Diamond Sports Likely to Make Rights Payment to Texas Rangers to Keep Team on Bally Sports Southwest

Though the news may make MLB representatives throw up their hands in frustration, it appears that the Texas Rangers will be staying put on Bally Sports Southwest for the time being. That’s according to the Dallas Morning News, which reports that Diamond Sports Group (DSG) is expected to make its scheduled June 15 rights payment to the club, which will ensure Rangers games remain on Bally Sports Southwest.

As it always does when DSG has a rights payment with a team coming up on the calendar, speculation arose that the company might decide not to pay. Had that happened, Major League Baseball would have taken over broadcasting of Rangers games in the Dallas market. Now, the league will have to wait until the end of June to see whether it will get the rights to the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Guardians, or Minnesota Twins back from DSG.

Those clubs have rights payments due on July 1, though DSG could surrender them whenever it wishes. Diamond is unlikely to hand over the rights to MLB one second before it has to, however; the company's decision to give up its rights to the San Diego Padres waited until May 31, the last day of DSG’s grace period to either pay or send the broadcast rights back to the team.

The decision to keep Rangers games on Bally Sports Southwest indicates that the team’s rights are still profitable for DSG, or at least potentially so. The company has said it is willing to let contracts with teams that cost it more than it makes revert back to the teams, but so far DSG has given up the rights to just one MLB team in the Padres. All of that could change suddenly in the next two weeks, as the rights payments to the teams mentioned above get closer.

Fans who are growing weary of the seemingly never-ending cycle of DSG missing or potentially missing payments may not get much relief until this fall. That’s when Diamond’s carriage contracts for its Bally Sports regional sports networks (RSNs) are up with major cable providers. If cablers decide not to renew, it could be hard for the company to make the case to a bankruptcy judge that it has a viable plan to pay off its debts.

But for now, it’s business as usual for the Rangers and Bally Sports Southwest. Fans who don’t have access to the channel in the Dallas market will likely be disappointed by the news, but for those in the sports media world, all eyes now turn to July 1 to see if DSG will make its next scheduled broadcasting rights payment.