Diamondbacks games no longer to be carried on Bally Sports; MLB moving them to new outlets
Major League Baseball announced Tuesday that it will take over production and distribution of Arizona Diamondbacks games from Bally Sports Arizona, beginning immediately with Tuesday’s series opener against the Braves.
The arrangement comes after Diamond Sports Group — the parent company of Bally Sports Arizona — missed its most recent payment to the Diamondbacks this month. Last month, the two sides pushed back a bankruptcy court hearing to Tuesday, saying that they were having “positive discussions towards finding a solution.”
Games will be broadcast on channel 4 on Cox in Phoenix; channel 7 on Cox in Tucson; channel 686-3 on DirectTV; channel 304 on Spectrum and channel 1261 on Xfinity. Games will also be available on Fubo and DirecTV stream. A full list of providers is available on dbacks.com/watch.
Fans in the Diamondbacks’ home television territory — who were previously blacked out from watching games on MLB.TV — will now be able to subscribe to that service for $19.99 per month or $54.99 for the remainder of the season. That territory includes all of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, as well as parts of southern Nevada.
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Per Major League Baseball data, Diamondbacks games will now be available in 5.6 million homes in the club’s home television territory, an increase more than five times from the approximately 930,000 homes that previously had access to games.
The Diamondbacks' broadcasters will all continue in their current roles. That includes Steve Berthiaume and Bob Brenly, who are employed by the club, as well as hosts Jody Jackson and Todd Walsh, who are now employed by MLB. Mark Grace and Brandon Webb will also continue as analysts on the MLB-produced broadcasts. There will be postgame shows after every game and pregame shows prior to home games, but not for road games.
“This decision provides us with an opportunity to partner with Major League Baseball to produce high-quality broadcasts of D-Backs games on current platforms, expand access to include streaming options, and remove local blackouts that have been a fan frustration point for years,” Diamondbacks President Derrick Hall said in a statement. “We have enjoyed our partnership with Bally Sports Arizona and thank them for the longtime partnership. But we look forward to providing unprecedented access to our exciting team moving forward, including a greatly expanded reach of new households.”
The Diamondbacks are the second team to whose broadcasts Bally Sports has lost the rights. The company lost the rights to Padres broadcasts on May 30, prompting Major League Baseball to take over. Bally Sports also lost the rights to Phoenix Suns games earlier this month.
Bally Sports’ issues have come as a result of financial struggles for Diamond Sports Group, which declared bankruptcy in March.
Major League Baseball has promised impacted clubs that it would provide at least 80% of the money owed to them this season in their deals with local Bally affiliates. The Diamondbacks’ deal was signed in 2015 for 20 years and $1.5 billion. At $75 million per year, they could potentially be looking at a shortfall of $15 million this year, a significant dent for a small-market club. It is unclear how the club’s finances will be affected beyond this season.
“We arrived at that number as something that would prevent financial distress at the club level, the ability to pay players and those sorts of things,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in May. “We didn’t feel like we should be in the position of guaranteeing somebody else’s payments, but we wanted them to have enough cash flow to prevent a disruption of our business.”
In a statement to The Republic, Diamond Sports Group said that it anticipates making the remainder of its payments to MLB teams through the end of this season.
“Given the inability to reach an agreement with the Diamondbacks and MLB, we have rejected that rights contract, which had financial terms that were not aligned with Diamond’s long-term plans," the statement read. "We are no longer broadcasting Diamondbacks games. We value the relationships we have built with the Diamondbacks and their passionate fans, and we wish them the best going forward.”
“Importantly, we are continuing to broadcast games for all other teams under contract without disruption and we anticipate making all rights payments to the remainder of the MLB teams in our portfolio through the end of this season.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Diamondbacks games moving from Bally Sports Arizona: Where to watch
