Comcast dropped 15 regional sports networks Tuesday night in the latest shake-up of the sports TV landscape.
The channels are owned by Diamond Sports, which has the broadcast rights to 38 teams from MLB, the NBA and the NHL. The impasse with Comcast could affect Diamond’s ability to emerge from years-long bankruptcy proceedings and could have a significant impact on all three leagues.
Some fans lost access to the channels in the middle of watching their teams late Tuesday night. Diamond airs games on Bally’s casino-branded networks in markets including Detroit, Indianapolis, New Orleans and Southern California.
The crux of the dispute, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions, is Comcast’s desire to move the networks to a more expensive tier of channels, as it has done in recent months with RSNs in Seattle and Pittsburgh and Mid-Atlantic Sports Network in the Washington area. Those deals gave subscribers the option to pay a higher monthly fee to watch their teams.
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Diamond balked at those terms, which led to dueling statements from the companies Wednesday.
“It’s disappointing that Comcast rejected a proposed extension that would have kept our channels on the air and that Comcast instead pulled the signals, preventing fans from watching their favorite local teams,” Diamond said.
Diamond directed customers to other video packages where its channels are still available, including Fubo and DirecTV.
Comcast countered: “We have been very flexible with Diamond Sports Group for months as they work through their bankruptcy proceedings, providing them with an extension on the Bally Sports Regional Networks last fall and a unilateral right to extend the term for another year, which they opted to not exercise. We’d like to continue carrying their networks, but they have declined multiple offers and now we no longer have the rights to this programming.”
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Comcast added that it would offer $8 to $10 rebates per month to its customers.
The dispute is part of the ongoing dissolution of the cable bundle, which for the better part of the past three decades has fueled much of the financial growth in sports. At the end of 2019, Comcast, the second-largest cable carrier in the United States, had 21.3 million video customers; today, it has 13.6 million. In the first quarter of this year alone, Comcast lost 487,000 video customers.
Last year, ESPN went dark on Charter Communications before the football season, though the sides eventually worked out a deal. Earlier this year, Diamond announced it had reached a new carriage deal with Charter that would require only new customers to pay for the more expensive sports tier.
Diamond has submitted a plan to a bankruptcy court in Texas that hinges in part on getting its channels distributed across its markets. How the company would maneuver through those proceedings without a deal with Comcast is unclear.
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The commissioners of MLB, the NBA and the NHL have spoken publicly about the importance of finding new media distribution models for teams in their local markets. Last year, MLB took over broadcast distribution for the San Diego Padres after Bally canceled its contract.
“It’s a great business model when a whole bunch of people pay for something they don’t really care if they have or not, which is what the cable bundle did for us,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said last year. “It’s hard to replicate that.”
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