March 14 (Reuters) – Diamond Sports Group, which provides local television broadcasts for nearly half of NBA, NHL and MLB games, filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection in Texas on Tuesday, caught between expensive broadcast rights agreements and sports viewers’ cord-cutting habits.

Diamond Sports, a Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBGI.O) subsidiary that operates the “Bally Sports” branded channels, listed assets and liabilities between $1 billion and $10 billion each in its Chapter 11 petition.

The company said Tuesday that it will continue to air games despite its financial struggles.

Diamond said that it has $425 million in cash on hand, but it owes $9 billion to its lenders and is weighed down by long-term broadcast rights agreements that make less economic sense as customers move away from cable and towards online streaming options.

Diamond enters Chapter 11 with an agreement that will eliminate $8 billion of the company’s debt by transferring ownership of the company from Sinclair to Diamond’s lenders. A group of Diamond senior lenders will instead be repaid in cash rather than in company equity, according to Diamond.

Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Christopher Cushing

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