The National Hockey League’s Arizona Coyotes said that bankrupt sports broadcaster Diamond Sports Group owes the team nearly $18 million following the termination of its telecast deal, Bloomberg News reported. Diamond has said that it needed to end the deal because its regional sports channel, Bally Sports Arizona, was losing money and telecast agreements with the state’s major professional teams were only getting more expensive. The team said in a bankruptcy court filing on Thursday that it was owed money. Terminating the Coyotes deal effectively ended Diamond’s broadcasting of Arizona’s major professional sports teams. Diamond ended its broadcast deal with Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks earlier this year and stopped broadcasting the National Basketball Association’s Phoenix Suns after declining to match a competing offer. Earlier this month, the Coyotes announced a multi year agreement with Scripps Sports to broadcast its games locally on free TV channels. Diamond has said that rights fees it owed to the Coyotes “total tens of millions of dollars annually and increase yearly.” The hockey team’s claim for repayment is an unsecured debt which, in general, is repaid in chapter 11 for pennies on the dollar. Diamond filed chapter 11 in March and has been attempting to formulate a plan to get out of bankruptcy as the NBA and NHL regular seasons get underway.
