Picture credit score: © Jonathan Dyer-USA TODAY Sports activities
Earlier than we start, let’s return in time. First, two years ago, when the league had locked the gamers out after the expiration of the collective bargaining settlement, rumors had been swirling that the regional sports activities community mannequin wasn’t going to work prefer it beforehand had. The expectation from the league, after all, was for the gamers to shoulder the danger of the RSNs that perhaps would not be printing cash. This was not a brand new technique—the identical issues, relating to nationwide tv offers within the Nineteen Eighties, led to a few years of collusion.
MLB found out a method to maintain issues shifting ahead: by profiting from the relationships between community rivals in a manner that will make the fallen scores a secondary concern. RSNs might be struggling greater than they had been in 2010 when groups just like the Rangers shocked everybody with 10-figure contracts for one staff’s video games, however MLB will discover one thing new to switch that cash, and greater than doubtless, surpass it. They’re already determining methods to attain that purpose. The renewed cope with TBS is value one thing like $2 billion yearly, as an example, and that’s simply one of many three nationwide offers MLB has agreed to, the opposite two being with ESPN and FOX. They’re contemplating disposing of blackouts, and starting up a nationwide streaming service for entry to native video games—for cord-cutters—that will additionally rope within the NHL and NBA to make sure it’s a large success with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Ask the Yankees and Pink Sox how significantly better it’s to personal your RSN outright as an alternative of getting to barter with one for a chunk of the income, after which make that idea a nationwide one which additionally includes followers of different sports activities.
That background is all wanted, however the important thing factor to drag from this was the assumption that “MLB will discover one thing new to switch that cash, and greater than doubtless, surpass it.” With that reminder in hand, let’s now leap to February of 2023, when Rob Mains coated large RSN proprietor Diamond Sports activities Group when it was “teetering on the sting of chapter.” Mains made a degree of explaining that “Chapter shouldn’t be the identical as closing up store,” and that the thought right here could be to restructure with a Chapter 11 chapter submitting so as to maintain the enterprise lively. Mains anticipated that funds could be delayed and perhaps even attenuated, however they might ultimately be made so as to keep away from “breach-of-contract provisions that will be the dying knell for Diamond.” Which, once more, was an organization making an attempt to remain alive by way of a chapter submitting, not shutter.
