The New York State Court of Appeals confirmed the fair market value of the Washington Nationals’ television rights Tuesday, a step that will help the team collect tens of millions of dollars in missing rights fees. New York’s highest court found the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which is controlled by the Orioles, has no right to take the dispute over $100 million in missing rights fee payments from 2012-16 to an independent arbitrator, which they had been seeking. The court did not compel a payment of the money immediately, and the two sides must continue negotiating over the amount of money to be paid to the Nationals.
The new media rights deal is worth $7.7 billion when the previously announced $1.1 billion agreement with The CW is included. NASCAR did not reveal monetary figures at the news conference held at the Music City Center one day before its season-ending awards ceremony.
Clark will report to Kenny Gersh, MLB’s executive vice president of media and business development. The 40-year-old will oversee distribution agreements for local media, the MLB Network, MLB.TV and the Extra Innings cable package.
While Major League Baseball’s owners stole the headlines this week when they voted to approve the Oakland Athletics’ move to Las Vegas, the cogs behind another potentially transformative development for the sport churned away in a Houston courtroom. Judge Christopher Lopez of the United States Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of Texas approved a deal between Diamond Sports and the NBA teams whose games it is under contract to broadcast on its Bally Sports networks. In the process of petitioning the judge to approve that pact, a lawyer for bankrupt Diamond Sports suggested the company hopes to come to a similar agreement with the 12 MLB teams whose games it is still contractually obligated to broadcast. But lawyers for both Diamond Sports’s parent company, Sinclair, and MLB raised concerns with the NBA deal, centered on its effect on the company’s ability to pay for its baseball obligations, even through next season.
The new distribution will provide NWSL fans viewing across linear and streaming each weekend. The four-year partnerships total a 40x multiple from NWSL’s previous deal.
The agreement, which was contained in a court filing made Monday, 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. While there will be a reduction in rights payments for some teams, the local rights for 15 franchises will revert back to those teams and the league at the end of this season. The NBA is also on the verge of beginning negotiations for national rights, which expire after the 2024-25 season.
The Rip City Remix of the NBA G League have announced Gray Television’s MNT affiliate KPDX Portland, Ore. (Fox 12 Plus) as its official broadcast partner, making all Remix home games accessible to fans for […]
Exclusives
The league’s longtime television partners, including ESPN and Turner, are undergoing major changes, which could alter how games are watched.
Numerous franchises are expected to overhaul their local media deals, returning games to free networks. The transition is underway in Arizona.
Scripps will televise all locally broadcast Coyotes games over the air to residents of Arizona and surrounding states within the team’s broadcast territory.
Bankrupt broadcaster Diamond Sports, the nation’s largest regional sports network, has made a take-it-or-leave-it offer to cut rights fees to the NHL and NBA in a last-ditch bid to avoid liquidation. Diamond proposed cutting the fees to both leagues by up to 20% ahead of a bankruptcy court-imposed Sept. 30 deadline, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said Thursday.
Amazon.com Inc. and Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. are competing to broadcast a new package of Nascar races, with the league trying to boost its overall revenue by bringing in more media partners. The companies are vying with a third broadcaster for a package of between six and eight races during the summer months, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private negotiations.
The Pac-12 conference is considering an offer from Apple for streaming rights that would kick in when its current TV contract ends. But it may be too little, too late.
The network will broadcast all NASCAR Xfinity Series races starting in 2025: 33 race weekends per year.
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.
The Jazz announced Tuesday that they will air games on KJZZ Salt Lake City starting in the upcoming 2023-24 season. The independent station owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group will broadcast all non-nationally televised Jazz games for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, the team will establish a new media arm called SEG Media that will sell subscriptions to a direct-to-consumer streaming service for fans to watch games over the internet, which also promises to deliver “unprecedented access” to the team with “behind-the-scenes” footage.
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, the owner of the 19 Bally Sports regional sports networks, next week could forego its broadcast rights to the San Diego Padres by failing to deliver its regular rights payment to the team. A Texas bankruptcy court judge has set a May 31 hearing to rule on Diamond’s motion to reduce its payments to the teams.
