Diamond Sports Group has been renegotiating its in-market deals with the Guardians, Rangers and Twins as part of its ongoing bankruptcy proceeding. Evan Drellich of the Athletic reported this morning that MLB expects all three organizations to sign one-year deals to remain on Diamond’s Bally Sports networks for the 2024 season. None of those contracts have yet been finalized.
The Twins’ TV deal expired at the end of the 2023 season. The Rangers and Guardians still had contracts with Diamond, but the broadcasting conglomerate had called those deals unprofitable and threatened to abandon them if they weren’t renegotiated at a lesser fee. Diamond already dropped contracts with the Padres and Diamondbacks during the ’23 season.
That left Cleveland, Texas and Minnesota to discuss reduced terms or to risk losing their local broadcasting fees entirely. According to various reports, Cleveland made $55MM off their TV deal a year ago. Texas took in around $111MM from Diamond, while Minnesota’s contract paid $54MM in its final season.
The specific terms under discussion aren’t known. However, Drellich reports that the Guardians and Rangers are expected to lose 15% or less of what they otherwise would have received in 2024. It’s unclear how much of a reduction Minnesota might need to take on their next contract. On the one hand, that’s still an unenviable position for those organizations. A 15% reduction could knock roughly $8.25MM off the Guardians’ expected revenues, while the Rangers’ deal could be reduced by something in the $17MM range by that criteria. (The precise figures are unclear, since the teams’ anticipated rights fees in 2024 were not necessarily the same as what they’d made in ’23).
At the same time, recouping 85+% of their expected fees is still a better outcome for those teams than moving on from Diamond entirely, which likely would have required the teams to turn to MLB to handle in-market broadcasting. That’s particularly true for Texas, which had one of the game’s more profitable RSN agreements. A one-year deal will still leaves the teams with long-term uncertainty, but they appear on track to remain on the Bally Sports networks for at least one more year.
If/when the new deals are finalized, Diamond will again be responsible for in-market televising for 12 teams. The company has already stated it’ll honor next season’s commitments at full price for the Angels, Braves, Brewers, Cardinals, Marlins, Rays, Reds, Royals and Tigers. Whether Diamond will be able to operate beyond the ’24 MLB season remains to be seen. Its recent restructuring agreement to sell its in-market streaming rights to Amazon for an influx of $450MM is designed to keep the company afloat beyond this year. That is still pending approval from the bankruptcy court. Drellich notes that some within the baseball industry remain skeptical about Diamond’s long-term viability even if the court signs off on its streaming deal with Amazon.
Good maybe the Twins can sign a decent starter now
The Twins need a new team announcer. He gives off zero excitement from s walk off homerun or hit. He calls it so subtly. Puts you to sleep. My uncle is a Twins fan. So I have no idea what his name is.
Dick Bremer, who has called Twins play by play since the 1990s, was sacked by the team in November and a few weeks later it was announced that Cory Provus, the radio voice, will replace him. So you get your wish.
IMO this is a tremendous mistake. Sure, Bremer may not be as excitable as some local pxp guys but I’d much rather tip in that direction versus something like Paul Allen covering the Vikings, which Cory sometimes slips into.
Actually Bremmer retired. He wasn’t fired.
He was pretty much fired. Dan Hayes reported it wasn’t his choice to “retire”
He tweeted that and put it in an article, I believe.
That’s a shame. Bremer is one of the most knowledgeable baseball announcers in the business. He knows the Twins, but he also stays current on other teams. Most announcers do not. He occasionally pointed out weaknesses on the Twins, another thing the ‘homer’ announcers won’t do. He’ll have more time to fish for walleyes. Wish him the best.
Provus is not anything like Paul Allen
With $8 mil less? Good luck with that.
When is Rob Manfred going to do the right thing and assess ALL MLB teams the loss in revenue that these three teams, through no fault of their own, are going to incur??? I know individual markets are unique but this is GROSSLY unfair.
There’s a lot more things grosser than that in the MLB if you’re looking for unfair.
This doesn’t do much for the uncertainty for 2025 and beyond.
It gives these teams a year to find a viable alternative. Ideally every team would own their own network (a la YES), and if that isn’t realistic teams could partner with each other to create a network.
Ideally MLB would follow the NFL and NBA with centralized media rights shared across the league.
There’s no way the Yankees and Dodgers and likely some other clubs would share that revenue
Add the Cardinals to that list
Earth to the Cardinals fan: Baseball has national and local TV contracts, just like the NBA, NHL, and WNBA. The NFL has centralized TV contracts as do MLS and the NWSL.
The Jays don’t report their numbers but they own the station and have the highest viewership in the league because the whole country is a fan as opposed to a city. It’s nice to see them spend.
The cable television model is broken.
Its not broken. its just less profitbale.
On cable you pay for dozens of channels you never watch. EVERYBODY pays a fortune for ESPN, whether they watch it or not. With so many other TV options, this type of pricing won’t be around much longer. The USA’s biggest cable provider, Comcast/Xfinity, has lost over 20M subscribers in just the last 6 yrs.
Streaming services aren’t any cheaper, and you have to subscribe to like 5+ different services. How is that any better???
You don’t have to subscribe to them all at once, but there’s too many people who have a severe case of FOMO.
