Diamond loses more teams, what’s next

Three more teams leave Diamond for a MLB-controlled game broadcasts.

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On Tuesday morning, Baseball Prospectus published a feature of mine on the Diamond bankruptcy proceedings, and what they meant for the coming MLB offseason. As discussed last month, MLB already pointed out that the trajectory of the bankruptcy saga means impacted teams won’t be able to plan their budgets for the 2025 season, and the addition of another couple of teams — and the threat of more joining them — meant that we were going to be in for another quiet offseason.

On Tuesday afternoon, it was announced that three more teams whose deals with Diamond had been dropped would not seek to renegotiate with the regional sports network… network… and would instead work through MLB to broadcast its games. The league already did this in 2024 with the Diamondbacks, Rockies, and Padres, and they’ll now be joined by the Guardians, Brewers, and Twins. (The Rangers have also separated from Diamond, but they’re going to peddle their wares on their own, without MLB handling things, so they aren’t part of this conversation.)

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On MLB’s rejection of the Amazon/Diamond streaming proposal

MLB’s rejection is also them showing their hand on their preference for the future of broadcasting.

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You saw the headline, now let’s get to some background. From me on December 22, at Baseball Prospectus:

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Diamond is probably going away, but broadcasting should remain

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There sure seems to be trouble in regional sports network land, and the question of the day is how it will end up impacting Major League Baseball and the payments owed to them by various RSNs. There’s the well-publicized issue of what’s going on with Diamond Sports Group, which runs Bally Sports, as they announced they’re skipping a $140 million interest payment, which now gives them a 30-day grace period to figure out if they’re going to make said payment or file for bankruptcy instead. Alongside that, though, is AT&T Sports, which is run by Warner Media, and has possibly already missed out on its first slate of payments for broadcasting games. Possibly, because there have already been denials from AT&T Sports, on the matter, but we can at least treat that as a potential where there’s smoke there’s fire situation until things are known for sure one way or the other. [2/20/2023 note: This article originally linked to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story here, but the Post-Gazette staff is on strike. Apologies for the oversight; the link has been removed.]

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