Bankruptcy judge Christopher Lopez has approved two parts of the restructuring deal for Diamond Sports Group, reports Anthony Crupi of Sportico. The judge signed off on the January agreement that raises $450MM in debtor financing and reaches a $495MM settlement with Sinclair Broadcasting Group to resolve litigation which Diamond had filed against its former parent company. ESPN’s Alden González tweets that resolution of the overall bankruptcy likely remains weeks or months away, but this marks an important seal of approval for the company.
The agreements provide a potential path for DSG to continue operating its regional sports networks beyond this year. As part of the restructuring, Diamond agreed to sell the streaming rights to the MLB, NHL and NBA teams that it possesses to Amazon. The latter figures to create some kind of package on its Prime Video service for an additional fee.
Attorneys for Diamond have expressed hope that the cash influx will be able to keep the corporation afloat. Before the Amazon deal, the expectation had been that Diamond would wind down its involvement in the RSN business and shutter its Bally Sports networks after the 2024 MLB season. Diamond believes that will no longer be necessary, although the company’s long-term viability is still the subject of skepticism among league officials.
Diamond has in-market broadcasting for 12 teams but only possesses streaming rights for five of them: the Royals, Tigers, Marlins, Brewers and Rays. It has reached agreements with all 12 teams that it carried through the end of last year — DSG dropped the Padres and Diamondbacks midseason — to remain on the Bally networks for 2024. The Guardians and Rangers took slightly reduced rights fees to prevent Diamond from dropping their deals; it is believed that the Twins had to do the same after their TV contract expired at the end of 2023.
Unfortunately baseball did not fit into Sinclair’s business model of “making grandpa mad”.
Nobody could have foreseen a global pandemic much less cord-cutting.
For those with a very short memory, Disney had to sell the Fox-branded RSNs as a condition of acquiring the Fox movie studio and film library.
It is amazing to me with all the revenue MLB generates and the amount of $$$ teams commit to players these days, that this is even a thing.
I’m not saying it’s necessarily Manfred or MLB’s fault that DSG went bankrupt and almost failed (they still might as the article says), but the league should never be in a position where almost half of its team’s broadcasts are in jeopardy. It’s wild.
Local broadcast rights is what we’re talking about. Most of these contracts were signed before Diamond Sports existed. Each team signed their own contracts. Sorry no one saw the collapse of cable television coming.
Cards – I understand the distinction. I’m saying I don’t understand how MLB didn’t have more awareness and/or control of the situation so that it didn’t suffer the horrific chaos that might have been by not having their games broadcasted had all of this not gotten worked out. That would have been catastrophic if fans weren’t able to watch their teams play, obviously.
Horrific chaos? Have there been times when fans have had no options for watching their favorite team? I haven’t seen that. Yes, it’s uncertainty at this time. I wouldn’t call it chaotic. It’s going to take a bit to finalize the path forward. Have patience.
No one can predict one of their business partners going bankrupt, or when it might happen. There was absolutely no concern at the time the deal was signed. Once signed, the team no longer has the option to pull the deal. Its just business 101.
Cards – Read what I wrote. I didn’t say it was or is a problem. I used descriptive words like might have and would have, inferring that it could have been bad.
You’re missing my point anyway, I think. And that is it should have never gotten to this point and getting it all sorted out so late in the game – literally weeks away from season start.
People might not be aware that the Milwaukee Bucks moved 10 regular season games from Bally to over the air TV. Now are they doing that to promote selling tickets to playoff games or is it because that same organization is not paying them? I have not seen details reported on what the contract implications are but am interested to find out. Will the Brewers do the same this season? At least anyone with an antenna can get the games for FREE while putting up with those dreaded advertising between and during innings. With the cost of parking, tickets and some food at a game it’s expensive to attend pro sports and with the inflation people deal with it’s an interesting economics study going forward.
We’re not talking about the NBA here.
Only games I see regularly here is ones on Bally for the Rays and most the Marlins on theirs too
.. On Spectrum
This bankruptcy judge is going to irritate many readers and posters of this site. Bally’s might be able to continue viability in the future. I find it interesting that the mention of an additional fee is possible on Amazon Prime. If there is one thing people should realize is nothing is free. Somebody always pays. May not b3 you or me but there is someone paying for the content. Well we will all wait for more details to be disclosed.
