Diamond Sports, the bankrupt broadcaster that carries the rights to 37 sports teams across MLB, the NBA and NHL, has arranged a $450 million plan with creditors that would allow it to continue operating beyond 2024, pending court approval. But the exact potential impact on Diamond’s partner sports leagues — 11 teams in MLB, 15 in the NBA and 11 in the NHL — wasn’t immediately clear, and many questions loom.
Amazon has agreed to invest $115 million in Diamond, people briefed on the arrangement who were not authorized to speak publicly said. With the benefit of Amazon’s Prime service, Diamond is projecting that direct-to-consumer revenue will grow from $49 million in 2023 to $658 million in 2026, according to projections the company shared Wednesday morning.
If the deal goes into effect, Amazon will have a 15 percent stake in this new company, Diamond Sports said. Amazon will also have the ability to invest another $50 million within nine months of the execution of the deal.
This year was potentially going to be Diamond’s last in operation before liquidation. But Diamond intends to shed some teams’ TV deals while keeping the digital, direct-to-consumer (DTC) rights agreements it currently has.
For example: While Diamond has the rights to broadcast 11 MLB teams’ games on TV, it has the digital rights to only five of those teams.
“The business plan contemplates that the Company retains and continues to use its current suite of DTC rights,” Diamond wrote in a summary of the plan it shared publicly Wednesday. “The business plan assumes that the existing rights portfolio is shrunk to reduce projected losses associated with certain team rights contracts.”
Diamond said in its news release Wednesday: “Customers will be able to access all local DTC content, including live MLB, NBA and NHL games, and pre- and post-game programming, for the teams for which Diamond retains DTC rights, through Prime Video Channels.”
A court hearing that could shed more light was scheduled for noon ET Wednesday. Amazon declined to comment. MLB did not yet have comment.
“We just received the documents and are reviewing them,” an NBA spokesperson told The Athletic. “We look forward to engaging in a productive dialogue with Diamond in the coming days.”
With the expectation it would be breaking up, Diamond had previously reached contingent arrangements with the NBA and the NHL regarding 2024 operation, and was set to end its agreements with teams in each league after the 2023-24 season, and was deep into negotiations with MLB over a similar arrangement. But the new arrangement appears positioned to supersede the deals the NBA and NHL reached, and could significantly alter negotiations Diamond has been having with MLB. A person briefed on the negotiations said Diamond is prepared to honor the financial terms it agreed to with the NBA and NHL for 2023-24, and is open to negotiating longer-term agreements. If this new agreement is approved by the judge, those NBA and NHL teams will still be under contract with Diamond Sports beyond this season if their original contracts ran that long.
The summary that Diamond shared publicly Wednesday noted that the new arrangement goes into effect only if “the terms of the NBA Term Sheet and the NHL Term Sheet… shall not have gone into effect,” and that Diamond “shall not have entered into any other similar arrangement or transaction with any of the Sports Leagues.”
MLB and Diamond were discussing an arrangement for 2024 that would have revised rights fees for at least some teams — certainly the Cleveland Guardians and Texas Rangers, whom Diamond has threatened to drop for 2024. The arrangement under negotiation likely would have returned all MLB teams’ rights to them following the ’24 season.
Diamond’s digital rights to baseball teams for ’24 were also likely to expand as well as part of any deal. The talks had also included the Minnesota Twins, a 12th MLB team. Diamond carried the Twins in 2023, but the deal between the two expired after the season.
But with Diamond now poised to carry forward beyond 2024, the tenor of any negotiations with MLB might now change. An MLB team executive who spoke to The Athletic on Wednesday morning said his team was still trying to figure out what the Diamond-Amazon partnership would mean for his team’s TV rights.
Meanwhile, the NBA and NHL already had reached the type of deal MLB was working on.
The deal between Diamond Sports and the NBA would have reverted all rights to the NBA and teams after the 2023-24 season — instead of the original longer agreements.
The NBA deal also carved out the ability for those teams to broadcast a number of their games on over-the-air channels in their local markets. The New Orleans Pelicans and Atlanta Hawks have already done so, and have scheduled 10 games each on broadcast television in their markets.
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