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Sinclair/Ballys/ESPN/TNT ... broadcasting access, tips and notes

bagopux said:
Just using it for the 12 months would be the plan. There's no way I'd stay with them past that.
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Like I said. Just be careful that Bally’s is available on the streaming only. They told me that too and it was on their site. When I bought it and saw ballys blacked out on the spectrum app I called and they said ‘oh sorry, Ballys is only available when you get our service with the cable box’. Then they tried to upgrade me to an $89 package. 🖕🏻
 
Fayettenamcanesfan said:
Like I said. Just be careful that Bally’s is available on the streaming only. They told me that too and it was on their site. When I bought it and saw ballys blacked out on the spectrum app I called and they said ‘oh sorry, Ballys is only available when you get our service with the cable box’. Then they tried to upgrade me to an $89 package. 🖕🏻
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Good advice. Thanks. they offer a 7 day trial so that should help work out any kinks.
 
Sports Business Journal reports that Sinclair‘s Diamond Sports Group has engaged investment banks LionTree and Moelis, leading to speculation that their RSNs are preparing to be sold. LionTree recently represented Ted Leonsis in his purchase of NBC Sports Washington from Comcast. Diamond has about $8 billion in debt which puts the bankers in a tough position. Creditors will be reluctant to restructure the debt until they know who the buyer is and buyers will be reluctant to engage until the balance sheet improves. But if the debt is converted to equity, that could work.

There has been speculation that bankruptcy is inevitable for Diamond Sports. That would be a brutal result for the teams broadcasting on that platform. Diamond would be able to suspend payments to teams while essentially broadcasting the games without paying for them
 
I read an article somewhere that indicated that Sinclair almost certainly is going to have to take Diamond Sports through bankruptcy eventually, whether they do so to clear the books ahead of a sale or simply to be able to continue to operate on their own. One way or another, somebody is going to have to clear a huge chunk of their debt in order for them to continue in the long term. It was a bit troubling in that the timing seems to leading towards a possible interruption of broadcasting during the hockey season ... as it's their baseball revenues that allow them to make their month to month obligations and that tap turns off in early October. Apparently they barely managed to keep the lights on last year, and are in worse shape now with rising interest rates and a softer general economy. Obviously there's a way for them to keep operating during bankruptcy, but I don't trust those clods to pull it off.
 
So. If I want to watch from Carteret County what are my options? Do I need Bally for that or just espn plus?
 
There is a page on NHL.come here you can enter your zip code to see what teams are blacked out. Mine is blacked out. So that means I need some way to watch Bally correct?
 
My in-laws have DirecTV Stream and gave me a login for their account for the app on Roku. DirecTV Stream has a deal with Bally Sports so no problems tuning in any game of the season. I think that's the only way around the black-out bullshit
 
The canes and nhl are making it too difficult for me to watch, so I’ll find something else. Are these people nuts? Paying to watch out of market games And it appears we can’t watch our own team.
 
dwind said:
The canes and nhl are making it too difficult for me to watch, so I’ll find something else. Are these people nuts? Paying to watch out of market games And it appears we can’t watch our own team.
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The basic setup of the blackout rules hasn't really changed Dennis. If you can still get Bally on a TV in your house (app or cable or DirecTV Stream) then you are blacked out from watching local games on ESPN+

That hasn't changed. They just added the app to the mix. If you got games on cable, then absolutely nothing has changed.
 
NoMich said:
My in-laws have DirecTV Stream and gave me a login for their account for the app on Roku. DirecTV Stream has a deal with Bally Sports so no problems tuning in any game of the season. I think that's the only way around the black-out bullshit
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I've still got my DirecTV Stream account. Other than the terrible user interface, it's a perfectly easy way to watch Canes games.
 
The frustration is that when you had network TV and the local teams played on the local channels the blackout stuff made sense. Now you don’t have that. You have to figure out a service that has what you want which you have to then pay for. For instance I don’t want direct tv stream for anything else besides the Canes games but I have to sign up for their 80 something per month package to get that. I also don’t want the Disney Hulu ESPN+ bundle but if I want to watch any other hockey teams I need that but I can’t watch my local team.

Dwind is right. They’re making this too hard. The teams/league need to figure that out. I used to watch ALL the boxing matches. Ali, Foreman, Frazier, etc. so did everyone else. They went PPV and I might have seen one fight since. I don’t know who the heavyweight champ even is but when I was in grade school ALL of us knew. They need to make it easy to watch/follow your team. I’m considering just not watching this season. If I do that I probably won’t trip for tickets next season either. I’d pay for content I want. I don’t want to pay for all the other crap that I not only don’t care about but I actively don’t support and don’t want in my house.
 
I think one of the reasons why football rules the sports roost here in the US is because you can watch all of your local team's games free on broadcast TV.
 
cmon3 said:
The frustration is that when you had network TV and the local teams played on the local channels the blackout stuff made sense. Now you don’t have that. You have to figure out a service that has what you want which you have to then pay for. For instance I don’t want direct tv stream for anything else besides the Canes games but I have to sign up for their 80 something per month package to get that. I also don’t want the Disney Hulu ESPN+ bundle but if I want to watch any other hockey teams I need that but I can’t watch my local team.

