Diamond Sports asks to extend exclusive plan periods by 120 days

By Sarah Lizee

Olympia, Wash., July 12 – Diamond Sports Group, LLC is seeking a 120-day extension of its exclusive periods to file and solicit votes on a Chapter 11 plan, according to a motion filed Wednesday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Specifically, the company asked the court to extend the exclusive plan filing period through Nov. 9 and the exclusive solicitation period through Jan. 8.

The company said that, against a challenging industry-wide backdrop, the debtors and their key stakeholders are working to formulate the best path forward to enable the debtors to continue their business.

Diamond Sports said that to maximize the value of the debtors’ estates and implement their reorganization strategy, they need to assess the continued viability of each of their team and league agreements with their go-forward business; extend and expand carriage with key distributors; and use these inputs to finalize an ultimate business plan to support the Chapter 11 plan.

“Timing is critical to the debtors’ ability to achieve these goals: the new NBA and NHL seasons will begin in the fall, and three of the debtors’ distribution agreements, which collectively provide the substantial majority of the debtors’ distribution revenue, will be up for renewal before the end of February 2024,” the company said in its motion.

Diamond Sports said renegotiation of distribution contracts requires an understanding of what sports programming – including for which teams and in which markets – the debtors will continue to produce and make available to distributors.

Also, negotiation of financially viable go-forward terms of league and team partnerships necessarily requires an understanding of the revenue that can be generated from producing and selling the programming, the company said.

“These issues are not only complex, but highly integrated, and the scale of the debtors’ business (including the number of counterparties with which the debtors must negotiate) further amplifies this complexity,” the debtor stated.

Diamond Sports Group is an independently managed and unconsolidated subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group. Diamond owns the Bally Sports Regional Sports networks, a provider of local sports. The Baltimore-based company filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 14 under case number 23-90116.

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