RSNs

With a judge approving the company’s disclosure agreement and setting up a June confirmation hearing, Diamond lawyer says the company is poised to exit Chapter 11, while insisting a just-approved November deadline extension is merely a “prophylactic motion.”

Stations have snapped up professional sports rights from struggling RSNs, but could find themselves edged out by direct-to-consumer streamers.

As the viewing landscape continues to get more complex in the streaming era, ESPN is aiming to streamline things for sports fans by integrating video feeds from regional sports networks into its main app and website. Starting this week, subscribers to NESN, which carries Boston sports teams including the Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics, will be able to tune into games via ESPN’s app or on ESPN.com. In May, timed to the start of the WNBA season, Washington, D.C.’s Monumental Sports Network will also be integrated. SportsNet Pittsburgh, which is operated by NESN, is also part of the ESPN agreement, though its coverage will be added down the line.

Major LeagMajor League Baseball rejected a proposed roughly $150 million lifeline extended by Amazon to the nation’s largest regional sports network as it languishes in bankruptcy. Amazon attempted to come to Diamond’s rescue last month by offering to invest roughly $150 million in the company and take over streaming broadcasts for the 11 baseball teams it carries. However, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred called foul on the proposal ahead of a bankruptcy hearing slated for Wednesday, according to a source close to the situation.

The agreement, which was contained in a court filing made Wednesday, is subject to court approval. Diamond Sports has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the Southern District of Texas since it filed for protection in March. The company said in a financial filing last year that it had debt of $8.67 billion.

Amazon is in talks to invest in the biggest regional-sports programmer, a move that would advance the e-commerce giant’s aggressive push into sports content as it takes on streaming rivals like Disney and Netflix. If an agreement is reached, Amazon’s Prime Video platform would eventually become the streaming home for Diamond’s games.

Signaling a major thaw in the icy relationship between Major League Baseball and bankrupt regional sports networks operator Diamond Sports Group, lawyers for the league on Friday said they’d agreed on a framework through mediation to keep 11 MLB clubs on Bally Sports channels through the 2024 season.

Sinclair Broadcast Group wants to pay pennies on the dollar to regain control of a nationwide chain of regional sports networks — which it had paid $10.6 billion to acquire four years ago only to see it fall into bankruptcy this spring. Sinclair, which owns 185 TV stations in 86 markets, has offered roughly $850 million in partnership with Bally’s owner Soo Kim to regain control of its bankrupt subsidiary, Diamond Sports Group, which airs local games on TV under the Bally Sports brand and owns the rights to 39 teams across MLB, the NBA and NHL, sources say.

Numerous franchises are expected to overhaul their local media deals, returning games to free networks. The transition is underway in Arizona.

Diamond Sports yesterday filed a motion in bankruptcy court to compel DirecTV to pay for past carriage fees that Diamond says DirecTV owes it for carrying San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks games. The company, which owns the Bally Sports regional sports networks, and declared bankruptcy last March, alleges that DirecTV stopped paying the fees after Diamond over the summer ended its agreements to broadcast the Padres and Diamondbacks games.

E.W. Scripps has agreements to place in several markets to broadcast games where teams are worried that their games will no longer be telecast by Bally Sports regional networks. The local sports market is entering a potentially chaotic phase, with the Major League Baseball season ending and the NBA and NHL about to start play for 2023-24. Scripps Sports President Brian Lawlor said: “Every team associated with Bally is concerned about the future. As a result they are all doing contingency planning for the short term and the longer term.”

Space City Home Network launches on Tuesday and will be a joint venture of the two franchises. The teams say the move will be seamless for fans, who will be able to watch games on the same channels they used previously.

As the NBA approaches a new season, releasing its 2023-24 schedule earlier this month and rolling out the matchups to watch over the next year, a nettlesome issue continues to hover over the league and half of its teams. Diamond Sports Group, the company that operates 19 Bally Sports regional sports networks across the United States and owns the local television rights for 15 NBA teams, including the Mavericks, Clippers, Cavaliers and Spurs, among others, continues to have its future linger in bankruptcy court. That has caused some uncertainty about how those teams will broadcast their games locally during the upcoming season.

The fate of AT&T SportsNet Pittsburgh appears to have been resolved: Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Pittsburgh Penguins, will buy the cable channel from Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal that’s expected to close in October. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Marquee Sports Network, the regional sports network joint venture of the Chicago Cubs and Sinclair, said it has launched a direct-to-consumer offering for viewers in the Chicago area. The service will cost $19.99 a month for viewers without a pay TV service. Marquee becomes the latest regional sports network to launch a streaming service and more consumers cut the cord with pay TV and look to streaming popular sports programming.

