Yesterday during the Arizona Diamondbacks game, play-by-play broadcaster Steve Berthiaume warned viewers that later this week, Bally Sports could lose TV rights to their games. What is interesting here is they made that announcement on Bally Sports during yesterday’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays, according to the AZcentral report.
This comes as Bally Sports’ parent company Diamond Sports, and the Diamondbacks have a court hearing on Tuesday over TV rights. At that hearing, it is expected that the court will terminate the TV contract.
Already MLB has been in talks with other networks, including DIRECTV, to find new TV partners for their games. This could mean that tomorrow’s Diamondbacks game against the Braves could be the last one to air on Bally Sports.
This comes as MLB has started talks with TV providers to air Diamondbacks’ games for the rest of 2023. To make that easier, MLB is hoping the judge will cancel the old contracts or transfer them to the MLB at this hearing.
Even though Bally Sports is expected to lose TV rights to the games and return the rights to MLB, TV providers would still be under contract to pay Bally Sports. This would force DIRECTV and others to pay both MLB for the games being aired and Bally Sports even though the games are no longer shown on that network.
Talks between all parties could still work out a deal, but for now, it seems unlike that MLB will accept a 20% cut in TV payments that Bally Sports reportedly wants.
Bally Sports has already stopped airing the Padres team and returned TV rights to the MLB. The MLB partnered with Fubo, DIRECTV STREAM, and several cable TV companies to air the games in market. It is expected something similar will happen with the Diamondbacks. When details for how you will be able to see future Diamondbacks games are announced, we will have full coverage.