On March 21, 1996, two teams new to the market, the expansion
Arizona Diamondbacks of
Major League Baseball and the relocating
original Winnipeg Jets of the
National Hockey League (which became the Phoenix, later
Arizona Coyotes), announced ten-year deals with Fox/
Liberty Sports to telecast 60 baseball games and 40 hockey games a season. The partnership between
News Corporation and
Liberty Media had been formed several months earlier. Liberty owned the
Prime Sports group of
regional sports networks, whose programming was seen in Arizona on the
Cox Communications–owned
Arizona Sports Programming Network (ASPN). The name for the new network was to have been Prime Sports Arizona, but following the announcement to rebrand Liberty's
Prime Sports Networks and form
Fox Sports Net, the name was changed to Fox Sports Arizona (FSAZ). Fox Sports Arizona was launched on September 7, 1996, with the first game on the network being
Arizona State University's 45–42 win over its
Pac-10 rival,
Washington. The first Coyotes game was broadcast on October 18; the Diamondbacks would join the network a year and a half later for their inaugural 1998 season. A secondary feed, branded as FSN Arizona Plus, was first used in 2007 to manage conflicts between a Suns playoff game and a Diamondbacks game. It returned in 2008 for the same purpose. By 2011, it was a full-time channel on most cable providers. In 2021 and 2022, a third feed, known as Bally Sports Arizona Extra, was necessary due to overlapping NBA, NHL, and MLB games. On December 14, 2017, as part of a merger between both companies,
The Walt Disney Company announced plans to acquire all 22 regional Fox Sports networks from
21st Century Fox, including Fox Sports Arizona. However, on June 27, 2018, the
Justice Department ordered their divestment under antitrust grounds, citing Disney's ownership of
ESPN. On May 3, 2019,
Sinclair Broadcast Group and
Entertainment Studios (through their joint venture,
Diamond Sports Group) bought the
Fox Sports Networks from
The Walt Disney Company for $10.6 billion. The deal closed on August 22, 2019. On March 31, 2021, coinciding with the start of the
2021 Major League Baseball season, Fox Sports Arizona was rebranded as Bally Sports Arizona, as part of a branding agreement with commercial casino operator
Bally's Corporation.
Bankruptcy and shutdown On February 15, 2023, Diamond Sports Group, the owner of Bally Sports Arizona, failed to make a $140 million interest payment, instead opting for a 30-day grace period to make the payment. On March 14, 2023, Diamond Sports Group filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In the months that followed, Diamond Sports lost all of its Arizona-market professional sports rights. During its bankruptcy, Diamond missed a payment to the Diamondbacks. On April 5, 2023, the Diamondbacks filed an emergency motion asking the bankruptcy judge to order Diamond to pay the Diamondbacks fully or give its media rights back to
Major League Baseball. Diamond argued that, because of
cord-cutting, the contract rate for the media rights of the teams was too high. A hearing on the matter was set for May 31, 2023. As an interim, on April 19, the bankruptcy judge ordered Diamond Sports to pay 50% of what the Diamondbacks were owed. On June 1, after a two-day long hearing, the bankruptcy judge ordered Diamond to pay the Diamondbacks fully within five days. On June 22, 2023, Diamond Sports announced its intention to reject Bally Sports Arizona's contract with the Diamondbacks on June 30, 2023. On July 18, Diamond was granted a motion to decline its contract with the team. Major League Baseball subsequently took over production and distribution of Diamondbacks telecasts (not unlike its takeover of a fellow Bally Sports property, the
San Diego Padres, in May). For the rest of the Diamondbacks season, MLB-produced telecasts were offered by local cable providers, including by Cox on its
YurView Arizona channels in the
Phoenix and Tucson regions. Under new owner
Mat Ishbia, the Phoenix Suns and
Phoenix Mercury of the
WNBA had telegraphed an interest in moving on from Bally Sports Arizona. In an April 2023 interview with the
Phoenix Business Journal, team CEO
Josh Bartelstein cited a "goal of wide distribution" for the teams in the face of cord cutting affecting the availability of RSNs. On April 28, the Suns and Mercury announced a
Gray Television to put its regional games on broadcast television, under a five-year agreement for the Suns and a two-year agreement for the
Phoenix Mercury, replacing Bally Sports Arizona for their upcoming seasons. Diamond subsequently accused the team of breaching its contract and bankruptcy law. Without the Diamondbacks and Suns, Bally Sports only had rights to the Coyotes. On October 4, Diamond Sports announced its intention to reject Bally Sports Arizona's contract with the hockey team, with the Coyotes signing a new contract with
Scripps Sports the next day. Under the
Scripps Sports umbrella, the Coyotes would air regular season games throughout both the states of Arizona and
Utah during the
2023–24 season. This move meant that Bally Sports Arizona no longer held the broadcast rights to any professional sports teams in the state of Arizona. On October 13, after losing the rights to Suns, Diamondbacks and Coyotes, Bally Sports Arizona posted on social media that it no longer held the rights to any local professional teams and would begin to wind down with the natural expiration of its carriage agreements. Its closure left the
Phoenix metropolitan area, the 11th-largest media market in the country, without a traditional regional sports network. ==Sports rights==