By Phillip Swann
The TV Answer Man –Follow on X.
Former editor of Satellite DIRECT magazine. Reported on DIRECTV for 30 years.
DIRECTV has filed an objection in a Texas court to reject Diamond Sports’ motion to compel it to pay for past carriage fees that the bankrupt RSN company says the TV provider owes it for carrying San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks games.
The motion will be the subject of a hearing on January 24 before the presiding judge in Diamond Sports’ bankruptcy case.
Diamond Sports, which owns the Bally Sports regional sports networks, and declared bankruptcy last March, alleges that DIRECTV stopped paying the fees after Diamond in the summer of 2023 ended its agreements to broadcast the Padres and Diamondbacks games.
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Diamond Sports says its contract with DIRECTV required it to continue paying the carriage fees for the two MLB teams even though Diamond Sports didn’t provide their games. Diamond Sports is asking the court to force DIRECTV to pay the fees as well as damages.
In its objection to the motion, filed January 11, 2024, DIRECTV says it’s not legally permitted to disclose the specific terms of the carriage agreement. But in a redacted filing, DIRECTV says this:
“The Diamond Parties seek payment of license fees in exchange for rights and games they failed to deliver. It would be inequitable to permit the Diamond Parties to enjoy a windfall by obtaining the fruits of performance when they did not perform or incur the costs of performance, while compelling DIRECTV to pay twice for the same games (once to the Diamond Parties and once to MLB).”
DIRECTV is referring to the fact that it had to pay Major League Baseball to continue carrying the Padres and Diamondbacks after Diamond Sports stopped carrying them. MLB took over the broadcasts after the end of the Diamond Sports agreements.
“The (Diamond Sports) motion is just another desperate attempt to rewrite one of their prepetition contracts to improve their cash flow to the detriment of their contract counterparties,” DIRECTV states.
In a statement released last October, DIRECTV said this:
“When DSG (Diamond Sports Group) ceases to carry a team, they seem to think we should continue to pay them for the right, even as we need to pay the new rights holders to ensure continued transmission to our subscribers. That makes no sense, and it is not how our agreements with DSG work.”
Since filing the DIRECTV motion, Diamond Sports has been renegotiating contracts with MLB, the NHL and the NBA to continue broadcasting team games in 2024. (Diamond Sports has held the regional TV rights to roughly three dozen NBA, NHL and MLB teams.)
It’s likely that the company will retain the regional TV rights for the three leagues this year but it’s unclear if they will continue to do so after 2024. The company is still working on an reorganization effort to become profitable after bankruptcy. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Amazon could help this effort by becoming an investor in Diamond Sports. But a New York Post report suggest that Major League Baseball could oppose a Diamond Sports/Amazon partnership because it would prefer Amazon to bid directly for regional streaming rights for future seasons.
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The TV Answer Man is veteran journalist Phillip Swann who has covered the TV technology scene for more than three decades. He will report on the latest news and answer your questions regarding new devices and services that are changing the way you watch television. See the bio for Phillip Swann here.
