Major League Baseball has officially assumed control of local broadcasts for the Arizona Diamondbacks after a bankruptcy judge granted Diamond Sports Group the right to terminate its rights agreement. Beginning with tonight’s matchup against the Atlanta Braves, Diamondbacks fans will need to find the new home of these league-produced game broadcasts. Earlier this year, the league took over local broadcasts for the San Diego Padres after Diamond Sports Group neglected to pay the team its rights payment after a 30-day grace period.
Anticipating the turmoil with the company in advance, Major League Baseball Commissioner Robert D. Manfred Jr. created a local media department, headed by Billy Chambers, to prepare for these scenarios and ensure fans do not miss a beat. Moreover, the league will be compensating afflicted teams 80% of media rights remuneration, although its future implications are not yet known.
In an interview on Arizona Sports 98.7, Diamondbacks team president and CEO Derrick Hall seemed optimistic about the sudden transition the team is making. Since the Diamondbacks have accumulated eight losses over their last 10 games played, Hall decided to start the conversation with Ron Wolfey and Luke Lapinski in a lighthearted manner.
“Well just another day at the ballpark here,” Hall said. “You know what, Wolf? This was by design. I figured the way we’ve played the last 10 to 18 games, we don’t want [our fans] to be able to find us on TV until we get straight again.”
The Diamondbacks were previously televised on Bally Sports Arizona under a 20-year, $1.5 billion contract, agreed to while it was a Fox-branded regional sports network. Diamond Sports Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March in order to reorganize itself, granting it the ability to selectively reject contracts. Bally Sports Arizona also lost the Phoenix Suns and Mercury since the two teams inked a deal to appear on broadcast television free of charge. The loss of the Diamondbacks leaves the Arizona Coyotes as the only local professional sports team televised on the regional sports network, which some cable providers hope to drop entirely.
The Diamondbacks initially thought they would be dropped by the regional sports network on July 1, the day the rights payment was due. Yet there was a sense of optimism in the negotiations, which reportedly included a lower rights fee and coveted direct-to-consumer broadcast rights; therefore, the bankruptcy court granted an extension. Manfred, however, was reportedly prepared to block the deal should it go through, which would have been a five-year deal valued at 20% less annually. During the moratorium period, the team was paid on a per-game basis.
“The most important part here was to make sure that there was no interruption in television [and] our fans could always get the games,” Hall said. “Now because the ruling came down today – this morning just now – it doesn’t give us a lot of time to notify and educate the fans on where the stations will change. Those fans that have always had access to the games, be it through cable or be it through satellite, [are] still going to get the game.”
The new television deal will increase the amount of households Diamondbacks games reach by nearly five-fold, and it will also open an opportunity for fans to stream the games in-market without blackouts or other restrictions. For the first seven days, fans will be granted a free trial of MLB.TV and can also stream the games on the Diamondbacks’ official team website. Then, they can sign up for the individual team plan for $19.99 a month or $54.99 for the rest of the season.
“We’re going to be able to see how it goes this year now that we’re with MLB, which by the way has done a phenomenal job in producing the games for the Padres,” Hall said. “I think they look as good, if not better, than they ever have. It feels like [in] talking to their fans; talking to their P.R. staff [and] talking to their executives [that] they didn’t miss a beat.”
Although Hall wishes the team had a few more days’ notice to inform the fans of the change, he is confident that people will discover how to watch the games and take a liking to the new format. The remainder of the 2023 season will guide what the team wants to do with the media rights going forward, which has already received considerable amounts of interest.
“We’re talking about MLB about what it looks like next year – if it’s just a specific partner of theirs exclusively or if we can bring in other partners to help distribution,” Hall said. “What’s important to me is to make sure we can have more viewership than ever before [and] cover more territory than ever before, and not only state-wide but outside because we have so many fans when you look at New Mexico and Utah and Nevada.”
More information about the Diamondbacks’ broadcast changes can be found on dbacks.com/watch and on the team’s official social media pages.
