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Diamond Sports Renews RSN Deal With NHL’s L.A. Kings

anthony crupi
·3 min read

With just nine days to go before the Los Angeles Kings are set to take the ice in their first preseason game of 2023-24, Diamond Sports has renewed its media rights deal with the NHL franchise.

Financial terms of the deal, which is being characterized as a “multiyear” agreement, were not disclosed. Under the new contract, the Diamond-owned RSN Bally Sports West will televise 63 live Kings games to subscribers in the sprawling L.A. market, which is home to 5.84 million TV households.

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The new deal includes a streaming component, as local fans will be able to access a digital feed of the Kings’ games via the Bally Sports app or through a subscription to the Bally Sports+ direct-to-consumer platform.

The Kings renewal comes as the Sept. 30 deadline for Diamond to submit a bankruptcy-exit plan grows nearer. A satisfactory formulation of the company’s reorganization strategy should go a long way toward assuring its league partners that local access to NHL and NBA games will not be disrupted.

“We are encouraged by the progress we are making in our restructuring process and are hopeful that this agreement can serve as a model for future discussions with our team and league partners,” said Diamond CEO David Preschlack, in a statement announcing the renewal.

As Diamond scrambles to meet the filing deadline, the company’s attorneys have affirmed its intentions to continue televising games for the 12 NHL and 16 NBA teams with which it is partnered. The Kings renewal is one less bit of business Diamond must attend to as the clock winds down. (Last month, a Diamond lawyer told Judge Christopher Lopez that management was keenly aware of the time constraint, which is “animating their every action, every day.”)

With the Kings deal sewn up, Diamond should be off the hook for any further NBA or NHL renewals, at least in the near term. A source with insight into the company’s contractual dealings said no other rights deals are set to expire between now and the end of either season.

Which isn’t to say that Diamond doesn’t have other business arrangements to close before the year is out. The company’s carriage deal with cable giant Comcast expires at the end of this month, or about 30 days before its contract with DirecTV runs out. Looking further down the road, Diamond’s carriage on Charter’s Spectrum-branded cable systems is binding through Feb. 29, 2024.

Spectrum is the dominant cable provider in the L.A. media market.

All told, the three operators provide just north of 42 million video subscribers, or approximately 58% of the U.S. pay-TV universe. A lawyer for DirecTV recently told the court that the satcaster was concerned that Diamond’s re-org plan might “assume a continuation of the status quo.”

Among the pressing issues DirecTV would like Diamond to address as they negotiate a renewal is a series of what the satcaster characterized as “cost-based reductions [related to the] loss of specific teams’ rights.”

A parallel conversation is likely to revolve around penetration minimums. Traditionally, the terms of a standard carriage deal ensure that the contracted RSNs are made available to between 80% and 90% of an operator’s overall subscriber base. That said, lower penetration thresholds were structured into a recent deal between Charter, which owns the RSNs Spectrum SportsNet (Lakers) and SportsNet LA (Dodgers) and DirecTV. In the wake of the Disney-Charter detente, flexibility is now just about as important a consideration as cash.

In the here and now, the Kings are pleased to have worked out a deal to stay in the Diamond Sports family. “We thoroughly enjoy working with our friends at Bally Sports,” said Kings COO Kelly Cheeseman in a statement released Thursday evening. “We are happy this agreement maintains consistency and continues to give our stakeholders informed and intimate coverage of our hockey club.”

A joint venture between Diamond (75%) and baseball’s Los Angeles Angels (25%), the RSN has served as the local TV home of the Kings since 1985.

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