Atlanta Braves TV Rights Deal "Amended" Ahead of Court Hearing

Ahead of Diamond Sports Groups' bankruptcy hearing, the Atlanta Braves are reported to have an amended TV rights deal

The Atlanta Braves and Diamond Sports Group have made some changes ahead of a key court hearing / Brett Davis-Imagn Images

The Atlanta Braves and Major League Baseball have withdrawn their objection to Diamond Sports Group’s (the owner of FanDuel Sports Network) get-out-of-bankruptcy plan. The report from The Athletic’s Evan Drellich comes less than a week after the objection was filed. 

What led to the withdrawal of the agreement has not been reported yet. However, according to Drellich, the objection didn’t seem to hold that convincing since multiple MLB teams were already known to be planning to return to DSG. 

That could be at least one of the reasons. But we cannot confirm at this time based on the information at hand. This could just be his speculation. 

Along with the Braves, the Tampa Bay Rays, Miami Marlins, Los Angeles Angels, Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals will have their games on the usual regional sports networks next season. 

Drellich noted that DSG’s filing described the Braves’ deal as “amended.” This is considered to be new information. 

Every other team returning to DSG is known to have negotiated a revised contract. However, that was not originally noted to be the case for the Braves. Back in October, DSG expressed their desire to keep the Braves’ current TV contract. That’s no longer the case based on the new information. 

No clear information was reported on these new details.

The hearing for DSG’s bankruptcy plan is scheduled to take place on Thursday. The Judge is expected to rule if they have a viable plan to escape Chapter 11. If they do, the status of baseball’s TV rights for certain teams will be an ongoing thing. 

During that process, we could potentially learn more about the amended deals that were put into place ahead of the proceedings. 

What we do know is that some teams have already given their in-market streaming rights to DSG. That means those teams can be watched via a standalone subscription DSG will sell via its own platform and also through Amazon Prime (but at additional cost on top of Prime’s standard fee).

The teams mentioned by Drellich that have locked their in-market media rights to DSG include the Rays, Marlins, Tigers, Cardinals and Angels. The Braves were not mentioned, but a report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution made it clear that it was the same case.

They reported that this deal would proivde "direct-to-consumer access to FanDuel Sports Network’s 16 regional networks."

This includes FanDuel Sports Network South and Southeast, which the Braves are contracted to air their games on.