For the second time in a week, a report has Disney looking at entering the regional sports space.
Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Disney and three of the biggest streamers — Apple, Amazon and Google — are among those interested in acquiring local NBA rights, but only if they can do so for a “critical mass” of teams. The majority of NBA local rights are owned by the bankrupt Diamond Sports Group, operator of the Bally Sports RSNs.
So far, Diamond has relinquished rights to only two of its various teams, the MLB Padres and Diamondbacks. It also lost rights to Suns games, but its contract had expired and it was unable to match the team’s subsequent deal with Gray Television and Kiswe.
Diamond said in a statement to Bloomberg that its goal is to produce and televise all of the NBA games to which it has rights. There is no immediate indication that it would lose or relinquish enough rights for a bulk acquisition to be feasible, though that could change in the event its contract negotiations with Comcast and DirecTV — its top-two distributors — fall through. (DirecTV, it should be noted, is also said to be interested in acquiring bulk local rights should they become available.)
Whether or not an acquisition is likely, the Bloomberg report marks the second time in recent days that Disney has been mentioned as contender for local sports rights. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that ESPN sees potential in the acquisition of local rights and has held early discussions with Major League Baseball about distributing some of its teams’ games though the ESPN+ streaming service.
The RSNs now owned by Diamond Sports were sold to Disney in 2018 as part of the company’s $71.3 billion acquisition of most 21st Century Fox assets, but the company was forced to divest them in order for the sale to be approved by U.S. regulators.
