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A quick glimpse of players at the Detroit Tigers pickups on Fox Sports Detroit this season.
Kirkland Crawford, Detroit Free Press

Fox Sports Detroit has new owners. Again.

Sinclair Broadcast Group has purchased the 21 regional sports networks and Fox College Sports acquired by Disney when buying most of Fox.

Sinclair, which owns the largest number of local television channels in the country, will get RSNs for $ 10.6 billion. The Wall Street Journal was the first to announce that the deal had been concluded.

According to a Sinclair press release, the RSNs will be managed by a new subsidiary, Diamond Sports Group, headed by Detroit-based Byron Allen, owner of Entertainment Studios and having purchased The Weather Channel last year.

What does it mean for the immediate future of the house of the Detroit The emissions of Tigers, Red Wings and Pistons are unclear. These are just three of the 42 franchises in the NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball for which RSN television rights are acquired.

The broadcast rights contracts remain in effect until at least 2021, according to one source. According to previous reports, the Pistons would receive $ 25 million a year for their emissions; the Tigers receive $ 50 million.

In order to complete Disney's purchase of the $ 71.3 billion 21st Century Fox entertainment division, the US Department of Justice has decided to sell the RSNs. The Free Press reported in March that Platinum Equity, owned by Pistons boss Tom Gores, was part of a group interested in buying channels.

Sinclair has nearly 200 television stations in the United States, including several in Michigan, and appears to be fully engaged in live sports television. The company, along with the New York Yankees and Amazon, recently bought the YES network, which features the most famous Yankees game, for $ 3.5 billion. And Sinclair associates with the Chicago Cubs to form a new network that will introduce the Cubs' games from 2020.

This release indicates that this new transaction has been approved by the Sinclair and Disney Board of Directors and is awaiting the approval of the Department of Justice.

Contact Kirkland Crawford: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @HiKirkHere. Vince Ellis, sports editor of Free Press.