In a weird twist, Sinclair is reportedly trying to buy back the Diamond Sports Group, which it spun off last year, and the Bally Sports RSNs.
Per the New York Post, Sinclair and Bally’s owner Soo Kim have offered $850 million to purchase the Diamond Sports Group. The RSNs were originally purchased by Sinclair from Disney, which was forced to divest them by the Department of Justice following Disney’s multi-billion purchase of a variety of Fox assets, for $9.6 billion, including $1.4 billion in cash.
A potential sale would also come with the condition that Diamond drops its $1.5 billion lawsuit against Sinclair for “alleged misconduct” related to alleged financial mismanagement by Sinclair related to Diamond and the RSNs.
Given the plethora of issues Sinclair had with the RSNs following its purchase of them, I’d take the report of the company wanting to spend another nine figures to re-acquire control of them with a grain of salt.
The Post’s report also repeats its story from September about the NBA negotiating to cut its rights payments by 20% (which was debunked by later reporting stating cuts had to be made on a team-by-team basis) and also claims the league is attempting to regain digital rights for all of its teams beginning with the 2025-26 season (which seems like a non-starter for teams like the Jazz, Suns, Clippers, Lakers, and so on launching their own direct-to-consumer services) and sell them to a digital company. I’m also not sure how that would work with teams whose games are on RSNs either the team or its ownership owns a stake in, like the Knicks, Celtics, Bulls, and Rockets.
Anyway, Diamond’s proposed 60-day extension to its bankruptcy proceedings (from November 29 to January 29) has yet to be approved, so this process seems like it will be in a holding pattern until we have a decision on that.