Let the content you want to watch accumulate, watch it all in a month or two and then cancel. Repeat with all services.
“Streamimg services aren’t any”..I don’t disagree, but many of the streaming services will not survive the transformation and will be folded, aka merged, into the larger media entities that remain.
It will be ironic when Comcast buys them all.
Correct. Everyone got used to the huge money flowing freely, and it’s just not there anymore…..at least not for MLB.
It’s really not just MLB. The whole TV business is transforming. The “Worldwide Leader”, Espn, is laying off thousands of people for a reason.
MLB as a whole is broken.
Why? Because of escalating player salaries? The inaffordability of a family of four to attend a game? Because owners pocket too much of the revenue? Because of the emphasis of max. velocity for pitchers and exit velocity for batters?? Because young players get taken advantage of due to free agency occurring so late in a career? It would be nice to hear something constructive instead of just a platitude that takes 10 seconds to write
Putting was being inspirational for you.
Spectacularly profitable for something that’s broke. Second highest revenue generating sport in the entire world.
You might be right, I don’t know. I thought the NBA had surpassed MLB in terms of revenue, years ago. Maybe someone on here knows for sure.
The Premier League over in England probably has greater revenue than any North American sportsball league.
Primarily due to it’s long season. Revenue increase is due to rising prices overall attendance and ratings are falling.
@PuttPutt⁰
I’d like to have something that is broken and valued at 11.5 Billion.
Any reduction in local broadcast revenue for these teams will also affect all other teams in the league to some extent because of “revenue sharing” — i.e., there will be less money overall that is pooled and split between all 30 teams. Right?
Two separate pots of money. The MLB media income is shared; not local media rights
Each team puts 48% of it’s media income into a pot to be shared evenly among all teams.
I believe national media income is split equally, but local media revenue goes into the “revenue sharing” pool. Either way it is shared to some extent among all teams.
As long as I can still watch all of them on MLB.tv I will be happy.
No one can watch all 30 teams on MLB.TV.
@gbs42
With a tor bowser or vpn you can, but without those your right your not watching all 30 until your regional game is done.
That means Texas can now finally work on getting Montgomery back, right?
Unless I missed something, all of that will ONLY be for the 2024 season since as part of their bankruptcy case DSG agreed to relinquish broadcast rights to MLB entirely after the season.
Why does Diamond hold all the power here? Aren’t they the ones breaching the contract? Just looking to understand why these teams can’t tell them to kick rocks and find a more suitable solution.
I’m not a bankruptcy expert but I believe DSG has some protections under bankruptcy laws that mlb has to let play out.
If the company doesn’t go bankrupt once Amazon acquires it, doesn’t that nullify this breach of contract then?
@deGrom
Only if Amazon was buying dsg outright and assuming all of dsg debt, but since that’s not the case and Amazon only bought the rights to some teams there not liable for what dsg does. As far as termination of contracts with dsg I’m sure that has been worked out already with the courts and there debt restructuring but I’m assuming they got the ok to do so. Mind you I’m no lawyer just someone that has some experience with filing for bankruptcy
DofuSports Stream is free.. so IDGAF except for allowing teams to actually signs some talent.
I read in past that actually half of local money is pooled and split 30 ways and remaining 50 percent is not split. So local tv money is a hybrid.
It’s 48%, but correct otherwise.
Let us hope the Rangers can sign Montgomery
I was thrilled when Nadale came back to the booth. Made the blackouts much more tolerable as a Ranger fan.
I’m ready for the Rangers to move on from Bally. I’m sick of the $14 monthly surcharge Fubo is tacking on for Bally.
I know that many companies have debt tranches (senior, mezzanine, etc.) and then equity to pay off once bankrupt. I assume that the payments would fall under debt, such that it would be illegal for them to appease the equity holders by reneging on debt agreements. However, this is a future obligation and not a debt. I also wonder how things may change if Amazon does help this company. It’s quite absurd how Texas got this just a bit too late for Hader, though. At least, they can get Montgomery and keep their draft picks.
I was all for Hader. He’s an elite closer in his prime that could fill a glaring hole on a contender. It’s just too bad that he signed with the wrong silver boot, and probably stings a bit more for that reason.
But in hindsight, a record type deal for a closer could be better spent on a bona-fide starter in my opinion. I like the idea of a Montgomery reunion, however, it may not be in the budget regardless.
Either way, I like the moves the Rangers have made to bring in some pen depth so far. Theyve strengthened without major longterm financial commitments. I have high regards for Sborz and Leclerc. Leclerc was crowned our future closer in 2018 I believe it was, and I have faith in him returning to form. He looked really good last year, finally healthy.
Bally agreement with the Rangers means nothing if they can’t broadcast regionally.
To get the same content, you have to pay as much or more for streaming and you can’t just change channels, you have to change the app so it’s annoying AF.
I guess if you just want to stream the equivalent of an old box of VHS tapes, it’s cheaper, more power to you, but…
This grass is not greener.
There’s no savings when you stream. Over the long haul. It’s going to cost you more. It looks cheaper when you have a cable come into your house and pay a price for a data package with unlimited data. Talk to people that live in rural areas that pay an arm and a leg for 50 gigs of data. I think you will feel the same way about it to. Its much cheaper to watch sports from direct tv than stream.