Court Voids NBA Suns’ New Deal To Leave Cable

A bankruptcy court ruled Wednesday that the Phoenix Suns cannot move forward with a radical new TV deal announced this month that would have taken the team’s games off local cable and moved them to broadcast TV and streaming services.

The Washington Post reports the court ruled that the Suns had not properly unwound their contract with Diamond Sports Group, the cable outlet that owns the rights to the team’s games. Diamond filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year and owns the rights to 42 MLB, NHL and NBA teams.

The Suns’ deal would be landscape-changing for those leagues. For the past three decades, just about every MLB, MBA and NHL team has sold its local TV rights to what are known as regional sports networks. With those networks in crisis as a growing number of Americans have dropped cable in recent years, the Suns, along with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, announced the boldest strategy yet to counter those trends. They signed the deal with Gray Television, owner of hundreds of broadcast TV stations around the country, and Kiswe, a start-up streaming platform.

After the Suns announced the new deals, Diamond filed suit to block them. Judge Christopher Lopez ruled that the deals violated the terms of Diamond’s bankruptcy filing, which placed a stay on all of its contracts as its finances are sorted out. Diamond has argued in court papers that the Suns also did not honor a right of first refusal to assess the Suns’ new deal and have an opportunity to match it. The Mercury’s deal with Gray and Kiswe is unaffected by the litigation.