Doug Johnson was answering emails at the Miami East hotel on May 30 when his phone rang with the call he had been awaiting for more than two months: Major League Baseball was taking over San Diego Padres’ television broadcasts the next day from financially troubled Diamond Sports. Pictured: Doug Johnson, SVP and executive producer for Major League Baseball, watches as producers and directers prepare to broadcast a baseball game between Arizona Diamondbacks and Atlanta Braves on Tuesday, July 18, in Atlanta. (John Bazemore/AP)

Houston court OKs Diamond Sports Group’s latest motion to tear up its regional sports networks contract with yet another MLB team on Tuesday.

The ecosystem, held together by the pay TV bundle, is showing wear and tear — like the MLB taking over a bankrupt network — as teams and programmers game out what’s next.

Sinclair’s bankrupt regional sports networks subsidiary Diamond Sports Group has rendered a payment to the Cleveland Guardians, ensuing that the Major League Baseball team will remain on Bally Sports Great Lakes through July. The payment, first reported by Crain’s Cleveland Business, only temporarily suspends the drama surrounding the local TV rights for a handful of MLB teams.

Diamond Sports, which declared bankruptcy in March, made its scheduled July 1 payment to the Cleveland Guardians, according to Crain’s Cleveland Business. But the publication writes that the owner of the 18 Bally Sports regional sports networks must make another payment to the Guardians by Aug. 1. The July 1 payment should guarantee that the Guardians will stay on Bally Sports until at least the end of this month. But it’s unclear what happens if Diamond Sports misses the next deadline.

Sinclair subsidiary Diamond Sports Group has already used federal bankruptcy protection to walk away from one Major League Baseball team, the San Diego Padres, with which it has a money-losing distribution deal. And it’s looking more and more like Diamond will banish more MLB teams from its Bally Sports portfolio of regional sports networks.

Judge Christopher Lopez made the ruling on Thursday in Houston. Diamond Sports, which owns 19 networks under the Bally Sports banner, has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the Southern District of Texas since it filed in March. Diamond said in a financial filing last fall it had debt of $8.67 billion.

Diamond Sports, which owns 19 networks under the Bally Sports banner, said in a statement Tuesday that it decided “not to provide additional funding to the San Diego RSN that would enable it to make the rights payment to the San Diego Padres during the grace period and will no longer be broadcasting Padres games after Tuesday.” The Padres become the first team that MLB will take over production of its broadcasts. MLB set up a local media department during the offseason to prepare for a bankruptcy filing by Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Diamond Sports, which took place in March.

If Sinclair’s Diamond Sports Group doesn’t pay Cincinnati’s MLB team by Friday, the club is set to broadcast its own games starting Saturday vs. the White Sox on a new channel. The Reds have handshake agreements with Charter Communications, the dominant cable TV supplier in the Cincinnati DMA, as well as DirecTV.

The regional sports network model failed for Sinclair Broadcast Group, with a nearly $10 billion investment by the company evaporating in less than four years. But in proof of the adage Wall Street is always looking forward, not backward, the company’s shares are surging, driven in part by enthusiasm over strides the company has made in distribution of its Tennis Channel and sister network T2. With a 30% gain last month, Sinclair stock led all components of the Sportico Sports Stock Index. Overall, the index, which tracks 40 U.S.-traded stocks to gauge the state of the sports business, barely moved in April, closing down one point to finish at 1,165. While that lags the 1.5% gain of the S&P 500 Index last month, sports stocks are still up 11% in 2023, besting the 9% gain of the broader market index.

Diamond Sports Group, which runs the Bally Sports regional sports networks, said that the agreement the NBA’s Phoenix Suns announced today to have games broadcast on TV stations owned by Gray Television breaches its contract with the team and violates bankruptcy law.

A Texas bankruptcy court overseeing the Chapter 11 restructuring of Sinclair’s regional sports networks subsidiary, Diamond Sports Group, has told Diamond to pay half of what it owes to four of the five Major League Baseball franchises to which it had previously withheld TV rights payments for the just-started 2023 baseball season. The unpaid balances, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez said, will be rendered next month, after the restructuring process resets the individual team fees Diamond must pay.

Major League Baseball has asked a federal court overseeing the bankruptcy case involving Sinclair Inc.’s Diamond Sports Group to terminate the broadcaster’s rights to games played by the Cleveland Guardians and Minnesota Twins if it does not make an immediate payment connected to licensing rights.

Major League Baseball filed a motion last week to the Texas bankruptcy court overseeing the restructuring of Diamond Sports Group, the Sinclair subsidiary that manages the Bally Sports regional sports network channels, demanding that the Cleveland Guardians and Minnesota Twins be paid for their TV rights or released from their Bally Sports contracts. Meanwhile, baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, who haven’t received their Bally Sports rights payment either, filed a separate but similar motion on their own behalf.

The Cleveland Guardians and Minnesota Twins appear to be the latest Major League Baseball teams forsaken by Bally Sports, as the bankrupt regional sports network owner restructures and seeks to walk away from its most unprofitable TV contracts with pro sports teams.

The regional sports network home of the Yankees and Nets can now be streamed for as little as $16.66 a month without a pay TV subscription.