NBA, NHL Demand Answers from Diamond Sports Group as Future of Regional Sports Networks Fades
Diamond is closing in on a new naming rights deal for its regional sports networks, but that may not matter if it doesn’t reach a new deal with Comcast.
Diamond Sports Group cannot afford to waste the summer away like a liberated school child. The broadcaster has serious work to do, as its 18 Bally Sports regional sports networks (RSNs) have been dark for Comcast cable customers since the end of April. Diamond was back in court this week to discuss a delay of the confirmation hearing for its bankruptcy reorganization plan, and comments from lawyers for Diamond’s major league partners made it clear that they are done waiting for the company to get its ducks in a row, especially with the 2024-25 NBA and NHL seasons rapidly approaching.
Key Details:
- NBA lawyers told the court that without a deal with Comcast, Diamond’s chances of successfully exiting bankruptcy are very slim.
- NHL representatives said they needed clarity on some important issues by the end of this week.
- Diamond says it has reached an “impasse” in its talks with Comcast, the largest cable channel distributor in the United States.
The latest bankruptcy court hearing for Diamond saw it win approval from Judge Christopher Lopez for a requested delay of the confirmation vote on the company’s reorg plan. The confirmation hearing was initially scheduled for June 18 but has now been pushed to July 29.
The NBA and NHL made no secret of the fact that they need answers sooner than the end of next month. Invoking the expired Comcast deal, NBA attorney Vincent Indelicato said that the league is dubious that Diamond can continue in the long term without a deal with the country’s second-largest cable provider.
“Without a Comcast deal, [Diamond] may very well not be able to survive,” he said. “We simply cannot wait much longer … Diamond, from our view, doesn’t appear to have a viable business plan. We’re talking about approximately 70 games per team across 15 different teams. You just simply can’t launch [a new broadcasting partnership] for approximately 1,000 games in that many geographies overnight.”
NHL representative Shana Elberg echoed the need for haste. Like the NBA, the NHL is still in the 2023-24 postseason, but the 2024-25 regular season is less than five months away, and the two sides cannot afford to be in the dark about Diamond’s plans for the upcoming year much longer.
“We have told the debtors unequivocally that we need to get clarity on certain outstanding matters this week,” Elberg said.
Attorneys for Major League Baseball said that they were planning to formally object to allowing Diamond to remain in business past the end of the 2024 season. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said earlier this month that “there's not much good about Diamond” right now, and he’s anxious to part ways with the company so he can try to create an in-market streaming service of his own.
No Comcast Deal in Sight
Unlike MLB, the NBA and NHL would likely continue to try to work with Diamond if it were able to reach a new carriage deal with Comcast. But that looks increasingly unlikely, as Diamond’s lawyers told the court in Tuesday’s hearing that they had reached an “impasse” with Comcast.
“Based on Comcast’s intransigence to negotiate off their current position,” said Diamond’s attorney Joe Graham, “the company has little choice but to explore alternatives to Comcast.”
It’s not exactly clear what those “alternatives” would be. Comcast has a reach of over 14 million customers, and finding another outlet with that kind of reach who’s willing to get involved in the mess Diamond has created for itself at this stage of its bankruptcy proceedings seems highly doubtful. Comcast wants to put Bally Sports channels on a higher-priced tier of its service, in order to spare customers who don’t watch the channels from having to pay for them anyway. Diamond is vehemently opposed to that tactic.
Still, the company insisted that any worries about the viability of its reorganization plan were “speculative and premature.” Earlier this week, it was reported that Diamond was closing in on a deal with FanDuel to allow the sports-betting giant to take over naming rights to the Bally Sports channels later this year.
Without a new carriage contract with Comcast, however, there may not be many more avenues for Diamond to go down. Its fortunes seemed vastly improved when 2024 began, as it had secured the promise of investment from Amazon and millions more in financing. But the heat has turned up on the company with the approach of summer, and its chances for emerging from bankruptcy as a going concern appear to be wilting.
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.