Bally Sports North May Stream Timberwolves, Twins and Wild on Amazon Prime

Diamond Sports (the parent company of Bally Sports) is ‘actively negotiating’ with Amazon about making Prime Video the streaming home of all future Bally Sports regional broadcasting, which would make Prime the streaming home of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Minnesota Wild and, presumably, the Minnesota Twins.

Bally Sports North on Amazon Prime?

Diamond Sports Group, which carries the games of more than 40 major sports teams across the country and filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, is actively negotiating with Amazon about a strategic investment and a multiyear streaming partnership, according to people familiar with the matter.

If an agreement is reached, Amazon’s Prime Video platform would eventually become the streaming home for Diamond’s games.

Wall Street Journal

This is a major development in the Diamond Sports and Bally Sports regional TV broadcasting saga. And really, it’s the first piece of tangibly positive news that’s come out of the FOX Sports North/Bally Sports North media companies in years.

Smart move by Diamond Sports, MLB

Even if Amazon doesn’t end up acquiring the streaming rights for Bally Sports broadcasts, I like their business plan to seek out and partner with a legacy streaming service, like Prime Video. If negotiations with Amazon fall apart, Bally and the MLB will have plenty of other interested parties.

Do you think Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV+ and other brand-name streaming providers aren’t standing by impatiently hoping to get in on similar negotiations? These massive streaming providers need ways to bring in and retain more subscribers than their competitors and they see sports coverage as another way to do that.

You can bet that every Minnesota sports fan in the country is going to have Amazon Prime as one of their streaming options, should that become the home of Bally Sports North and the only place that cord-cutting fans can watch the Wolves, Wild and Twins play.

Related: Jump on the Timberwolves Bandwagon Now or Live with Regret Later

And clearly, there’s some quiet confidence floating about the Diamond Sports office recently, given they’ve quietly extended their contracts with the NBA and are nearing a new deal with the NHL. Not only that but they’ve also signed extensions with Comcast and DirecTV too.

In recent weeks, Diamond has extended its contracts with the NBA, Comcast and DirecTV. An extension with the NHL is expected in the near term, some of the people said.

Wall Street Journal

Minnesota Sports fans watching closely

If the above report is true, and we have no reason to doubt the reporting out of the Wall Street Journal, in this case, it appears Bally Sports North isn’t leaving the Minnesota sports market anytime soon.

The Twins’ contract with Diamond Sports has ended but if they’re sticking around for the Wild and Wolves then you can bet both they and the Twins will be interested in letting bygones be bygones in order to renew their broadcasting relationship going forward.

Having Bally Sports North available to them makes everything about broadcasting game day on TV a breeze for the Minnesota Twins. Without them, the Twins and MLB would have to handle EVERYTHING themselves. Either that, or find a brand new company to do the exact thing Bally’s already knows how to do.

Related: Twins and Bally Sports North are Done; Wolves and Wild are Next

And just in case you aren’t aware, there are a lot of people, time, money and other resources that go into a good, professionally done television sports broadcast. Something neither the MLB nor the Twins really want to deal with, if they can avoid it.

So if Bally Sports can find a streaming partner and rights contract that creditors, investors and bankruptcy courts are all satisfied with, we’ll be able to find future Wolves, Wild and Twins games on Amazon Prime or a different well-known streaming service.

While there’s no way to know what the future holds, when it comes to watching our favorite sports teams, we know you can stream all Bally Sports North programming with Fubo TV right now.