The Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy continues, with a handful of new teams seeking missed payments. According to reports from Daniel Kaplan of The Athletic and Alden González of ESPN, the Rangers and Reds joined an MLB motion seeking overdue rights fees this week.
MLB first filed that motion in early April on behalf of the Twins and Guardians. Diamond, the corporation that operates the Bally Sports networks, which carry local broadcasts for nearly half of major league teams, informed those clubs it wouldn’t meet its scheduled payments on April 1. The D-backs filed a separate motion shortly thereafter seeking missed rights payments.
Diamond apparently also recently failed to meet its obligations to the Rangers and Reds. Despite the missed payments, the Bally Sports networks have continued to operate and carry local broadcasts in each market through the season’s first few weeks. Kaplan reports that the Rangers’ deal calls for Diamond to pay the team $111M this season. The precise value of the first missed payment is unknown.
González writes that the Reds situation is a bit different from those of the other clubs. The Reds have an ownership stake (the precise extent of which is unreported) along with Diamond in the Bally Sports Ohio network that carries games in Cincinnati. As a result, they’re bucketed separately from the other franchises involved in the litigation. According to González, Diamond entered into a 15-day window to meet its obligations to the Reds, beginning Monday. If it fails to do so, the team would be able to get out of the deal and turn in-market local broadcasting responsibilities over to MLB.
The other clubs will have to wait a while longer for resolution. The bankruptcy court has scheduled a hearing for May 31 to consider MLB’s motion for those teams’ overdue fees. Diamond is expected to continue all broadcasts until then. The Reds’ partial ownership offers a potentially quicker endpoint in their case, though that’s only if Diamond doesn’t meet its obligations to them in the intervening two weeks.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has stated on numerous occasions that the league is prepared to take over local broadcasting for teams whose contracts are defaulted. For any local broadcasting deals that fall through, MLB would be able to make games available in-market through streaming and cable platforms free of blackout restrictions.
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