Which Major League Baseball teams stay with the broadcasting company Diamond Sports Group and which teams go elsewhere could be clarified soon.
A major court date looms for Diamond on Nov. 14. That’s when Diamond, which has been in bankruptcy for a year-and-a-half, is to have the first day of a potential two-day confirmation hearing — when it will find out whether it has put together a sufficient business plan in the eyes of a federal judge.
But James Bromley, a lawyer for MLB, said Wednesday that he’s in discussions with Diamond counterpart Andrew Goldman about getting baseball’s situation sorted out ahead of Diamond’s big day.
“We have been in conversation now with Mr. Goldman about the possibility of finding a way for those clubs that are not going forward — Major League Baseball clubs that will not be going forward, whether joint-venture clubs or clubs that are subject to your honor’s jurisdiction — that we might find a way to terminate and/or reject (contracts) as appropriate prior to the confirmation hearing, so that we can open up the the opportunities for those clubs to make alternative arrangements for 2025 season,” Bromley said.
What’s not known yet is which teams will go which direction. Eight clubs are still relevant to the conversation, and they fall into two groups: those who are subject to the bankruptcy proceeding and those who are not because they are “joint-venture” clubs.
Three teams are formally part of the court’s process: the Atlanta Braves, Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays. Diamond has said it will keep the Atlanta Braves’ contract, and drop the contracts of the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays.
Five other teams — the Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals — are the “joint-venture” teams. The Diamond stations those teams are carried on are not formally in bankruptcy. But there are ways for Diamond to effectively walk away from them too.
It happened in 2023, when Diamond chose not to pay the San Diego Padres in the middle of the season, and MLB then took over the team’s broadcasts.
Diamond appears open to continuing on with the other seven teams besides the Braves, but only on re-negotiated deals. MLB, meanwhile, seems to be running away from Diamond as fast as it can.
The league announced on Tuesday that four teams — one third of the dozen that were carried by Diamond last year — definitively would not return to Diamond for 2025. The Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers and Minnesota Twins are going to be broadcast instead by MLB. The Texas Rangers, meanwhile, have not finalized their next broadcast home, but the league said they will not go back to Diamond either.
Those four teams all came out of contract with Diamond at the end of the 2024 season, while the aforementioned eight have time remaining on their deals.
(Top photo: Mark Cunningham / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
