Amazon Abandons Plan to Invest in Diamond Sports Group
Amazon Abandons Plan to Invest in Diamond Sports Group
The pledged $115 million cash infusion would have helped Diamond ensure creditors that it could emerge from bankruptcy.
Ever since March 2023, the Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy proceedings have felt like a two-steps-forward, one-step-back affair. The company saw that pattern emerge again this week; Diamond announced new deals with the NBA and NHL late on Friday that will allow the company to broadcast nine NHL teams and 13 NBA clubs for at least the 2024-25 season. That was a key win for Diamond, but on Monday, Sports Business Journal reported that Amazon was rescinding its offer of a $115 million investment to Diamond, which raises yet more questions about the long-term viability of the regional sports network (RSN) broadcaster.
Key Details:
- Amazon first made the agreement with Diamond in January 2024.
- The deal would have seen Bally Sports channels distributed on Prime Video.
- Diamond is still confident in its reorg plan, even without the Amazon investment.
Amazon and Diamond first announced that they were planning to do business in January 2024. At that time, Amazon promised that it would invest $115 million in Diamond Sports Group, in exchange for local streaming rights to all 15 NBA teams that Diamond was partnered with at the time for broadcast on its Bally Sports channels.
The deal also included a stipulation that Amazon would wait 12 weeks after Diamond’s emergence from bankruptcy proceedings to send a check, ensuring that its reorganization plan was sound. However, the landscape for both Diamond and Amazon looks very different from the one when the two sides struck their bargain in January.
Diamond has lost the rights to the New Orleans Pelicans and Dallas Mavericks since then, agreeing to send their local broadcast rights back to their respective clubs as part of its deal with the other 13 NBA clubs it agreed to last week. The company has also dropped the NHL’s Dallas Stars and the Florida Panthers in 2024. SBJ reports the loss of the NBA teams was a big factor in Amazon’s decision to pull its investment off the table.
Amazon, meanwhile, has bigger financial fish to fry. The company recently struck a deal with the NBA to distribute a package of its games nationally on Prime Video, which will cost it $1.93 billion per season for the next 11 years starting in 2025. In April, Amazon also came to a deal with the NHL to broadcast a package of Monday night hockey games in Canada.
What Comes Next for Diamond Sports Group?
Despite the loss of the Amazon investment, SBJ reports that Diamond still plans to emerge from bankruptcy as a going concern. The next hearing in the process will be on Tuesday, Sept. 3, however, a press representative for DSG has told The Streamable that it will be a status conference for the preceding judge to approve the company’s NBA and NHL deals. The final reorganization plan will be approved in a hearing to be scheduled at a later date.
If Diamond wins approval from its creditors in that hearing, it will be the company’s biggest step yet toward actually escaping Chapter 11 protections. If it does not, it will have to consider whether there are viable revisions to the reorg plan that it could make, and if not it could be staring oblivion in the face.
The long saga of Diamond’s bankruptcy proceedings could be coming to an end in the coming weeks, one way or the other. The company still wants to stay in business, but it will have to do so without an investment from Amazon.
Prime Video
Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.