After weeks of rumors and negotiations, Amazon has officially entered into an agreement to invest in Diamond Sports Group and become the primary streaming home of live games on Bally Sports.
Diamond announced Wednesday that Amazon Prime Video will become the primary streaming partner of Bally Sports, carrying all of the MLB, NBA and NHL teams to which Diamond has digital rights. While Diamond owns digital rights to all of the NBA and NHL teams carried by Bally Sports, that is the case for only five of 11 Major League Baseball teams.
According to the New York Post, the size of the Amazon investment is $100 million. According to previous reporting in the Post, Amazon was initially set to invest $150 million in a deal that would have included all of the MLB teams.
The Amazon deal is part of a broader restructuring agreement that also includes Diamond settling its litigation with parent company Sinclair, which has agreed to pay a $495 million. Diamond filed suit against Sinclair last year alleging that the company had been draining the division of assets with an eye toward its eventual bankruptcy.
All of Diamond’s existing rights deals with NBA and NHL teams are set to expire after this season under separate agreements reached late last year, meaning that any future distribution through Amazon Prime Video will require future negotiations. As pertains to the NBA, there had been an assumption that the end of Diamond’s current rights deals would free the league up to sell those rights to Amazon as part of a broader national media rights agreement. Now Amazon has those rights for a relative bargain and could continue to own them without having to negotiate directly with the league.
For its part, Major League Baseball has resisted the Amazon-Diamond pact, refusing to sell Diamond streaming rights for the six other teams under contract with the company and conditioning discounted rights fees for three teams this season on Diamond relinquishing the digital rights it currently owns. MLB wants to negotiate streaming deals directly with Amazon. It is not clear whether the NBA shares that desire.
All of the agreements announced Wednesday are subject to approval by bankruptcy court.
