Amazon expands US sports footprint with Diamond streaming deal

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Amazon is taking a stake in television networks that broadcast big league sports in some of the US’s biggest media markets, expanding its footprint of live matches into regional networks that carry most NBA, NHL and MLB matches.

The ecommerce giant announced on Wednesday that it had agreed a $115mn minority investment in the largest operator of so-called regional sports networks in the US, Diamond Sports Group, which is seeking to emerge from bankruptcy protection.

The agreement will allow Amazon’s Prime Video to stream programming for half of all MLB, NBA, and NHL teams in North America, intensifying the tech group’s competition with the likes of Apple and Google to show live sports.

The investment is part of a new restructuring agreement for Diamond, allowing it to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and staving off a potential media rights crisis for three of the four leading US professional sports leagues.

Prime Video “will become Diamond’s primary partner through which customers will be able to purchase direct-to-consumer access to stream local Diamond channels”, Diamond said in a statement. Prices and the availability of local sports on Prime Video would be announced at a later date, Diamond said.

Amazon first entered the live sports market in 2017 when it acquired the rights to stream the US National Football League’s Thursday night fixture. It has since expanded into global football rights in Europe and North America.

Diamond was acquired from Disney for $10.6bn, including debt, by Sinclair Broadcast Group in 2019. Subsequent challenges to its business, including the shortening of professional sports seasons during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the broader shift by consumers to cancel cable subscriptions in favour of streaming platforms, left Diamond unable to pay down almost $9bn in debt by the time it filed for bankruptcy in March 2023.

The group’s fate has been closely followed by much of the sports world, which heavily depends on broadcast rights fees as a source of revenue. The bankruptcy proceedings have caused a splinter movement by some team owners, such as the Phoenix Suns’ Mat Ishbia, to move fixtures off of Diamond-owned networks and over to free-to-air channels.

Late last year, billionaire Mark Cuban cited his desire to move away from dependency on media rights as a partial factor in his decision to sell his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks basketball franchise to the family of Sheldon Adelson, the late casino magnate.

As part of Diamond’s restructuring agreement, subject to approval by a US bankruptcy court in Texas, Sinclair will pay Diamond $495mn in cash and continue to offer management and support services during its transition. Some of Diamond’s debtors have agreed to provide $450mn in debt-in-possession financing to further its operations and emerge as a going concern.