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Bally Sports Ohio

Diamond Sports Misses Payments to More MLB Teams; Cincinnati Reds Might Reclaim Broadcast Rights in Two Weeks

David Satin
David covers the biggest news stories, live events, premieres, and informational pieces for The Streamable. Before joining TS, he wrote extensively for Screen Rant and has years of experience writing about the entertainment and streaming industries. He's a Broncos fan, streams on his Toshiba Fire TV, and his favorites include "Andor," "Rings of Power," and "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
Read full bio ›
David Satin

Another week, another MLB team not getting its contractually obligated broadcast rights payment from Diamond Sports Group (DSG) — which owns and operates 19 regional sports networks (RSNs) under the Bally Sports brand. This week, in fact, two teams have gone begging thanks to missed payments from DSG; The Cincinnati Reds and Texas Rangers.

The Rangers joined an emergency motion filed by MLB, the Cleveland Guardians, and Minnesota Twins with the bankruptcy court in which DSG is currently trying to restructure its $8 billion debt load, according to The Athletic. The motion would force the company to either make the payments it owes to those teams in full, or surrender the broadcast rights to the clubs.

“That ‘there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch’ is a well-recognized, simple, but axiomatic economic principle,” the Rangers said in the motion. “Everyone understands it—everyone, apparently, except [DSG]. Here, they are getting lunch—using the right to create content based on the Rangers’ baseball games, and in turn, selling that content to distributors—but without paying for it.”

For its part, Diamond is seeking a hearing in court that with industry experts that it hopes will testify its rights deals with the Guardians, Rangers, Twins, and Arizona Diamondbacks are overvalued, and that it can convince the judge to allow it to pay those clubs less than contractually obligated. Because DSG fully owns the networks those teams’ games are broadcast on —Bally Sports Great Lakes, Bally Sports Southwest, Bally Sports North, and Bally Sports Arizona, respectively— the judge gets to decide whether or not the company has to pay them the full amount.

That’s not the case for another team that reports a missed payment from Diamond, however. The Cincinnati Reds own part of Bally Sports Ohio, which essentially means that the channel has no part in the bankruptcy court proceedings. DSG has a 15-day grace period to make its payment to the Reds, and if it doesn’t, the team can immediately reclaim its broadcast rights. The Reds could take over broadcasts of their own games as early as their May 6 outting against the Chicago White Sox, according to John Ourand of Sports Business Journal.

Ourand also reports that the league has handshake agreements in place with DIRECTV and Spectrum Cable to carry Reds games on a different channel than Bally Sports Ohio in Cincinnati. That channel could be MLB Network, which the league previously stated may be used to broadcast games if Diamond’s RSNs could not fulfill their contractual obligations. For now, Bally Sports RSNs continue to broadcast the games for all of these clubs, despite the financial situation.

The hearing to determine whether Diamond has to surrender the rights to the Diamondbacks, Guardians, Rangers, and Twins has been scheduled for May 31. The Reds could see a resolution much more quickly and may end up taking over broadcasts of their games from Bally Sports Ohio in less than a month.

David Satin
David covers the biggest news stories, live events, premieres, and informational pieces for The Streamable. Before joining TS, he wrote extensively for Screen Rant and has years of experience writing about the entertainment and streaming industries. He's a Broncos fan, streams on his Toshiba Fire TV, and his favorites include "Andor," "Rings of Power," and "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
Read full bio ›
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