Major League Baseball will take over broadcasts of San Diego Padres games starting Wednesday after Diamond Sports missed a royalty payment to the regional sports network’s parent company and let time extension expires.
Diamond Sports, which owns 19 networks under the Bally Sports banner, said in a statement that it has decided “not to provide additional funding to the San Diego RSN to allow it to make rights payments to the San Diego Padres.” during the extension and will no longer broadcast Padres games after Tuesday.”
San Diego kicked off a three-game series at the Miami Marlins on Tuesday night. Padres RSN is owned by a joint venture between the group and Diamond.
The Padres becomes the first team that MLB will take over the production of its broadcasts. MLB established a local media division throughout the season in preparation for Diamond Sports’ bankruptcy filing, which took place in March. Distribution plans for the Padres games have not been announced, but it is likely that the games will be broadcast locally over the MLB Network or streamed on MLB.TV.
Announcers will not change as they are employed by the team.
Padres signed a 20-year, $1.2 billion deal with Fox Sports Networks in 2012. Diamond Sports Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group bought regional sports networks from The Walt Disney Co. for nearly $10 billion in 2019. The Department of Justice’s sale of networks for the acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets has been approved.
Diamond Sports is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the Southern District of Texas. Diamond said in a financial filing last fall it had $8.67 billion in debt.
Diamond cited the amount of rights payments to Padres and the small market region compared to other regional networks to explain why it withdrew.
Diamond owns 80% of Bally Sports San Diego with the Padres owning the remaining 20%. It’s one of six Diamond regional networks where MLB teams are minority owners. The others are the Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals.
With Padres off Bally Sports, Diamond has rights to 40 professional teams — 13 baseball, 15 NBA and 12 NHL.
A hearing will be held Wednesday on whether Diamond can reduce its rights fee payments to the Cleveland Guardians, Minnesota Twins, Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks
