Now Optimum TV Has Lost the Bally Sports Nets

By Phillip Swann
The TV Answer Man –Follow me on X.

Optimum TV, the cable TV service, says it has lost the Bally Sports regional sports networks due to a carriage dispute between the companies.

“Despite our best efforts and continued flexibility to reach a fair and reasonable agreement, Diamond Sports Group continues to seek unsustainable demands that would raise our customers’ TV bills and, as a result, Bally Sports Networks has been removed from Optimum TV lineups,” Optimum said in a statement this morning. “We do not believe it is fair for Diamond Sports Group to ask customers to pay high rates for their channels when they are still negotiating content rights with various sports leagues and do not yet know what content will be available to their viewers.”

Diamond Sports, the owner of the Bally Sports RSNs (regional sports networks), has not issued a comment yet. The company, which is working on a bankruptcy reorganization plan, has been under fire from the professional sports leagues because of concerns it will not have the resources to broadcast their games indefinitely. The Bally Sports channels now offer the games of roughly three dozen MLB, NBA and NHL teams.

The loss of Optimum follows a similar carriage dispute between Comcast and Bally Sports. Comcast lost the Bally RSNs on May 1 when the companies could not reach a new deal.

Optimum says the following Bally Sports channels have been removed from its lineups:

Bally Sports Arizona
Bally Sports Extra
Bally Sports Great Lakes
Bally Sports Kansas City
Bally Sports Midwest

Bally Sports New Orleans
Bally Sports Ohio
Bally Sports Oklahoma
Bally Sports South
Bally Sports Southeast
Bally Sports Southwest
Bally Sports West

Optimum is urging affected subscribers to consider subscribing to Fubo or the Bally Sports Plus standalone app to continue watching their hometown teams.

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