Bankruptcy Reveals Bally Sports+ Only Has 203K Subscribers; Is Streamer Closer to Closing than Hitting 10M Goal?
The enmity between Major League Baseball and Diamond Sports Group was on full display on Wednesday this week, as the two sides met in a long-planned emergency hearing to determine how much of its contracts DSG had to pay to four MLB teams.
At first, DSG wanted to pay only half of what it owed to the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Guardians, Minnesota Twins, and Texas Rangers, then upped the number to 75%. But on Thursday, Judge Christopher Lopez ruled Diamond has to pay those teams the full amount they're owed, which could lead to the company simply rejecting their contracts instead.
Reporting from The Athletic indicates that as part of the proceedings, MLB outside counsel forced DSG representatives to reveal that Diamond’s nascent streaming platform Bally Sports+ — which provides in-market streaming of games without the need for a pay-TV subscription for five MLB, 16 NBA, and 12 NHL teams — has just 203,000 subscribers. That number represents 55% of the company’s subscriber targets after its soft-launch in June 2022 and full launch in September.
Despite these figures, Diamond CEO David Preschlack still believes that the service will quadruple its subscriber total between now and the end of this year to more than 800,000. He testified this week that he projects Bally Sports+ will have 10 million users by 2028.
With apologies to Preschlack, that seems highly unlikely. Bally Sports+ has been on the market for nearly a year, including one full regular season of the NBA and NHL. The service has not added any new teams or markets in that time, despite its desperation to get its hands on more MLB streaming rights. DSG’s deal with the NBA expires after the 2024-25 season, and given that NBA commissioner Adam Silver has said that his league needs to “reimagine” its relationships with regional sports networks, it would be surprising if the NBA got back into business with DSG or Bally Sports.
Without NBA games, there’s no path for Bally Sports+ to reach 10 million subscribers in the next five years. Even if it had local streaming rights to every team in the league, it would be difficult to see how Bally Sports+ could reach that number. By comparison, the sports streaming service DAZN, which holds NBA, NFL, and other major sports league rights in Europe, sits at 15 million global subscribers currently. Unlike DAZN, Bally Sports+ is not a global property, and its programming is regional, not national; so by definition, that limits its customer base, making it all the more unlikely that it could reach its goal of 10 million subscribers in five years.
Competition is also ramping up in the sports streaming space. Big MLB teams like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox have launched their own in-market streaming platforms, and the league would like to do the same. The NBA reportedly wants to sell a streaming-only package of games in its next broadcasting deal, and Disney has allegedly had substantive discussions with some leagues and cable providers about creating a fully streaming ESPN that won’t require a pay-TV subscription.
With all due respect to Diamond Sports, on its current trajectory, it seems likelier that the company will be out of the sports streaming business in five years than sitting on more than 10 million paying customers. There’s still time for the company to turn things around, but considering how many of the leagues it does business with have expressed concern or even outright contempt for DSG and its future prospects, it looks highly improbable that the company will be adding substantially to its 203,000 Bally Sports+ users any time soon.
Bally Sports+
Bally Sports+ is a direct-to-consumer streaming service that offers live games for those who want access to your local Bally Sports RSN without subscribing to a cable or satellite package.