The Texas bankruptcy court overseeing Diamond Sports Group’s restructuring says the NBA franchise must first try to negotiate a new deal with Sinclair’s regional sports network subsidiary.
Scripps will air NHL Golden Knights games on its KMCC Las Vegas station, which is currently airing programming from Ion, Scripps’ national entertainment network. A rebranded KMCC will broadcast local and national news, local sports and additional entertainment programming.
Sinclair’s Diamond Sports Group subsidiary has paid the Cincinnati Reds the initial payment for the team’s 2023 local TV rights, within a mandated 15-day grace period after the April 17 due date, keeping the MLB club on regional sports network Bally Sports Ohio.
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.
The “transformative rights deal” will bring every game free, over-the-air with statewide distribution.
Executives from the Las Vegas Golden Knights NHL franchise, Scripps Sports and leading sports rights analysts will weigh in on the leagues’ TV future in a highly fluid rights environment in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference at the NAB Show in Las Vegas on April 16. Register here.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The long-running fight between the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals over television rights fees reached New York’s highest court Tuesday when a lawyer for the Orioles […]
Looking at the trouble regional sports networks are having getting distributors to pay for local sports and at CBS affiliates pulling their local feeds from vMVPD FuboTV, Lightshed partners analyst Rich Greenfield is questioning whether the retransmission gravy train for TV broadcasters has left the station.
The sports streaming market is poised for continued growth in 2023, with SVOD services expected to spend $8.5 billion globally on sports rights, according to new data from Ampere Analysis. The rise in spend — a 64% increase from $5.2 billion in 2022 — is indicative of more general entertainment services leveraging live sports to stand out from other streaming competitors. The NFL’s multi-year deals with Amazon and YouTube arguably shifted the tide for sports streaming, Ampere noted, as both agreements represent the largest signed sports streaming deals to-date.
NBA reportedly re-ups a streaming deal with the league that will keep 16 teams on the DTC service through the 2024-25 season … should it still be around.
Comcast’s NBCUniversal is preparing to make a strong bid to win back National Basketball Association broadcast rights more than 20 years after the company lost them to Disney and Turner Sports, according to people familiar with the matter. NBCU executives have informed the NBA of their interest, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. NBC Sports wants a package that would include playoff games to air on NBC’s broadcast network, two of the people said. Some regular season games could be exclusive to NBCU’s streaming service, Peacock. The NBA could also decide to force media companies to simulcast all games on streaming to increase reach, the people said.
As Bally Sports struggles with financial difficulties, Major League Baseball is exploring all of its media options — including taking back local TV rights to 14 teams. At present, MLB would prefer to keep the status quo with Bally, which operates 19 regional sports networks across the U.S. But as Bally parent Diamond Sports — a unit of Sinclair Broadcast Group — spirals toward bankruptcy, time is running out, and MLB executives are preparing contingency plans.
The deal would mark one of the first major moves for the network since being acquired by Nexstar.
The U.S. Soccer Federation is switching its Spanish-language U.S. broadcasts to Telemundo from Univision. The USSF said Tuesday the agreement with Telemundo, a division of Comcast Corp.’s NBC Universal, runs through 2026. The first telecast will be the U.S. women’s exhibition at New Zealand on Wednesday (10 p.m. ET Tuesday) and all matches also will be streamed on Peacock.
Two former executives are accused of paying bribes to obtain broadcast rights, including for the World Cup. Testimony could reveal what the company knew.
The National Football League is in advanced talks to give Google’s YouTube exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, a subscription-only package that allows football fans to watch most Sunday afternoon games, people familiar with the matter said. An agreement could be reached as early as Wednesday, following a meeting of NFL owners, who approve rights deals.
Talks for Sunday Ticket are expected to spill into next year, as Apple faces increased competition from Google for the league’s last available TV rights.
Apple Inc. is building an advertising network for live television as part of its deal to stream Major League Soccer games next year, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The company is holding discussions with advertising partners and MLS sponsors in advance of the launch next February about airing advertisements during soccer games and related shows, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.
