Becuase were trapped in a transition phase
Those that profit from the "old models" are trying desperately to keep them relevant to capitalize on scarcity
but technology has elminated scarcity and theres been no new method devised to reliably and consistently generate profit off a post-scarcity world
The worlds economy has been fueled by ads for like a century and companies were willing to invest heavily in those ads because the options were limited
Now with smart phones and the internet its harder and harder to capture the amount of eyeballs and attention that your local newspaper and three national tv stations used to be able to
You can all cry about the media coverage for the Kings all you want but the reality is there aren't enough eyeballs watching Kings games to justify a single dedicated independent journalist to covering the team.
Everybody talks about the Cap going up but also likes to complain about the cost of coverage... if every team in the league signs up with Victory+ next season I got bad news for you cap optimists.
All of this is true, but Sinclair/Diamond Sports has absolutely butchered their regional sports networks.
Al of this is theory, and I know it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but
1) They paid way to much. Disney jedi mind tricked them in to seriously overpaying and they are never going to recoup that mone
2) They have completely screwed up their distribution and lose ever single carriage fee dispute. With every other provider (like Disney , ABC, ESPN right now with Direct-TV) it's temporary. The fox sports RSNs were on every single streaming service and now they are on Fubo or DTV stream. which leads in to my next point,,,
3) They seriously overestimated the demand for their product. No one is in their right mind is going to pay $20 a month for a Ballys streaming app that works less often that it does. Most people I knew who signed up cancelled within the first month because it didn't work and had ridiculously bad support. So very few signed up and those who don't have it readily available go the path of least resistance and simply pirate it.
4) They hedged too much on sports gambling being legalized in all states. From a few snippets I heard they were somewhat okay with Ballys being a loss leader for the real business model. Gambling. Supposedly the Ballys app was going to have live in game odds and betting and Sinclair/Diamond thought that it was going to be the next boom economy and they'd have Walter White levels of money from gambling addicts.
Even after sports wagering didn't pass in certain big states, instead of reflecting on the errors of their ways and reevaluating the market value of their product they doubled down on their stupidity and lost another big carriage fight with xfinity and their subscribers lost Ballys for months
