Frustration has mounted for Milwaukee Bucks fans over the past week trying to access games on the Bally Sports Wisconsin app. Specifically, the past two games have been unavailable to stream on the app.
Those who have cable or satellite were able to see Milwaukee take on the Miami Heat on Monday and Toronto Raptors on Wednesday, but those who pay $19.99 per month for the app were left in the dark.
It’s not a problem specific to Wisconsin. The “Bally Sports Help” account tweeted that it was working to identify the problem during both games.
A message sent to Bally Sports didn’t immediately yield more information about the outage. The feed was back up and running by 8:30 p.m. Wednesday — too late for the Bucks game — but users in other parts of the country experienced more problems Thursday. With Milwaukee playing the New York Knicks on Friday in the kickoff of the NBA’s In-Season Tournament, it’s anyone’s guess if the service will work properly for subscribers to the app.
A Bally message to at least one subscriber indicated the outage came “from one of our service partners which has since been resolved,” but that was before the outage struck again Nov. 1.
Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star took Bally to task on behalf of fans who couldn’t watch the Indiana Pacers.
“Sinclair, Diamond, Bally — whatever — couldn’t negotiate with streaming services, then couldn’t form an app that was worth a darn,” he wrote. “I bought the thing last year, doing my part, and watched exactly one game. How come? Put it this way:
“You know today’s video games, right? The quality is so impressive, it’s like watching a movie: characters, dialogue, graphics, crisp visuals, all of it. Well, video games weren’t always so good, which brings me back to the Bally Sports App. Watching that Pacers game last year, basically 10 stick figures moving back and forth across my TV, reminded me of a childhood video game: ‘Pong’ by Atari.”
A Milwaukee Bucks spokesman deferred questions to Bally. The Bucks are one of 12 teams covered by Bally Sports regional sports networks (RSNs) owned by Diamond Sports Group (and a subsidiary of Sinclair in a complicated, contentious arrangement). The much-maligned deal to acquire those RSNs in 2019 has led to bankruptcy for Diamond, and now Sinclair is reportedly looking to reclaim Diamond in an attempt to salvage the floundering operation.
Diamond has been undergoing restructuring in bankruptcy, a slow process that has kept the status quo for broadcasts (airing on Bally Sports Wisconsin) in the short term.
Both Major League Baseball and the NBA have indicated they are prepared to take over broadcasts if and when the bankruptcy proceedings lead to the cessation of broadcasts by Diamond. Bucks owner Wes Edens indicated before the season that he expects every Bucks game to be broadcast to televisions inside the market.
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