Since Diamond Sports Group, the parent company of Bally Sports South missed a $140 million interest payment last month sports fans around the country have begun to speculate about what’s next.
There isn’t a simple answer for the company itself. Over the past three years, Regional Sports Networks (RSN) have scrambled to find their footing in a post-Covid landscape. Diamond Sports isn’t the only RSN struggling to survive. The industry as a whole has trended down as American consumers cut the cord in favor of streaming services.
What makes Diamond Sports unique is it’s over $8 billion in debt. Sinclair Broadcasting, the parent company of Diamond Sports paid Disney $10.6 billion for twenty-one regional networks in 2019. It was a gamble for Sinclair which operates over two hundred local affiliate networks for CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox.
Now after three years, gambling over $10 billion on a dying industry has proven to be disastrous. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in hopes of surviving its current trajectory.
What does this mean for the Carolina Hurricanes? Will you turn on your television to watch a game just to find that the network has disappeared? Are Tripp Tracey, Mike Maniscalco, and Hanna Yates in danger of losing their jobs?
For the Hurricanes it means they should quietly start looking for a replacement partner to broadcast their games if Diamond Sports doesn’t make it through the off-season. If they act quickly, it shouldn’t affect the team’s balance sheet. At this point in the season, Carolina would have received all funds due for Bally Sports South to broadcast Hurricanes games.
Tracey and Maniscalco both work for the Carolina Hurricanes directly. Hanna Yates is the only trio member that works for Bally Sports themselves. But don’t worry Hanna won’t be forced to leave in the middle of the night trying to land on her feet.
Sources have told me that this season will finish without major hiccups. What happens after that is still unknown. But at least for the rest of the season, you can still rely on Bally Sports to watch the Hurricanes try and gain momentum en route to the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
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