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There’s been some progress in the Bally/Diamond broadcasting rights bankruptcy debacle of late, but only for the National Hockey League and National Basketball Association. MLB is continuing to have issues with the regional broadcasting giant, and the latest stems from the agreement Bally made with the NHL and NBA. Evan Drellich has the full story at The Athletic, but there’s one specific thing I want to focus on here:
“Major League Baseball and those clubs are unable to plan to obtain revenue and to have certainty with respect to the 2025 season,” James Bromley, a lawyer for MLB, said in court Tuesday.
Judge Chris Lopez on Tuesday approved deals Diamond recently reached with both the NBA and NHL, calling them “a step in the right direction.” But contained in those agreements is a key date that has put MLB on the offensive: both require Diamond to come out of bankruptcy by April 1, shortly after baseball’s season begins.
Speaking for nearly 14 minutes straight, Bromley warned Diamond that it cannot wait that long to figure out its plans in a bankruptcy process that’s already taken nearly 18 months, and called the status quo a “Band-Aid.”
Nine teams are under contract with a Diamond-operated RSN for 2025, with another three facing expiring contracts after this season. So we’re talking about over one-third of the league not knowing just how much money they’ll be getting in 2025 for their television rights, and from where. Diamond, per Drellich, seems unfazed by the threats from MLB to escalate their legal action if this isn’t figured out sooner than later.
Here’s what matters about this from this newsletter’s perspective: whether 9-12 MLB teams actually will have a problem with revenue and cash flow in 2025 isn’t what we should be concerned about, but that their public position is that the lack of resolution from Bally will keep them from being able to plan out rosters for 2025 is an issue. Now, I’m not saying these clubs are absolutely all fine, that there won’t be issues with their numbers or what have you; it’s more that, by saying this, you know that they’re going to act as if there definitely are. As if 2025 is something of a lost year, before it even begins, one in which general managers of these clubs are probably going to have to work overtime to make creative upgrades to the roster that won’t increase payroll.
The 2023-2024 offseason was already a slow one. Yes, massive contracts were handed out to the very best talent out there, but the winter, for most, was a slow-going affair, one that resulted in a number of players signing very late, even during spring training, which in turn impacted the year they had. It took Blake Snell months to finally be the guy he’s supposed to be, to make it deeper into games (well, deep for Snell) and look dominant and healthy. Jordan Montgomery still hasn’t recovered from his late start and lack of prep. We’re probably just going to do that again, which shouldn’t be a surprise, really. Even without the broadcasting issue, the current CBA has just two more seasons on it before it expires. The league’s owners want to tighten their grip a bit before then, to help create problems that need to be solved in bargaining, in order to try to extract more from the players once more.
It’s not a new tactic, but the Bally issue helps give them an excuse for the kinds of behavior they’d be displaying, anyway. This is an ongoing story to watch, basically, that is about more than it’s about on the surface.
Late last month, Dartmouth College’s men’s basketball team union filed an unfair labor practice charge against the school with the National Labor Relations Board. The charge? A refusal to bargain with players. The union, formed in March, has certainly been patient with Dartmouth College, which has refused to enter collective bargaining with the players despite the NLRB’s regional director already declaring them to be employees.
In a way, this is all a positive, though. Dartmouth’s refusal to bargain, with the defense being that the NLRB has made a mistake, means that this is a case that’s probably going to end up in court, with decisions that reverberate throughout college athletics. The school wants a federal court to review it, even! Now, federal court could certainly be a blow to the idea of unionized college athletes, especially with how much more conservative they’ve become in recent years, but look at the current situation, where the NLRB has declared that these athletes are employees and should be treated as such. Dartmouth refuses to acknowledge this to be the case, so nothing has changed. The courts could force a change, and the results would then be NCAA-wide, because what separates Dartmouth College from every other institution with college sports on campus? Not a thing, other than that their students struck first.
No need for a full monthly check-in on the White Sox since I already did that on Friday, pre-Labor Day holiday, but just for the sake of having something here in early September all the same: the White Sox lost every game since that piece was published. They finished August 4-22, just one win better than July with the same number of losses, despite losing 16 in a row that month. They’re 0-3 to begin September, already set a new franchise record for losses in a season with weeks left to go, and are 14 losses away from setting the modern-day league record with 22 games to go.
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