Bally nears bankruptcy

Diamond Sports Group, owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group and owner of the Bally Sports regional networks, is expected to declare bankruptcy this week after struggling to weather the financial strains of widespread cord-cutting in recent years. MLB sold Diamond exclusive rights to 14 teams and partial rights to two more in 2019, but the company reported losses of more than $1 billion in the third quarter of 2022 alone.

Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters last week that MLB will be prepared to take over telecasts if Diamond cannot broadcast the games.

“Our goal would be to make games available not only within the traditional cable bundle but on the digital side as well,” he added.

Exactly what an Mlb-run version of local telecasts would look like remains to be seen. Still, the situation presents MLB with an opportunity to rethink the regional sports network model that yielded massive revenue for organizations over the past few decades but has succumbed to cord-cutting.

Manfred said in December that the model is not sustainable, but untangling broadcast rights from big contracts is not easy, meaning the model is not easy to rethink or reshape quickly. It might give MLB a pathway to start solving the issue of local blackouts experienced by fans who do not have cable and try to watch games via streaming by paying for a subscription to MLB.TV.

Either way, change is coming to the way MLB delivers its product to customers. That change — and the financial ramifications it has for the game — might be here by Opening Day.