The Cleveland Guardians are looking at their best team in decades but good look watching

The fans’ biggest issue for the Cleveland Guardians 2023 season won’t be the quality of play but how to find it on television.

The Cleveland Guardians have arguably the best rotation and bullpen in the league, they have a great hitting lineup that can get on base, and just added two big boppers to join the team. Everyone is healthy and the team is in arguably the easiest division in baseball. They’re looking like a team to worry about if you’re a fan of anyone else. The team has few holes and even fewer questions but one is lingering in the minds of fans in Cleveland; how are we going to watch this team?

See, the Guardians are on the Bally Sports group of networks, which are run by Diamond Sports Group, and who is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBG). SBG has been working on building a streaming service to provide baseball fans with content. SBG hit a snag financially and was forced to sell off some assets; like Ring of Honor wrestling.

This financial issue has plagued their subsidiary, Diamond Sports Group as well. Diamond owns the broadcast rights for the Guardians and 13 other teams, and they are in a massive amount of debt. Diamond owes $6.8 billion in debt and the folks at MLB are concerned that Diamond will be able to make their debt payments.

What happens to the Cleveland Guardians when Diamond Sports Groups defaults?

If they’re unable to make the payments, the contracts they have become insolvent, leaving those teams in a lurch.  Should the payments not get made and according to Cleveland.com, the MLB is prepared for Diamond to miss those payments, then the MLB will take over control of broadcasting the games.

The Guardians payroll may take a hit if this happens, as it’s unclear if the MLB will honor the $47 and $52 million owed to the Guardians from Diamond via the contracts, or if they can obtain the rights at a reduced cost.

Assuming that MLB does take over the broadcast rights, it may be hard for those local teams to find broadcast outlets, as it’s unclear what’s going to happen to all the regional networks that Diamond and SBC own. If they default on the rights, they’re also defaulting on operation costs as well, at least one would think.

The biggest issue that comes out of this for fans is that the MLB may elect to just broadcast them all via their MLB.TV outlet. That means being charged a hundred-plus dollars for a team, and that’s assuming their own contract situations will allow them to do so, as right now you can only watch teams that are out of the market.

Now, if there is no market in which to watch a local team, one would think they’d be in the free and clear but who knows? It’s rather ironic, that one of the best clubs on paper in team history may be among the least-watched this season.

This may also affect the Cleveland Cavaliers, but the NBA has a simpler solution. While some games may end up on the app, Bloomberg is reporting the NBA is prepared to start broadcasting the games on local affiliates, like in the old days. For fans of a certain age, everyone remembers that the Cavs used to play on WUAB-43.

What else is ironic, this didn’t have to happen. The Guardians owned their own television rights until 2012 but sold them to Fox when they were trying to secure the regional sports market and were buying up every local sports network they could. That means getting their hands on MLB and NBA games.

When Disney bought Fox, they bought the regional channels as well, but then sold them to Sinclair when Disney bought ESPN.

Now the market is wide open, especially with Disney rumored to be shopping ESPN around, and ESPN looking to end some deals, like one with the NBA, which means that NBC may get back in the running for the league.