Sinclair is continuing to struggle with the ownership of Diamond Sports, the parent company of Bally Sports. Today they reported their first quarter 2023 earnings that saw revenues down 40% from the year before.
Sinclair reported revenue was down 40% to $773 million. This is down from $1,288 million in the same period of 2022. If you remove Bally Sports and the Diamond Sports group from Sinclairs’ earnings, revenues were only down 7% vs. the same period before.
Sinclair says advertising revenues were down 17% in 2023, but again if you remove Bally Sports, the numbers were only down 6%.
It was also announced that Distribution revenue from places like cable TV fees was down to $426 million vs $873 million in the same period in 2022.
In total, Diamond Sports Group, the parent company of Bally Sports, lost $94 million in just the first two months of 2022 leading up to its bankruptcy.
“Sinclair is seeing a solid start to 2023, meeting or beating guidance on all key financial metrics,” said Chris Ripley, Sinclair’s President & Chief Executive Officer. “Nonetheless, we remain cautious for the full year on expectations for a weaker economy. As we continue our evolution from a traditional broadcast company to a diversified content and data distributor, we have begun the process of reorganizing our company structure to increase transactional flexibility and transparency around the sum-of-the-parts and to unlock value for our organization. Our end goal is to create an even more efficient company, designed to use the breadth of our assets to identify and accelerate growth.”
Ripley continued, “This year, we are allocating capital towards technology that will transform our operational workflow, both strengthening our returns on investment and improving operational outcomes. At the same time, the last few months have presented an opportunity to allocate capital to buying back our shares.”
With numbers like these, you can see why Bally Sports parent company Diamond Sports, which is owned by Sinclair, is going through bankruptcy.