Diamond Ditches the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes, Team Moves on to Scripps Broadcast Deal

Daniel Frankel
·1 min read
Arizona Coyotes.
Arizona Coyotes.

As expected, bankrupt regional sports network operator Diamond Sports Group is walking away from the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes and shuttering yet another channel, Bally Sports Arizona.

The move comes after the network’s other tenants, the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, all broke loose from Bally Sports and set up their own local TV arrangements.

Updated: On Thursday, broadcaster E.W. Scripps announced that the Coyotes would broadcast 81 of their 82 regular season games via its new Scripps Sports operation on Scripps-owned ABC affilate Channel 15.2 (KNXV.2). The Stanley Cup Champion Vegas Golden Knights also entered a similar arrangement with Scripps Sports in May after fleeing now-defunct AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain. 

"This is a major win for us to increase our reach and continue to grow the game of hockey in the desert," said Coyotes Chairman and Governor Alex Meruelo in a statement. 

Arizona Coyotes
Arizona Coyotes

As for Diamond, the subsidiary could take or leave hockey in the desert.

“The Debtors have been conducting an ongoing analysis of their rights agreement portfolio to identify those rights agreements that are burdensome and/or otherwise unnecessary for the Debtors’ go-forward business operations,” Diamond said in a motion filed Wednesday in the Houston federal court overseeing its restructuring.

Chapter 11 has enabled Diamond, a subsidiary set up by Sinclair Broadcast Group to manage its Bally Sports channels, the flexibility to walk away from team contracts it finds unfavorable.

Earlier Wednesday, the Suns announced details of their new direct-to-consumer streaming platform, which will launch alongside a new local broadcast TV arrangement with Gray Television.

Sinclair paid $10.6 billion four years ago to acquire 19 Fox Sports Net regional channels, rebranding them as Bally Sports. After the eighty-sixing of MLB’s San Diego Padres and the closure of Bally Sports San Diego over the spring, and with the shuttering of Bally Sports Arizona Wednesday, there are now just 17 Bally Sports networks.