Royals negotiating return to Diamond Sports
Diamond emerges from bankruptcy with a re-brand.
Royals fans may not be done with Bally Sports Kansas City quite yet.
The name has changed - Bally Sports regional networks have re-branded as the FanDuel Sports Network - but the channel itself is still owned by Diamond Sports Group, which emerged from bankruptcy on Thursday. The group had previously announced they were dropping plans to broadcast games in 2025 for the eight teams with which they still had contractual obligations. But several of those teams have returned to Diamond with re-worked deals except the Royals - so far.
According to Evan Drellich of The Athletic, the Royals are in discussions to return to Diamond. Pete Grathoff to the Star reports an announcement on next year’s plans should be announced this week. If the Royals return, the TV situation would seemingly be largely unchanged from last year, when games were available on most cable carriers and through a direct-to-consumer streaming option, but were unavailable on many large streaming services such as YouTube TV.
One change nexst year is that games will also be made available on Amazon Prime Video under a new agreement, but only for in-market viewers. The channel would be provided as an add-on for subscribers, with pricing details not yet available. Diamond announced this week that it would make NBA and NHL games available on Amazon on an a la carte basis at $6.99 per game for non-subscribers, an option they could provide for MLB games as well.
A reworked deal would almost certainly be for less money than what the Royals were receiving under the old deal with Diamond. The St. Louis Cardinals reached agreement on a new deal earlier this month, with reports indicating they will receive 20 percent less in 2025 than the $78 million they were owed under the old deal. The Cardinals deal will expire in 2028, the same time MLB’s national TV deals expire, with some anticipating the league will want to set up a national streaming deal at that time.
The Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers, and Minnesota Twins all opted not to return to Diamond for 2025, and will have MLB broadcast their games The Cincinnati Reds this week announced they are also leaving, and today announced they will join MLB’s broadcasts as well. The Texas Rangers left Diamond to create their own sports network. The NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and New Orleans Pelicans left Diamond to broadcast games for free on over-the-air channels.
Diamond Sports is a subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcasting, and took on $8 billion in debt to finance the purchase of 21 regional sports networks that included the channel that was known as Fox Sports Kansas City at the time. The bankruptcy restructure reduced their debt load from $9 billion to $200 million and was approved with near-unanimous approval from debt-holders.