Mavericks among regional sports network broadcast deals that could fall through

For those of us counting the days until Regional Sport Network Bally croaks, an interesting little nugget emerged last week in a Sports Business Journal report. The Dallas Mavericks could find themselves searching for a last-minute broadcast deal before the start of the 2024-25 season if things continue along their current trajectory.

Should Bally’s parent company Diamond Sports Group make it out of bankruptcy “in the coming weeks or months,” SBJ cited several unnamed sources who indicated that the regional broadcast company would shed as many as five of their RSN contracts, naming specifically the Mavericks, Detroit Pistons, Memphis Grizzlies, Oklahoma City Thunder and New Orleans Pelicans as potential broadcast partners the new restructured company would be unable to service going forward. According to the report, the number of RSN deals affected by the bankruptcy restructuring may be the full five, or it may only be three, but whatever the case, “[Diamond’s] recent distribution agreement with Comcast seems in line with managing its business outside of bankruptcy.” That part of the report makes it seem like Diamond is on its way to emerging from bankruptcy intact, and some of this may indeed come to pass.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported separately on Monday that the Pelicans would ditch Diamond and Bally for the upcoming season in favor of going over the air full-time this year.

The timing of these and other reports like them is interesting, as we are now less than three months away from the start of the 2024-25 NBA regular season. If the current broadcast deal with Diamond and Bally is interrupted mere days before the start of the season, or a week or a month into regular season play, it would behoove each of those five teams to have a contingency plan in place for this year.

So what might the Mavericks’ contingency plan look like?

First and foremost, if the 2024-25 broadcast agreement with the Mavericks is dissolved, it likely spells the end of the Bally Sports Southwest channel, though the on-air talent may carry over to some extent with whoever swoops in to take Bally’s place. Bally lost the NHL’s Dallas Stars to the VICTORY+ streaming service the team is trying for the upcoming season, which will broadcast regular season games to a regional tract including Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas for free for the first year it’s in place. The Texas Rangers’ RSN rights will hit the open market after the current MLB season as well.

Option 1: More involvement from WFAA, the Dallas-Fort Worth ABC affiliate

Remember in January when the Mavericks announced an additional 10 games in March would air on local ABC affiliate WFAA, seemingly out of nowhere? Well, that was actually a move made as part of an agreement between Diamond Sports and the NBA last November — all part Diamond’s road back to solvency — that gave the rights to 5-10 games from the same teams listed above (Dallas included) to other broadcasters. The franchises could thereby recoup some of the monetary losses incurred as Diamond started to miss actual payments to some teams with which it holds agreements.

All this is to say that WFAA is already something of a local broadcast contingency plan for the Mavericks. If there was a convenient landing spot for a bulky content dump onto some local broadcaster’s lap, WFAA seems like the best fit and the easiest lift. It wouldn’t have to all fall on WFAA, though. Any local broadcaster would love to get their mitts on a bundle of 5-10 or more Mavs broadcasts, and with such short notice before the start of the season, bundling games and selling to an array of broadcasters might be the move to get them all sold quickly. For instance, the Seattle Kraken will reportedly split the team’s regular season broadcasts among local affiliates in the Pacific Northwest and Amazon Prime Video.

A WFAA broadcast (as would a local NBC or CBS affiliate broadcast) would also lend itself to the “rabbit ear” advantage, too. No subscriptions required. This over-the-air solution is the one that many of the Mavs’ peers, like the Pelicans, seems to be choosing at this juncture.

Option 2: Stick with the RSN

There’s one glaringly obvious possibility we’ve yet to broach yet. The deal with Diamond and Bally could stay in place for the 2024-25 season, in which case local viewers will have to once again subscribe to Bally’s premium version to stream most regular season games. If the Mavericks remain in the Bally stable for another year, their (and all other Bally teams) usual yearly rights fees will be slashed by somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40%. It’s unclear how that 30-40% decline in broadcast money compares with what the Mavericks can command in an over-the-air deal.

If the Mavericks deal with Diamond and Bally is torn up before this season, there are other companies who run RSNs, including Scripps and Comcast. Two NHL teams whose deals with Diamond recently lapsed are now with Scripps. The Vegas Golden Knights are also now with Scripps, though they also have their own direct-to-consumer streamer. Any of these packages, or a combination of several of them, may be in the Mavs’ future.

Latching on with some other RSN cable broadcaster, though, would only kick the can down the road a few years, as companies like Scripps and Comcast are not fundamentally different than the now defunct Fox Sports regional networks. Likely, the advertising dollars will continue to bleed from companies like these until they go the way of the regional sports broadcasters before them. No need to jump back onto a sinking ship if you’re the Mavericks right now.

Option 3: Team-owned streaming service

This is probably more of a long-term solution than one that could be put into place before the 2024-25 season, but why can’t the Dallas Mavericks pull a Dallas Stars here? The Stars entered into a seven-year agreement with A Parent Media Co. (APMC) in July, including a first-year teaser where all regular season Stars games will be aired for free in that four-state region in the team’s sphere of influence. APMC currently reaches millions of homes globally through products including Kidoodle.TV, Dude Perfect Streaming Service, Glitch+, and Safe Exchange.

Is there any room on VICTORY+ to squeeze the Mavs in during this first year, to give Patrick DuMont & Co. time to get the ball rolling on their own team-owned streamer? Or, could VICTORY+ move forward as a two-team (or three, eyeing the Texas Rangers) streamer in the future? It sounds like a good idea on the surface, but it depends on the level to which each ownership team can work with the other to make that happen. Or, will one streamer per ownership group end up being the preferred business model? The Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns are unrolling their own direct-to-consumer streaming models for the 2024-25 seasons in the NBA.

There are a lot of wrinkles to iron out yet — and an increasingly short window in which to get it right.