Bally Sports has been the long-time broadcasting home for Texas Rangers’ games, but that may soon change.
The company, which filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year, has a deal in place to settle any outstanding issues with its creditors for the MLB season, but the agreement still needs to be approved by a judge. According to CBS News Texas, the deal would include Bally Sports ending its baseball broadcasts after the 2024 MLB season.
Sinclair Broadcast Group rebranded its Fox Sports regional sports networks to “Bally Sports” after announcing a collaboration with Bally’s Corporation in 2021 after 25 years of broadcasting games under the Fox Sports name. However, the company was forced to file for bankruptcy after missing a large interest payment in March.
Since then, the future of many teams’ broadcasting homes has been up in the air, as Bally Sports currently has broadcasting deals with 42 teams across the MLB, NBA, and NHL, including the Rangers, Mavericks, and Stars.
All three teams have declined to comment on the issue as the legal proceedings continue and they continue to assess their options for the future.
According to the Sports Business Journal (SBJ), the networks will continue to carry NBA and NHL games during the current season, and Sinclair “will probably shut down” Bally Sports and its parent company, Diamond Sports Group, after the 2024 MLB regular season, forcing its teams to find new broadcasting homes.
However, the Rangers may need to find a new home sooner because Texas and the Cleveland Guardians are in danger of having their deals end before the 2024 season.
“Our intention is to broadcast almost all of [our] Major League Baseball teams next year,” one of Diamond Sports Group’s attorneys said in court earlier this week, according to The Athletic and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
“There are a few, a very few, for which we do not have agreements in place, and that, frankly, at this point, are too expensive for us to broadcast without concessions. I am told that those discussions are taking place, [and] there have been reach-outs to both of the teams involved,” the attorney said.
If dropped from their networks, the teams could have the league broadcast their games or find another broadcasting partner, which they would have to do eventually either way.
