Can anyone explain to me why this went to court in the first place? Isn’t it the fault of Diamond that they chose to sign the contract? When a person takes out a ARM and defaults they lose the house and their credit gets crushed. Because they made a decision to sign the contract and then the future didn’t play out the way they wanted it to, they should get leniency? I didn’t read the transcript but one report quoted the judge saying it was “tough decision’. Why?