The worst local sports deals

SportsNet LA’s role in fueling the Dodgers' ability to afford Shohei Ohtani’s new contract was the focus of a text exchange I had with several top media execs over the weekend. That conversation turned to the worst local sports media deals. These are the prohibitive favorites:

1. Sinclair buys RSNs from Disney for $10 billion: Sinclair convinced a group of lenders to loan the company $8 billion so that it could form Diamond Sports Group, which would operate the RSNs. Those lenders essentially lost all their money in five years.
   
   
2. Disney values RSNs at $20 billion in Fox deal: When Disney bought Fox’s entertainment assets in 2019, the group of 21 RSNs was valued at around $20 billion. The Justice Department said it would approve the deal only after Disney divested the RSNs. Several months later, Disney sold those RSNs to Sinclair at half that $20 billion valuation.
   
   
3. Time Warner Cable-Dodgers sign long-term deal: The timing on this deal couldn’t have been worse. Ever since signing this deal in 2013 -- at the height of the RSN market -- Time Warner Cable and, now, Charter have seen their distribution numbers drop. Yet, the cable operator gets no relief from the rights fee it has to pay the team, as part of an ironclad contract that runs into the late 2030s.
   
   
4. Comcast launches CSN Houston in 2012: Besieged by subscriber shortfalls and cost overruns, Comcast’s Houston-based RSN filed for bankruptcy within a year and finally exited the RSN a year later. In between, the cable operator lost hundreds of millions of dollars on this folly.

Honorable mentions:

• MASN is a successful RSN for the Orioles. But MLB’s decision to have the Orioles control the rights fee paid to a rival club -- the Nationals -- has sent many lawyers’ kids through college over the past two decades.

• Denver’s RSN Altitude was humming along from its 2004 launch to 2019 when Comcast and Dish Network dropped the channel. Since that time, most of the Denver market has been unable to watch Nuggets and Avalanche games. The fact that both the Nuggets and Avalanche have won titles in that time has not pressured the market’s biggest cable system to cut a deal.

• You probably don’t remember when the Twins launched Victory Sports 1 in October 2003. That’s because the RSN closed six months later after failing to convince any cable or satellite company to carry it.

• The expansion Bobcats launched Carolinas Sports and Entertainment Television in 2004, but shut it down after only one season after the channel failed to get proper distribution.