Diamond Sports Group revealed in court filings on Wednesday that it has reached new broadcasting deals with the Rays and Tigers, as first observed by Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times (X link). The Rays released a statement confirming their agreement. The Tigers have not commented.
Both teams presumably took reduced rates from their prior contracts with Diamond, which had operated under the Bally Sports name until a recent rebrand. Terms of both agreements remains unreported. Diamond had abandoned its contracts with 11 of its 12 partners, only abiding by the original terms of its agreement with the Braves. Court filings today revealed that some portion of the Braves’ deal was amended, though it’s not clear what changes were made.
Diamond has since hammered out new deals with the Marlins, Cardinals, Angels, Rays and Tigers. The Rangers and Reds are looking elsewhere, while the Twins, Brewers and Guardians agreed to allow Major League Baseball to handle in-market distribution. The Royals are the only team that remains in limbo. Evan Drellich of the Athletic reports that Diamond remains in talks with the Kansas City franchise.
There should be resolution by the end of the week. Diamond is set for a confirmation hearing tomorrow on its reorganization plan. The company needs approval from the bankruptcy court to avoid liquidation. The Braves and MLB had filed an objection last week, expressing their belief that Diamond was in danger of quickly falling back into insolvency. Drellich writes that MLB and the Braves have withdrawn their objection. The Department of Justice is the only party still objecting to Diamond’s plan, as they’ve taken issue with some of the legal releases. That seems to be a minor hurdle, so Diamond appears well positioned to continue operations at least into 2025.
The Mariners are going to be the only team left without a deal. Gonna have to give away all our players and turn into the White Sox. Maybe I need to look into snooker or pocket pool.
@Ignorant Son-of-a-b
Good. Mariners are one step above the White Sox. Let’s hope they have a fire sale.
But I don’t want to default to the Kracken or Seahawks. I guess there is the Tacoma Rainiers.
Ignorant – Rainier cherries are the best!
Ignorant – Snooker? Always reminds me of Andy Capp.
Great cartoon.
dewey – I always viewed Andy as the British version of Al Bundy.
Fever: a.co/d/8k0l3di
Mariners own their RSN 100%.
Garbage company
Amended contracts means amended team budgets and amended off-season spending by teams affected.
Let’s hope Scott Boras amends his expectations for his clients or he may have more than 4 players chasing contracts into spring training.
Let’s face it. The Dodgers and Yankees and Phillies and Mets and Red Sox and Cubs may have some extra dollars to spend but the Guardians and Brewers and Twins and
Reds, Rays, Marlins, Rockies and maybe Tigers won’t be part of any Juan Soto/Corbin Burnes/Pete Alonso/Blake Snell/Max Fried bidding wars. So like Travis D’Arnaud already did, if there is decent money on the table now, GRAB IT NOW for there may not be that much left in anyone’s budget come the end of this year. Only so many salary slots open fellas.
That should make for a pretty good winter meetings.
To be fair, I don’t think any of the aforementioned teams that won’t be part of bidding wars were never gonna factor into the bidding wars in the first place. Maybe the Twins or Tigers could have spent a few bucks, but the other teams probably have already reached their budgets without doing anything. In the end, most FAs will go to a California team, a NY team, the Cubs and mayyybe the Braves. Mayyybe Texas teams as well. They are the only ones who can afford FAs these days.
Rays – As the 4th-highest revenue team in MLB with the 13th highest payroll, my team could afford the best free agents… they just prefer bigger profits over winning.
@fever
That explains more than half the teams in baseball. Greedy owners who refused to put a good product on the field.
Rays – Yes but no other team comes close to the disparity between revenue ranking and payroll ranking, right now my team is 4th in revenue and 14th in CBT payroll.
but we suck and can’t stay healthy, an overpriced free agent or two probably won’t help all that much right now, if we would have showed we could stay competitive through the end of the season the last two seasons they might be more willing to splash the cash
FPG, call ’em out my name. It’s the Boston Red sox!
gbs – Between this year’s financials, the sluggish 2025 season ticket sales, and all the money that came off the books now, perhaps they will actually start to spend what you’d expect from a high revenue team.
Time will tell.
The Red Sox should have been stocking up Portland and Pawtucket during these times, but I don’t think they have as much there as they should by now.
Pitching and defense have to greatly improve Ifcredsox. Cora hasn’t had the guns and by late July, the staff is tanked. As for defense, I blame Cora as spring training is when you get the players to focus, back each other up, hit the cutoff, learn how to bunt and hit and run, etc. That said, the team needs to focus on the glove as great defense saves the arms.
going to be a hard sell for the rays when they don’t know where they are playing this year. they may need to go the trade route more than the FA route.
Braves are already being careful with their spending. That’s why D’Anaud is an Angel, and they grabbed a SS off waivers.
stymee – It’s also why Fried isn’t expected to return to the Braves, right now they are projected to have the 6th-highest payroll in MLB.
And the #1 payroll in MLB projected right now for 2025 is not who you think …. it’s the Phillies.
The Phillies don’t have the highest projected payroll for 2025. The stat you’re referencing is they have the most money committed for 2025 heading into the offseason. It’s unlikely they’ll have the top payroll after the offseason.
lemon – Projections as of right now are based on actual commitments that already exist. Nobody can predict whether it will go up or down because we don’t know who each team may sign or trade.
Middleton recently said he expects the payroll to increase even further next season. Just curious, which team do you think will have a higher payroll than the Phillies?
Unless the Dodgers sign Soto, I don’t see other teams like the Yankees, Padres, or Astros passing the Phillies.
Stop making up bs. Every team is wealthy beyond belief and are only limited by the greed of their owners. Really sad how easily people are misled by billionaires.
Well good news for the Rays they will salvage some money from their TV deal. That might be the only reason they keep guys with salaries over 8 mil on the team.
With the recent success of the Battery Atlanta, the Braves see that current deal in place is undervalued and they want out to negotiate a better deal. There is a reason Diamond held on to that deal and dropped the others initially. When it has run its course I hope that can develop something comparable to Yankees/Dodgers to maximize revenue. I for one would spend the bread to watch 162 without the BS of blackouts.
Well, now I know where I can watch my Tigers next year. I had no issues with BSD as they do have a direct subscription option for us cord cutters. But I know others did.
More significantly — and this hasn’t been widely reported yet — the Diamond-owned RSNs will soon be available for in-market streaming through Prime Video. It should be similar to how Prime Video carries select Yankee games in the Yankees’ TV territory.
Yeah! For just $20 / month, I get The Tigers, Red Wings and Pistons, but I can ‘just pause’ the fees all winter till spring training, since I only care about The Tigers.!
And the madness is allowed to continue.
Robby the robot is fiddling while Rome is burning.
Between the RSN issues and how poorly he has handled John Fisher’s move for the Athletics, Lord Manfred is going down as one of the worst commissioners in MLB.
I wasn’t a huge fan of Bud Selig, but my god he at least would have handled these two situations better.
G