Diamond Sports Group has confirmed a minority investment deal with Amazon. The deal is part of a much larger Restructuring Support Agreement (RSA) announced today that will eventually see Diamond emerge from bankruptcy.
Throughout 2023, the future of Diamond Sports, and by association, Bally Sports, remained unclear. Over the past few months alone, Diamond has agreed multiple deals with individual teams and leagues to cover the remainder of this season, and while it continued to work out the finer details of its restructuring plan.
Those details became far clearer today after Diamond announced the RSA with its largest creditor groups. As part of the agreement, Diamond explained that Amazon has committed to a minority investment in Diamond. In addition, Amazon has also entered into a commercial arrangement to provide access to Diamond’s services via Prime Video.
According to the details, Prime Video is now set to become “Diamond’s primary partner” and offer the option to purchase direct-to-consumer (DTC) access to local Diamond channels and content, including live MLB, NBA and NHL games, as well as pre- and post-game programming, through Prime Video Channels.
Evidently, this deal only applies to the teams for which Diamond still has DTC rights to. Not to mention, the deal does not impact the existing MLB, NBA and NHL broadcast deals Diamond has with MVPDs.
Basically, Amazon is now set to take over the streaming side of Diamond’s DTC services and operations, with those services set to be sold as premium subscriptions through Prime Video Channels. At present, it remains unclear how much these premium Prime Video subscriptions will cost, with the announcement simply explaining that “pricing and availability will be announced at a later date.”
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