When Sinclair's Diamond Sports Group subsidiary entered bankruptcy restructuring in March, it was widely believed that the Cincinnati Reds would be among four Major League Baseball teams in Diamond's Bally Sports regional sports network portfolio that wouldn't be paid their TV rights fee for the just-started MLB season.
And according to Sports Business Journal's John Ourand, Diamond has indeed followed through on that expectation. Diamond still has a 15-day grace period to pay the Reds, but it appears the subsidiary wants the bankruptcy court to restructure its money-losing Reds contract before it pays anything.
The Reds, Ourand reported, might be the first MLB team affected by the Bally Sports bankruptcy to follow through on MLB's earlier declaration that teams not paid by Diamond for the 2023 season terminate their RSN deal and start broadcasting/streaming their own games. but more on that in a second.
Before Ourand's report, the fate of the Reds' Bally Sports deal had been somewhat of a mystery.
Earlier, Diamond skipped payments for two of the four teams listed as being money-losers for Bally Sports -- the Arizona Diamondbacks and Cleveland Guardians. The subsidiary did make its payment on time to the fourth team on the "money-losers" list, the World Series-contending San Diego Padres, but it skipped out on paying the Minnesota Twins, which weren't on the original list.
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MLB lawyers have petitioned the Texas bankruptcy court adjudicating Diamond's case to cut affected teams loose from their Diamond contracts and stop Bally Sports from broadcasting the teams' games.
MBL Commissioner Rob Manfred has said his league is ready to step in and help affected teams, including the Reds, stream their games without Bally Sports' help.
Sinclair and Diamond, meanwhile, are trying to trade equity in exchange for around $8 billion in debt tied to Bally Sports. They want the court to restructure deals for the Diamondbacks, Twins, Guardians and Reds to "market rates."
In the meantime, Sinclair and Diamond want business with their respective league and team partners to resume as usual.
Like the Guardians, Reds games are shown on Bally Sports Ohio. Unlike the other three clubs not being paid by Diamond, however, the Reds own a stake in their RSN, which was part of the 15-year deal it signed with Diamond back i 2017.
Ourand reports that the Reds have already begun developing plans to broadcast/stream their games following a default by Diamond, He predicts
Because of their ownership stake in the RSN, the Reds have access to the production crew for their games, and can even enlist play-by-play announcer John Sadak and analysts Chris Welsh and Barry Larkin.
Ourand predicts that the Reds could take over their broadcasts for a May 6 game between the Reds and Chicago White Sox, with the May 5 game between those opponents streamed under national MLB contract by Apple TV Plus.
