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Diamond Sports Group, owner of Bally Sports South and Southeast among others, is approaching a deal with Comcast to return the channels back to one of MLB’s largest broadcasting partners. Alden Gonzales from ESPN with the update:

“We believe that we have made substantial progress on resolving our issues with Comcast, and we have the intention of fully documenting and executing an agreement with Comcast to broadcast our RSNs in the very near term,” Diamond attorney Brian Hermann said in court, alluding to Diamond’s regional sports networks.

The two sides continue to make progress from talks over the All-Star Break. John Ourand, who has also been following this story closely, had this note earlier last week.

One of the loudest rumors making its way around the MLB All-Star Game was that a Comcast–Diamond Sports Group deal was closer than ever. The next question is whether this deal will be enough to convince the bankruptcy judge to allow Diamond to emerge from bankruptcy. We’ll know the answer to that in a week and a half.

The timeframe refers to the discussions with Diamond’s creditors before a July 29th bankruptcy hearing in Houston. The confirmation of the news was repeated by the Athletic’s Evan Drellich, who reported the play-by-play on Diamond’s bankruptcy hearings last summer.

So it appears that Diamond and Comcast will strike a deal to restore the Braves’ broadcasts as well as twelve other teams back to their subscribers. MLB has been following Diamond’s movements closely since Diamond outbid them for the broadcast rights. They have already picked up the Padres’ and Diamondbacks’ broadcasts after defaulting on the rights payments. MLB is always adding their MLB Network to their streaming offerings. They are adding MLB Network to their platforms along with their existing game audio offering.

But wouldn’t MLB rather just grab the regional sports network broadcast rights from Diamond and offer more in-market streaming as they have already done with the Padres and Diamondbacks. Is this announcement made in expectation that Diamond will emerge from bankruptcy? Why announce this now instead of grabbing the rights that they can shortly after the hearing. Diamond has been (may still be?) in default on payments from three teams. But it looks like those discussions with their creditors (which include MLB teams) may be aided with a deal from Comcast.

This whole Diamond TV situation has been tedious and frustrating, from their initial purchase to descent into bankruptcy to denial of payments to the legal stiff arms to MLB. Finally it appears that some more payments will continue and the Braves will be back on Comcast. Which is good, but not as good as Diamond imploding and getting in-market MLB streaming to cord-cutters.