ST. LOUIS — Diamond Sports Group — the parent company of Cardinals and Blues broadcaster Bally Sports Midwest — is weeks away from a key hearing when the company will make the case that it should be allowed to emerge from bankruptcy and continue airing professional sports.
The case hit a snag earlier this month when the MLB, NHL and NBA pushed Diamond for detailed financial information about the company’s contracts with cable distributors like DirecTV and Charter — information, Diamond said, that it legally can’t release without those companies’ permission or a court order.
Cox Communications and Charter — which pay fees to Diamond for producing professional sports telecasts — argued in court that the information is confidential, and its release could hurt them competitively. But the Houston bankruptcy court judge overseeing the case said Diamond needs to be able to share those details, in order to make a strong case that it is capable of emerging from Chapter 11.
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During a Friday morning hearing, the judge signaled that he planned to allow Diamond to release parts of the documents.
Judge Christopher Lopez said Diamond would be permitted to release certain aggregated financial figures related to its business with the cable distributors. And key language in the contracts — so-called “most favored nation” clauses — would be released on an anonymized basis, to be viewed only by the leagues’ outside, non-staff attorneys.
If those details were kept private, Lopez said, the company would go into the confirmation hearing “with one arm behind its back,” unable to make the strongest possible case for its business plan.
“That’s just something that cannot happen,” Lopez said. “The debtor cannot be hamstrung.”