Diamond Sports Group may drop Reds from regional channel

The Cincinnati Reds might become the next MLB team to find a new broadcast home.

On Tuesday, Steve Watkins of the Cincinnati Business Reporter wrote that Bally Sports Ohio, the Diamond Sports Group regional network, may drop the team after fulfilling its contractual obligations for the 2024 season. 

DSG, as frequently reported throughout the year, is still mired in bankruptcy proceedings going back to when it filed Chapter 11 in March. Though the beleaguered operator had worked out a deal with its NBA teams and hoped to have one in place for the NHL, MLB has done all it could to pull away from DSG after it struggled to pay several teams. The league took over broadcasts for the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres during the regular season after contracts were severed with their respective Bally Sports channels.

An interesting note from Watkins are the financials of Bally Sports Ohio, which have come up against the challenges of cord cutting.

"About a decade ago, regional sports networks reached about 80% of the population in Greater Cincinnati and in most markets.
"Now that figure is around 40%. But those networks in most cases are locked into long-term rights fees paid to teams based on viewership numbers from several years ago. The Reds, for example, signed a deal with Bally Sports in 2016 to begin broadcasts in 2018. That deal pays the Reds about $60 million a year, an industry insider told me. The Reds also have equity in Bally Sports Ohio as part of the deal. But those figures were based on distribution and viewership that has since declined.
"If Bally drops its contract with the Reds, the team would lose that $60 million annual rights fee and have to try to make it up with another contract or by generating its own income from ad sales for TV broadcasts. But neither is likely to approach the $60 million Bally paid, so the team's budget and most likely player payroll would be affected."

Watkins added that the network, which broadcasts games for the Reds, the Cleveland Cavaliers and Columbus Blue Jackets, lost $17.7 million through the first nine months of 2023.

Before last season began, word got out that several teams were concerned about the viability of their channels, with the St. Louis Cardinals copping to their worries about player payroll back in January. The Reds, who just got out of Joey Votto's massive contract in the offseason, are certainly mindful of any further drops in revenue and could explore options to buffer their finances through competing networks such as Scripps, the media conglomerate that's also based in the Queen City.

After an absolutely dreadful 2022 where the team lost 100 games, the Reds turned misery to moderate success on the field in 2023 with a team that flirted with a wild-card berth until late September. The future looks a little brighter with Elly De La Cruz on the field, but the plight of Bally Sports is still providing murky skies for the Reds.