Last month Diamond Sports Group failed to make a payment on behalf of Bally Sports Ohio that was due. That triggered a 15-day grace period where they could still make the payment without issue. May 5th would have been the first day in which Bally Sports Ohio would not have had the broadcast rights without making that payment, but that game was going to be on Apple TV+. The next day would have been the first game where no one had a real idea of what would happen if no payment was made. MLB believed they could take over the rights, but it’s usually not as cut-and-dry as that. For now, all of that has been avoided as the payment was made on time, according to John Kiesewetter of WVXU.
For some fans this is great news. For others it is likely a big letdown.
While we certainly live in a “streaming” era, not everyone is streaming their television. A majority of people aren’t. Things are about even when it comes to the number of people streaming versus the number of people using cable and or satellite to bring in their television signal. Both are slightly ahead of viewers who only use an antenna.
One of the biggest gripes seen online with how all of this could work out if games went to a “streaming only” option if Bally Sports lost their rights was fans noting how difficult it would be to teach their parents how to find a way to access the game on their television that wasn’t “turn the TV on and go to channel 43”. Toss in that not everywhere has high speed internet and streaming isn’t even an option for them, and you had a subset of fans who could have been shut out of being able to watch games.
The flip side of that is that one of the talked about plans was that if the games broadcast rights would have reverted back to the team and Major League Baseball that the blackout rights could have been waived and it would have been much easier for anyone to watch the games online. This was important in many cases of current “streaming” cable packages who have dropped many of the sports networks from their offerings. While people likely could have subscribed to Spectrum or Altafiber or some satellite provider that did offer Bally Sports, they weren’t willing to make that move and instead just went without the station and the games visual presentation – opting to listen to the game, follow it on Gameday, or simply not follow at all. For those people, they are still in the same situation.
How long the current payment goes through was not clear. And with Bally Sports opting to not pay other teams, it seems that they are going to continue to look at these situations on the basis of how much sense it makes for them to uphold their contract or to just let their rights revert back to the team instead of “overpaying” to continue to broadcast games.
