Diamond Sports activities’ reorg affirmation listening to postponed to late July

Diamond Sports activities Group’s 14-month-long saga via chapter court docket will prolong a bit additional. Diamond, which supplies regional broadcasts all through the nation underneath the identify Bally Sports activities, pushed its affirmation listening to again by about six weeks, from June 18 to July 29 and 30, in keeping with a discover filed on Thursday.

The affirmation listening to, scheduled for 10 a.m. CT in Houston, will basically decide whether or not Diamond will emerge from Chapter 11 reorganization, at which level MLB, the NBA and the NHL may lastly achieve some much-desired readability with a lot of their regional sports activities networks.

A consultant from Diamond stated pushing the affirmation listening to again permits the corporate extra time to barter offers with the NBA and the NHL and to supply monetary projections that mirror its being unable to safe a brand new contract with Comcast, its third-largest distributor. However the delay inches the listening to nearer to the beginning of the next NBA and NHL seasons after attorneys from each leagues expressed a powerful need to keep away from one other yr of uncertainty throughout final week’s standing convention.

“We now have certainty on the overwhelming majority of our principal income streams, which is useful for our staff and league companions and their loyal followers, following multi-year agreements with 10 of our prime 12 distributors, together with our not too long ago introduced cope with Fubo,” a spokesperson for Diamond Sports activities Group wrote in an announcement. “We’ve got decided to maneuver the listening to a number of additional weeks to deal with reaching rights agreements on mutually useful phrases with our league and staff companions and to finalize an up to date marketing strategy effectively upfront of the upcoming NBA and NHL seasons.”

Diamond has secured offers with three of its prime 4 distributors in Constitution, DirecTV and Cox, however there was no indication {that a} cope with Comcast will in the end materialize, a growth an MLB lawyer known as “devastating” in chapter court docket on Might 15. The dearth of a brand new deal prompted Comcast to pull Bally Sports activities’ native MLB broadcasts off the air in the beginning of Might, leaving followers all through the nation with out the power to observe their groups. These video games are blacked out regionally on the league’s streaming arm, MLB.television, resulting from exclusivity provisions.

Diamond maintains the rights for 12 baseball groups, however the Cleveland Guardians, Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers are underneath contracts that stretch solely via the 2024 season. Diamond additionally held the rights for 16 NBA groups and 12 NHL groups, however these offers expired on the finish of the 2023-24 seasons.

In its submitting, Diamond additionally moved voting and objection deadlines for its restructuring plan again from June 5 to July 18.