Amazon jacked up their yearly prime fee. Used to be $79 a year when I first signed up. It’s now $139. Prime video now includes ads during its movies and shows unless you upgrade to the higher tier. Now we’ll have to pay extra to watch MLB games…..what a great time to be alive.
Costs money. Plays ads. Has a bunch of crap you’ll never watch. Only a few things you do.
Didn’t take long for streaming to become the same as cable.
Streaming always had a bunch of crap you’ll never watch. Nothing changed there.
That $139 cost for Prime membership includes expedited shipping on stuff you order from Amazon.
I canceled Amazon Prime when they started showing commercials. I’ll watch free TV if I have to watch commercials.
@Card Do you go to STARBUCKS 3 times a day for $7.00 latte?
I went to a Starbucks once years ago. That was enough.
Kill blackouts!
Yes. The MLB region map is stupid.
When I lived in Mississippi, Reds home games were blacked out because TUPELO, MISSISSIPPI was considered part of Cincinnati’s “local market.”
Gtfoh
North Carolina is considered the Reds local market too. I think it is seven states overall.
Agreed. If I want to watch my local team on MLB app I should be allowed.
All of Canada is considered the blue jays market and as a Nova Scotian it’s easier for me to drive to Boston, NY or anywheres in between than it is to Toronto to see a game, hell there’s three provinces between NS and Ontario. Plus Rogers and sportsnet are absolute streaming garbage. Would love to simply subscribe again to mlb.tv for all my mlb viewing.
I really wish that blackouts would be a thing of the past. But it appears that we will have to wait longer still for that to happen.
Looks like Diamond is in the rough.
People wonder where the Dodgers get the money to sign players like Ohtani.
The Dodgers signed agreement several years ago with Time Warner that pays them $320M a year. I believe it runs to 2039.
Plus all the money from local radio rights. And their share of the National TV contracts.
They own Dodger Stadium. They don’t get the revenue from parking. Ousted prior owner Frank McCourt owns the parking lot. And he was given $2B to go away.
Amazing him and his ex wife almost ran The Dodgers into the ground and he walks away with a kings ransom. His ex wife didn’t get any of it.
And btw McCourt was a longtime friend of then Baseball Commish Bud Selig.
It’s called Warner Bros. Discovery today and they are the same WBD that dropped out of other RSN’s completely after 2023. I believe those teams affected were the Pirates, Astros, and Rockies.
Leach was referring to Time Warner Cable, a spin-off company that was sold to Charter Communications and melded into Spectrum. The Dodgers’ local TV contract is so ironclad that they get paid even if Charter goes out of business.
Also, the Dodgers’ radio rights are part of a joint venture between the ballclub and iHeartMedia.
Thanks. Had to look into it and you are right. Spectrum is the owner of the Dodgers broadcast rights.
At least the Pirates landed on their feet. They are now in a joint venture with the Penguins called “Sportsnet Pittsburgh”.
Baseball needs to fundamentally change its economic model and market disparities.
Ideally they’d follow the NBA model with a mix of local and national partners and spread broadcast money around evenly to make a more competitive game.
But they won’t.
The teams on both coasts will NEVER let that happen.
To be fair, though, there’s never really been long-term parity in baseball, and it’s always been a battle between the “haves” and “have nots.”
…and the game has always survived.
Robby the robot is the large market’s boy and lets them do as they please. This offseason has been a clear indicator of that.
Want to know how valuable MLB streaming rights are? DSG sold ONE year of the rights for 5 teams to Amazon for $110 million.
DSG will no longer be broadcasting baseball in any market after 2024 at this point. This does mean that some NHL and NBA teams may still be on DSG channels after 2024. Going to be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Do the streaming rights apply to all 162 games that each of those 5 teams play? Regardless of which teams they’re playing? If so that’s like 30 percent of the full MLB regular season schedule.
Prime Video’s streaming rights don’t include any national exclusives airing on ESPN, Fox, or Apple TV+.
No, only the games that DSG has the rights to broadcast. So it doesn’t include the handful of nationally televised (FOX/ESPN/TBS) or streaming exclusive (Apple on Friday nights) games.
Who owns the streaming rights to all of these other clubs? I cannot find any info. Why are some sitting on their hands not streaming games?