Even the NBA, NHL and MLB don’t want to buy Bally Sports. Which means that the compagnie will probably file for bankruptcy very soon.
Bally Sports’ parent company, Diamond Sports Group, was in talks with the NBA, NHL and MLB to sell RSNs to those leagues. Which would make NBA.TV, NHL.TV and MLB.TV much more interesting for cord cutters. However, after Diamond cut its year-end earnings outlook in November, leagues became less interested in paying a premium for the networks. And now Diamond Sports Group is likely heading for bankruptcy in 2023.
The financial side here looks pretty bad for Diamond Sports Group, as most of its contracts with baseball teams cost Diamond money rather than generating a profit. And the same goes for most NBA and NHL contracts the company has.
We now know why Fox did not want to buy these RSNs
You may remember that back in 2018 when Disney bought Fox, that included RSNs. Which at the time were Fox Sports. However, since Disney already owned ESPN, they were forced to sell the RSNs, and Fox was unwilling to buy them back, even at a steep discount. And instead, Disney sold them to Sinclair for $10.6 billion (after paying $20 billion for them) in 2019.
Once Sinclair renamed the RSNs to Bally Sports (a name they had licensed), the brand wasn’t going too well for the company. And without having the NFL and College Football to make those channels more lucrative, the writing was on the wall. Of course, we can’t forget the fact that Sinclair removed the Bally Sports channels from streaming services once the contracts ended, in favor of the creation of Bally Sports+. Which works pretty well, but Diamond Sports Group just doesn’t have enough team rights to make it sustainable.
Bankruptcy likely means the end of the road for Diamond Sports Group. It is expected that sports leagues and other media companies will be able to buy the business at a bargain price. MLB is already seeking to recover the rights of teams that Diamond Sports Group would lose in bankruptcy court.
The bottom line here is that sports are expensive. And almost unsustainable for a regional sports network.
