The saga of baseball on television took another turn Wednesday during a U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearing in Texas.
Diamond Sports Group informed their Major League Baseball partners that it plans to end their media contracts for all teams excluding a rights deal with the Atlanta Braves.
Sportico is reporting that Diamond Sports, the owner of the regional Bally Sports brands, revealed they they plan to cut ties with eight clubs including Cincinnati Reds, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, the Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins, Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals and Tampa Bay Rays.
As of Wednesday, Oct. 2, Diamond Sports has only dropped the contracts on Tampa Bay and Detroit, according to The Athletic's Evan Drellich.
Three other teams including the Minnesota Twins, Cleveland Guardians and Texas Rangers had contracts that expired at the end of September.
The cutting of ties with MLB means the league would be free to make plans for television broadcasts for the 2025 season immediately, if they haven't done so already. Diamond explained that this decision wasn't their "preferred path" but acknowledged their ongoing bankruptcy forced their hand and they needed to allow teams to make their own decisions going forward.
Cardinals President Bill Dewitt III touched on the regional sports network (RSN) situation on Monday at the Cardinals end-of-season press conference.
"I think the real challenge for us revenue wise is on the local media situation. As you know, there's a large trend of cutting the cord on the cable bundle and we had our distribution challenges," said Dewitt III. "The good news is it appears as almost in every scenario we're looking at, the fans will have a direct-to-consumer (DTC) product to get our games. It's basically an app they can stream games for a fee."
"We're working very hard to figure out how to enter this new phase of local media challenges and come out better on the other side."
The Cardinals agreed to a 15-year deal worth with then-Fox Sports Midwest back in 2018 with the deal worth a reported total value of $1 billion and included a 30% equity stake into the network.
Drellich notes that since five teams, including the Cardinals are "joint-venture teams", they are not a formal part of the bankruptcy proceeding, meaning their deals technically couldn't be assumed or rejected Wednesday.
However, Drellich notes that Diamond did drop the San Diego Padres in 2023, who were a "joint-venture" team.
The judge did schedule a follow-up session for Oct. 9. A final confirmation hearing is expected to take place on Nov. 14.