Zulgad: Wild and Wolves appear set on Bally Sports North for this season, but future is filled with uncertainty
Where will the local NHL and NBA teams be available to watch starting in 2025-26? They could follow the Twins' plan to go to a streaming option but many questions remain.
The Minnesota Twins finally escaped the clutches of the bankrupt Diamond Sports Group this month when they announced they would be joining forces with Major League Baseball to produce and distribute their games beginning next season. The Twins’ contract with Diamond, the parent company of the Bally-branded regional sports networks, had expired and, unlike a year ago when the team surprisingly ended up returning to Diamond, this time the divorce was completed.
This doesn’t mean Minnesota sports fans are done with Bally Sports North, or FanDuel Sports North, as it may be known, if Diamond gets court permission to re-brand the network of channels under a new naming rights deal with the sports betting giant.
The Wild and Wolves remain under contract with Diamond for this season. The Wild are entering the final season of their deal; the Wolves have two years remaining. The second year is essentially a team option and there’s no guarantee Diamond will be operating the networks for an extended period, given their tenuous status.
That leaves little to no certainty about where fans will be able to watch the Wild and Wolves in future seasons. This issue goes well beyond Diamond and is more so about the demise of Regional Sports Networks. It wasn’t that long ago that the RSN model was king for both teams and fans.
MLB, NBA and NHL clubs sold their television rights for a hefty fee — the Twins got a check for $54.8 million as recently as 2023 — and didn’t have to worry about production, advertising sales or, and this is the key one, distribution. The decision by Twins ownership to cut payroll by $30 million in 2024 had a significant amount to do with the reduction they took in rights fees when they went back to Diamond in February.
The Wild and Wolves, and previously the Twins, have had to deal with uncertainty surrounding their television futures since Diamond filed for Chapter 11 protection in March 2023 because of declining revenue that was a result of cord cutting and $8.5 billion in debt.
They are far from the only teams to face this issue. Since declaring bankruptcy Diamond has severed ties with various MLB, NBA and NHL franchises and, in some instances, abandon markets entirely. In August, some of the immediate uncertainty was cleared up as the NBA and NHL finalized agreements with Diamond to continue airing games for 22 of the teams in their local markets.
The Wolves and Wild were among them. But the decision came with a sacrifice.
The Wolves reportedly, like Diamond’s other NBA partners, agreed to a 30 to 40 percent reduction in rights fees. The Wild, and the seven other NHL teams that went back, agreed to a reduction that reportedly was closer to 20 percent.
Despite the fluidity of the situation, the Wild and Wolves are confident that their leagues’ agreements with Diamond mean they will be on Bally Sports North for the duration of the 2024-25 season.
“We’ve got Bally’s back for this year,” Wild owner Craig Leipold said in early October. “We were all ready – we have options that were ready to go – and we have a contract so if they came back, we’re contractually obligated to be with them this season, and we’re very happy to be there. We’re there for at least one more year.”
Leipold said Diamond already had made two payments to the Wild.
The next significant date in this convoluted matter will be Nov. 14 when a court hearing is held before Houston-based U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez. Diamond should find out whether its amended reorganization plan is considered viable. This being the U.S. court system, there is no guarantee that anything will be settled on or near that date. Diamond reportedly also has confirmed that if it does not emerge from the bankruptcy process by Dec. 16, contracts with its NBA and NHL teams will be null and void after this season.
All of that only gets us through the 2024-25 season.
What happens from there is anybody’s guess, although the Wild and Wolves both have put plenty of work into trying to figure out where the business might be going. The one thing that everyone seems to realize, except for those running the newly launched Chicago Sports Network (home of the Blackhawks, Bulls and White Sox), is that Regional Sports Networks are dying.
The replacement is simpler, but not nearly as profitable. At least not yet.