NBA Strikes Deal With Diamond Sports Group, All but Guaranteeing Games Remain on Bally Sports Channels This Year
Bally Sports regional sports networks will keep their NBA teams through the end of this season, at which time those rights will revert back to the league.
The NBA is staying on Bally Sports regional sports networks for the rest of the 2023-24 season. That’s according to reporting from Sports Business Journal's John Ourand which states the the reached a deal with Diamond Sports Group (DSG) whose details were partially unveiled in a bankruptcy court meeting on Monday.
- The new deal will keep NBA teams partnered with their respective Bally Sports regional sports network and streaming on Bally Sports+ for the rest of the NBA regular season.
- After the 2023-24 season, those rights will revert back to the NBA. Under the previous agreement, the rights did not revert until the end of the 2024-25 season. The NHL may agree to a similar deal in the coming weeks.
- The NBA has ambitious plans for its next broadcasting package, but remains open to a new deal with Diamond Sports.
What Are the Terms of Diamond’s New Deal with the NBA?
According to Ourand’s report, only partial details of the new contract between Diamond and the NBA were made available in bankruptcy court. The deal is also subject to the approval of Judge Christopher Lopez, who has been presiding over DSG’s bankruptcy proceedings since March.
The agreement all but guarantees that the 15 NBA teams currently signed to air their in-market games on a Bally Sports channel stay there for the rest of the season. After the 2023-24 regular season ends, those teams’ rights will revert back to the NBA, instead of staying with Diamond for another season as the renewal of terms between the two sides in February stipulated.
That means the NBA gets to decide at the end of this season if it wants to do another deal with Diamond before next year, or sell the local rights to those teams to another outlet. Previous reporting indicates that Disney, Amazon, Apple, Google and others have expressed interest in picking up the NBA’s local rights if Diamond drops them at any point. The NBA’s national broadcasting contract with ESPN and TNT expires following the 2024-25 season, at which time the league is expected to pursue vastly more money than the $24 billion overall it makes now. Numerous reports have also indicated the NBA wants to sell a package of games exclusively to a streaming platform.
What Did the NBA Give to Get Flexibility from Diamond?
Ourand’s report doesn’t specify if the NBA took the 20% reduction in rights fee payments DSG suggested be a part of their broadcasting agreement for 2023-24. It seems likely the league had to give up some percentage of that money, however, in exchange for the return of its broadcasting rights after this season.
The report also states that the NHL is likely to agree to a similar deal in the coming weeks. It too would likely see the flexibility granted by the reclamation of its local broadcasting rights to 12 teams from Bally Sports channels as a fair tradeoff for smaller rights fee payments from Diamond this season.
Coming to terms with these two leagues does not mean DSG is out of the woods, however. Agreeing with the NBA and NHL, as well as its recent carriage renewal with Comcast are important steps in the company’s debt reorganization plan, but that plan is far from complete. Diamond recently asked Judge Lopez for another extension to turn that proposal in, which would give it until January. Both MLB and DIRECTV, two of Diamond’s other creditors, have asked the judge to reject that motion, saying the company has had time enough.
As if those weren’t thorny enough issues, a recent update to the company’s in-market streaming platform Bally Sports+ caused waves of outages all over the country last week. The new deal with the NBA is an undoubted win for Diamond Sports Group, but it still has a long way to go to prove it can stand on its own two feet in this evolving entertainment marketplace.
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.