Dwind is right. They’re making this too hard. The teams/league need to figure that out. I used to watch ALL the boxing matches. Ali, Foreman, Frazier, etc. so did everyone else. They went PPV and I might have seen one fight since. I don’t know who the heavyweight champ even is but when I was in grade school ALL of us knew. They need to make it easy to watch/follow your team. I’m considering just not watching this season. If I do that I probably won’t trip for tickets next season either. I’d pay for content I want. I don’t want to pay for all the other crap that I not only don’t care about but I actively don’t support and don’t want in my house.
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Oh, I get the frustration ... it's just that for this season nothing really changed other than adding one additional option for access. I would also say that this is a transitional period for sports broadcasting (aside from the NFL) so whatever is happening now will probably not be what's happening in a couple of years once all the moving parts shake out. Bottom line -- if you're frustrated now, just wait. It's prolly getting worse before it gets better.
 
What the league(s) need to consider is they putting hurdles in the way of watching loses you fans. In the 80’s Icould tell you the starting pitchers for all the major league teams and if a batting order changed I knees that too. I watched all the games I could and read everything etc. then it was gone for a year and I got out of the habit. It’s been 25 years since I watched a game on my own. Watched a few with my brother and dad because they were watching but that’s it. The point is that this sports fan yhing is way mor fragile than you’d expect. If it gets hard to access people find other ways to spend their time.

so worse before it gets better is going to cost them fans.
 
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Sure ... but what are their options exactly? We're really talking about MLB and the NHL here, because they're the two leagues most directly impacted by the collapse of the regional sports networks. Both leagues had existing contracts that have yet to run out, yet the original partner (Fox Sports RSNs) got bought by a less than capable company (Sinclair) during the Fox fire sale ... all of which 100% happened outside the control of MLB and the NHL. They both know that what's happening is costing them fans, but you can't just make a few calls and sort something out here. It's a changing landscape in a segment of their businesses that is also rapidly changing ... and they're starting with a sketchy partner that they can't just force to go away.

My guess is that the NHL will end up with ESPN+ as a full service streaming option eventually, but before that can happen Bally's/Sinclair has to go the way of the dinos. Maybe the most self-serving thing hockey fans can do is avoid giving any money directly to Bally's/Sinclair and thus hasten their inevitable demise.
 
MLB, the NBA and the NHL may put in a bid to buy the Sinclair-owned RSNs. Sinclair paid $10.6 billion for the networks. Insiders believe the sale will cost the leagues $3 billion plus the assumption of about $2 billion in debt. If a deal isn’t made, the RSNs could be forced into bankruptcy within 3 to 6 months. As I noted in an earlier post, that’s the worst case scenario for the teams; bankruptcy would allow the RSNs to continue broadcasting without paying rights fees.

The article notes something I don’t remember seeing before. When Disney sold off the RSNs, MLB had teamed up with Liberty Media to submit a bid. Liberty owns Formula One, the Atlanta Braces, a 76% stake in SiriusXM and a 35% stake in Live Nation

nypost.com

Exclusive | MLB, NBA and NHL may buy biggest owner of regional sports TV networks: sources

The leagues are expected to soon begin talks with Diamond Sports, which operates 21 Bally regional sports networks, sources said.
nypost.com nypost.com
 
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andyt said:
MLB, the NBA and the NHL may put in a bid to buy the Sinclair-owned RSNs. Sinclair paid $10.6 billion for the networks. Insiders believe the sale will cost the leagues $3 billion plus the assumption of about $2 billion in debt. If a deal isn’t made, the RSNs could be forced into bankruptcy within 3 to 6 months. As I noted in an earlier post, that’s the worst case scenario for the teams; bankruptcy would allow the RSNs to continue broadcasting without paying rights fees.

The article notes something I don’t remember seeing before. When Disney sold off the RSNs, MLB had teamed up with Liberty Media to submit a bid. Liberty owns Formula One, the Atlanta Braces, a 76% stake in SiriusXM and a 35% stake in Live Nation

nypost.com

Exclusive | MLB, NBA and NHL may buy biggest owner of regional sports TV networks: sources

The leagues are expected to soon begin talks with Diamond Sports, which operates 21 Bally regional sports networks, sources said.
nypost.com nypost.com
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I read a couple of those articles yesterday. It sounds to me like bankruptcy is roughly equally as likely as an immediate sale to the NHL, but I think the league can probably end up paying far less for the assets if they purchase the RSN rights out of bankruptcy. It's a matter of weighing the short term loss of revenues for impacted teams while Sinclair operates in bankruptcy against the lower out of pocket expense up front. At the end of the day, the NHL is almost certainly going to end up with the regional rights and that's going to be a good thing for everyone in the long run. The question is how much cash flow pain the teams will have to endure while the matter is settled.

Dundon ought to love this. It's the ultimate distressed asset acquisition. Sinclair got the RSNs for roughly half their market value in the Disney/Fox fire sale and now the NHL is going to end up with the RSNs for half of that. Sadly this is all a fairly accurate depiction of the league's standing in the sports world. Their regional networks are basically scratch and dent shelf stock, and the only interested party is the league itself. Congrats to Gary Bettman for another triumph.
 
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