NHL Reaches Deal to Keep Games on Bally Sports Channels for Season; Will This Be the Last for Hockey on RSNs?
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman says the league has alternatives in place, but at the moment it appears the league will stay with Bally Sports until the end of the season.
Diamond Sports Group (DSG), the parent company of Bally Sports regional sports networks (RSNs), is ticking items off its checklist. The broadcaster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections in March and ever since has been trying to work with its partner sports leagues to plot out a debt relief plan. The next step in that plan is now complete, as the NHL has agreed to a new deal with DSG that will keep its teams on Bally Sports channels until the end of the current 2023-24 season.
- Diamond Sports currently holds the rights to 11 NHL teams.
- The league will take smaller rights fee payments from Diamond this season, and in exchange will get its broadcast rights back at season’s end.
- The reported interest of Amazon in DSG leaves the NHL with a big choice to make following this season.
What Are the Terms of the New NHL Deal with Bally Sports?
The NHL’s new deal with Diamond and Bally Sports is essentially the same agreement the broadcaster presented to the NBA in early November. That is, the league will accept smaller rights fee payments for the 11 hockey teams that Bally Sports currently broadcasts games for, and, in exchange, Diamond will send those rights back to the NHL at the conclusion of the current season.
The deal is subject to the approval of the court, as DSG is still in bankruptcy proceedings. But if approved, it will give fans much-needed stability in knowing that their favorite team won’t disappear from Bally Sports channels during the course of the season.
League commissioner Gary Bettman was prepared with backup plans in case Bally Sports RSNs went off-air during the season. Speaking with the Dallas Morning News shortly before the terms of the deal were finalized, Bettman said there was no reason for fans to fret, even if Bally Sports went belly-up during the season.
“We have contingency plans,” he said. “It’s more in the short-term of making sure we can deliver games. That’s something from the first time I was worried that we had prepared for. The longer-term business strategy is something that’s going to have to evolve.”
Will Amazon’s Investment Change NHL’s Long-Term Plans?
Bettman has been clear for a while now that he sees the RSN model as flawed for broadcasting his league’s games going forward. Last week, it would have felt all but guaranteed that the very deal now agreed to would have led to a final, permanent departure of NHL teams from Bally Sports channels.
But that was last week, and this week reports surfaced that Amazon was looking to make an investment in Diamond Sports Group. Amazon certainly has the capital to keep Bally Sports channels on-air if it chooses, and owns a widely-known streaming brand in Prime Video which already hosts live games from the NFL, WNBA, and even MLB in the New York market.
Would Amazon purchasing a controlling stake in DSG give the NHL reason to renew its deal with Bally Sports channels? It certainly could; the league would have certainty that it would be able to collect full rights payments from an Amazon-owned Diamond, and it would know that any teams whose rights are held by that entity would have the potential for wide distribution. After all, Bally Sports channels may not be available from every provider, but Prime Video is accessible to everyone with a broadband connection.
How wide that distribution would be depends on the terms of the deal that Amazon and Diamond agree to. Currently, all 11 NHL teams DSG owns the rights to are available to stream on Bally Sports+. Would those streaming rights revert to Prime Video instead, or would Amazon keep Bally Sports+ as a separate entity? Would Bally Sports linear channels continue, or would they be shuttered in favor of a more streaming-forward configuration?
Those are the most urgent questions that the NHL would need to be answered before it could comfortably jump back into business with Diamond. But if Amazon does purchase a controlling stake in DSG, it would go a long way toward allaying the league’s fears that Diamond is operating under an unsustainable business model.
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