San Diego Padres’ Daniel Camarena takes a hit during the fourth inning of baseball’s game against the Washington Nationals at Petco Park on July 8, 2021, in San Diego.
Dennis Porroy | Getty Images Sports | Getty Images
The San Diego Padres have a new home base on TV.
Major League Baseball will broadcast the team’s home games starting Wednesday, after the owner of Bowling Sports San Diego, a local market sports network, dropped the team.
After Diamond Sports, which filed for bankruptcy in March, chose not to make additional rights payments to the team, its Bolly Sports San Diego said it will broadcast the Padres’ final game on Tuesday. The move comes as Diamond pushes for direct-to-consumer broadcast rights to MLB teams broadcast on regional sports networks.
A Diamond spokeswoman also forced our hand over its ongoing efforts to negotiate direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming rights for all groups in our portfolio. press release. The company said it has plenty of cash and can still make rights payments and distribute other MLB teams in its portfolio.
MLB has announced that it will begin Wednesday for the Padres’ game against the Miami Marlins. Fans in Padres markets can watch games on cable TV or the league’s MLB.TV streaming app for $19.99 a month or $74.99 for the rest of the season.
“Commissioner Manfred has previously stated that Major League Baseball is ready to produce and broadcast Padres games to fans in Padres territory,” MLB Chief Revenue Officer Noah Garden said in a release. “While we are disappointed that Diamond Sports Group has not been able to honor its contract with the club, we are taking this opportunity to re-evaluate our distribution model, eliminate gaps in home games, improve telecasts and expand the reach of Padres games to more than 2 million homes.”
The MLB takeover means local Padres games won’t be interrupted on MLB.TV like other local teams. It added that MLB will make games free through June 4 through MLB Login on MLB.com, Padres.com or the MLB apps.
On cable TV, Padres games are available on four providers: Charter Communications’ Spectrum, Cox Communications, DirecTV and AT&T U-verse. It will increase the reach of Padres games from 1.13 million homes to about 3.3 million homes, according to MBB.
Bolly Sports San Diego is supported by joint ownership between Diamond and the team. The Padres signed a 20-year, $1.2 billion contract with Fox Sports in 2012.
When Disney acquired assets from Fox, it had to offload the Fox Sports networks. Disney later sold the network as Bally Sports to Sinclair Broadcasting Group in 2019 for $10.6 billion, which included approximately $8 billion in debt.
The debt burden has crippled the network ever since. Diamond is now a deconsolidated and independently managed subsidiary of Sinclair.
Streaming rights for MLB teams have been a sticking point between Diamond and the league for some time. While Diamond acquired the streaming rights to all NBA and NHL teams on regional sports networks, he was working on a team-by-team basis in MLB.
In previous months, Diamond has skipped payments to other MLB teams, including the Arizona Diamondbacks, to acquire waiver rights. Diamond owns 19 regional sports networks under the BallySports name.
Diamond has been forced to make partial payments to teams it has defaulted on in bankruptcy proceedings.
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