The deal struck between Bally Sports’ ultimate owner Sinclair Broadcast Group for Live on the Line, powered by BetMGM, has a greater significance than simply being another media sponsorship deal.
The hour-long show debuted in late January across Sinclair’s 19-strong regional sports networks (RSNs), on the Bally Sports app as well as on Stadium, Sinclair’s sports streaming operation.
“We’ve found a great partner in Bally Sports and are confident that Live on the Line is going to be one of the industry’s leading sports betting-centric shows,” said Matt Prevost, BetMGM’s chief revenue officer.
Understanding the RSN backdrop
To understand why there is a bigger story behind this sponsorship, we have to look back to November 2021 when Sinclair and Bally’s Corporation announced a “transformational” strategic partnership.
Under the terms of that deal, Sinclair’s Fox-branded RSNs were renamed Bally Sports and the pair committed to creating “unrivalled sports gamification content.” But a lot can happen in 16 months with both sports betting and media.
First, Sinclair is in deep trouble financially. Analysts at LightShed pointed out that the deal announced in January this year which has seen Sinclair’s subsidiary, Diamond Sports Group, increase its liquidity with a $600m debt deal has only staved off bankruptcy – Diamond Sports has an almost unbelievable $8.7 billon of debt.
The problem is Sinclair has failed to find a home for its RSNs on any cable network carriage deal. Having been dropped by Dish in 2019, the recent deal between the two, for instance, specifically excluded the RSNs. So while the company was able to sign a deal at the same time as the debt arrangement was announced with the NBA to stream its RSNs via an over-the-top subscription channel, it likely won’t be enough to stop Diamond Sports eventually going bust, at least according to LightShed.
Bally’s lack of betting credentials
Meanwhile, Bally’s Corporation is also having its own issues around sports betting. The future of the company as a listed entity is in doubt following the intervention of major shareholder Standard General, led by Bally’s chairman Soo Kim.
That bid would take the company private. In comments to CNBC on the day of the announcement, Kim suggested Bally was holding back on relaunching its betting offering, Bally Bet, at least in New York, because of the intensity of the marketing and promotional environment. The company has undergone extensive migration work following its acquisition of Bet.Works and Gamesys’ tech platform, but the growing cash burn of its competitors could be another reason to postpone a full-scale launch.
This echoes comments from the CEO at Bally’s, Lee Fenton, who said at the time of the last quarterly results in November that being late to the market might not be a bad thing.
“The winners are not decided in the first few years,” said Fenton on the call with analysts. “It can take 10 years.”
Fenton said then that the launch of Bally Bet 2.0 would be in the first half of this year and as per Kim’s comments in April at the earliest in New York, it means that it is a second quarter event rather than first.
An opportunistic move from BetMGM
Between the fears over the future of the RSNs themselves and Bally’s Corporation’s unwillingness to go to market with what as it continues working on its sports betting platform, BetMGM has clearly spied the potential for a relatively easy win.
The RSNs do still, at present, have something of an audience. There is still value to be had in reaching that audience and in creating content, BetMGM buys itself a good deal of control. It also, given the backdrop, is likely to have been a relatively cheap deal, and in a market where marketing costs are clearly an issue, a cheap route to market must have a lot of appeal.
Indeed, in words that might yet come back to haunt Bally’s, it said at the time of the Sinclair deal that it would “reduce (it’s) reliance on advertising spend.” Nothing dates faster than strategic partnerships that go wrong, but it seems odd that if there was any benefit in terms of advertising spend, then it has to an extent been handed to a competitor.
For Bally, it’s all about the 2.0 relaunch
As for Bally’s, it feels like a lot is up in the air right now, not just the ownership. The company has grown very quickly through acquisition; a lot now hinges on the 2.0 app.
For BallyBet to succeed it will have to impress its customers that it has a market-leading betting product that can not only compete with the leading names in the market but also beat them.
That is surely going to mean they will have to do more than rely on a naming-rights deal for a TV network that doesn’t even appear on most people’s TV screens – and which currently has a rival prominently sponsoring a betting show.
