The Morning Chop: Corporate Wheelings and Dealings for Liberty Media?

It’s a complicated situation, but Liberty Media might be in a position to pull off a very interesting coup.

For years now – thanks an the ‘insider’ deal hatched to sell the Atlanta Braves – the team has been saddled with a below-market-value television rights contract.

It was back in 2014 that this contract was renegotiated (and most likely extended) to provide a bit of financial power coming back to the team.

Nonetheless, this contract still remains as one of the elements that is holding down overall revenues for the club and it acts as a large weight that is keeping them from competing with the rest of the large market franchises at higher payroll levels.

That situation has the potential to change… and a lot sooner than expected.

Some months ago (last June), the Walt Disney Corporation entered into an agreement with Fox to purchase their movie and television operations and other assets. As with most large corporate mergers or buyouts, there’s a process of government regulatory review, and the US Department of Justice had an objection… one that has been settled with an agreement on both sides.

The DOJ will approve the sale provided that Disney divest itself of a specific portion of the Fox universe: their Regional Sports Networks (RSNs)… 22 of them.

Hitting Close to Home

Among the networks that would be part of this spinoff sale are the very networks that the Braves are contracted with for broadcast of the vast majority of their games: FOX Sports South and FOX Sports Southeast.

It seems that Disney is finding it difficult to locate buyers for this enterprise, though, and that is leading to an interesting possible competition.

According to Awful Announcing, two of the more prominent bidders remaining now are Major League Baseball itself and Liberty Media – the parent company of the Braves.

What’s most intriguing here is that Liberty Media (LM) is thus bidding on the rights to own the very TV contract that is still hamstringing the Braves.

A successful purchase would mean that they wouldn’t even have to renegotiate any deal… they’d own both sides of the transaction, and all of the downstream revenues would flow to the company.

In more practical terms, if they saw fit, they could choose to axe and re-make the contract with the Braves, for that would allow easier cash flow to the team – if that’s the route they would choose.