The reason many sports fans across the country, and especially here in North Texas, should be at least a little concerned over this is that Diamond Sports Group owns the regional sports networks (RSN) for a whole mess of professional sports teams. Locally, that includes the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, the NHL’s Dallas Stars and the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball, all on Bally Sports Southwest.
This latest development wasn’t a surprise to anyone paying attention, as reports going back to January predicted that bankruptcy was likely.
For now it seems as though there won’t be much to worry about for Dallas-Fort Worth fans planning to keep visual tabs on the Mavs, Rangers and Stars. Diamond Sports Group says it has enough on-hand cash to keep things going, and the individual leagues and teams involved have also promised their fans that the show will go on over the airwaves. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has stated the league will still broadcast the games somehow, should Diamond Sports Group not hold up its end of the deal.
“As of now nothing changes,” confirmed Dallas Mavericks governor Mark Cuban to the Observer via email on Wednesday morning. The Texas Rangers, with their season set to begin in a couple of weeks, also seem optimistic that their television viewers will not suffer due to a lack of availability.
“We expect that there will be no disruption in the televising of Texas Rangers games for the upcoming season. We are confident that a long-term solution will be accomplished for the RSN issue,” the Rangers’ Executive Vice President of Communications John Blake told the Observer.
Shortly after Blake provided his statement, The Athletic reported that the Rangers are making a move to terminate the team's $111 million agreement with Diamond Sports Group. Blake provided The Athletic with the same email statement he gave to the Observer when asked about the Wednesday court filing.
The ins and outs of Tuesday’s bankruptcy filing consist of a number of complex, big-money transactions and billions of dollars of debt. But for the average consumer, the hassle of keeping up with whether local pro games are readily available to view is a whole other story. The Bally Sports app, which ostensibly should have healed a lot of broken sports hearts, was introduced a few months ago, offering live sports for $19.99 per month. But it was roundly criticized for its high price and lack of DVR capability.
Cuban’s and Blake’s assurances of uninterrupted broadcasts are fine for some, but for many others who have spent the past two-plus years not regularly watching sports, it doesn’t really matter if it means things are staying the same for now.
“Long story short, it’s been a complete hassle and I have no shame in expressing my glee at the current situation Sinclair finds itself in.” – Dave Lane, 1310 The Ticket Hardline co-host.
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Popular multi-channel streaming services Hulu and YouTube TV dropped the many Bally-branded regional sports networks in fall 2020, around the time that cable provider Frontier Communications did the same. Some services carried Bally Sports Southwest, including then-named AT&T TV, now DirecTV Stream. To regain some lost viewers, Cuban even subsidized a $50 DirecTV Stream discount for Mavs fans who made the switch in November 2021.
Some of the area’s most fervent sports fans have now gone years unable to watch their favorite teams play on the regular basis they had grown accustomed to. In fact, some of those fans make a living talking about sports, and going through the hassle of switching television providers has just not been worth it even to them.
“YouTube TV was great,” said Sean Bass, the producer of 1310 The Ticket’s Norm and D Invasion show. “It was relatively cheap and it had all the sports when I signed up. The interface has been great, and I can pull it up on my laptop and use it for the show, and I just didn't want to give it up when it didn’t have Bally Sports anymore. Luckily, there are enough ways to get around it by finding not-exactly-stable streams on the internet, which is what I’ve been doing.”
Bass is the longtime host of the Ticket’s Rangers post-game show and arguably the station’s biggest baseball enthusiast. Jumping through the hoops that Bally Sports has forced on viewers in recent years isn’t appealing to him, a man who needs to watch Rangers baseball for his occupation. In fact, he’s totally cool with the possibility of Major League Baseball taking Rangers game broadcasts over from Bally Sports.
“MLB.TV is yet another thing I pay for,” he said. “If the league takes the local blackouts off of Rangers games in order for fans here to see the games, then my problems are solved.”
One of Bass’s Ticket colleagues also gave up chasing his teams on Bally Sports a long time ago. Like Bass, Dave Lane was a YouTube TV customer when Bally Sports dropped off its channel guide. The co-host of the 1310’s The Hardline program said he was “sick of switching” and decided to not keep changing television services.
Like Bass, he found alternative workarounds, loopholes and the use of what he called “less-than-legal streams” to keep up with the local teams.
“Long story short,” Lane said. “It’s been a complete hassle and I have no shame in expressing my glee at the current situation Sinclair finds itself in.”
When surveying the entire scene as it has played out, Lane gets down to what is probably the simple truth of what has gone wrong with Bally Sports, and the reasons why many local fans haven’t had any qualms about not keeping up with its many ebbs and flows, ups and downs.
“They paid way too much for the networks, took way too long to develop an app and were way too greedy in pricing their product,” he said. “Meanwhile the CEO was getting multimillion dollar bonuses, so they deserve all the failure they get.”
