With the start of the 2023-24 NBA season scheduled for October 24, Gerry Smith of Bloomberg has reported that Apple AAPL , Amazon AMZN , YouTube and Disney have expressed an interest in streaming local NBA games. This interest comes at a time when regional sports networks, which have been the primary source for local sports for decades, have become financially hampered as revenue from subscriber fees decline from cord cutting. The report also said DirecTV may also be interested.

All four streaming providers have been dipping their toe into streaming live sports. For example, Apple is in its first season of a ten-year agreement to live stream MLS games. Apple is also in its second season of streaming two Friday night MLB games each week. More recently, Apple had also been in talks to live stream Pac-12 sporting events. Next month, Amazon will begin its second season of live streaming NFL Thursday Night Football games. Amazon has also been live streaming WNBA games since 2021. This season, YouTube replaced DirecTV as the home of the NFL’s Season Ticket. Apple, Amazon and YouTube did not respond to inquiries from Bloomberg.

As of April, the Disney owned ESPN+ has 25.3 million subscribers and streams hundreds of live sporting events each year. Ironically, Disney’s acquisition of Fox, completed in 2019, came with 21 Fox owned RSN’s. With Disney already the parent company of ESPN, government regulators required them to divest the RSN’s before approving the $71 billion acquisition. In August 2019, Sinclair’s Diamond Sports acquired the Fox/Disney RSN’s for $9.6 billion (well below the original forecast of about $20 billion). In a ten-year, $85 million deal, finalized in March 2021, Sinclair rebranded the RSN’s as Bally Sports.

Moreover, Disney’s ESPN and ABC have been televising national NBA regular season and playoff games since 2002-03, including the NBA Finals. The current NBA media rights agreement expires at the end of the 2024-25 season. Disney, as well as Warner Bros. Discovery, have exclusive negotiation rights through next April. It is widely expected the media rights fees will more than double and possibly even triple from the current agreement. In addition, with the next negotiation, the NBA has indicated they will be adding a third media partner. NBC is widely expected to aggressively bid on the new contract, with perhaps Apple and Amazon also making bids (especially if Warner Bros. Discovery backs out).

A few RSN’s have already begun streaming local games at various price points for subscribers. Last year, NESN launched NESN 360, which live streams Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins games. At the start of the 2023 MLB season, the YES Network launched a direct-to-consumer service for the New York Yankees, the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and WNBA’s New York Liberty. In June, the MSG Networks MSGN launched MSG+, a direct-to-consumer service providing live streams of the NBA’s New York Knicks and the NHL’s New York Rangers, Buffalo Sabres and New Jersey Devils. Last month, Chicago’s Marquee Sports Network launched a streaming service for local Cubs games.

In December 2020, Sinclair announced they would be providing a streaming service called Bally Sports Plus. The launch date was pushed back to 2022 with streaming rights still needing to be negotiated with individual teams. By June 2023, Bally Sports, with only a handful of streaming agreements with teams, had only 203,000 direct-to-consumer subscribers, well below company forecasts. Earlier this year, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred had refused to hand over the streaming rights to Diamond Sports.

Bally Sports, has been the nation’s largest RSN. In 2022-23 they televised locally 16 of the 29 U.S. based NBA teams; Atlanta Hawks, Charlotte Hornets, Cleveland Cavaliers, Dallas Mavericks, Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies, Miami Heat, Milwaukee Bucks, Minnesota Timberwolves, New Orleans Pelicans, Oklahoma City Thunder, Orlando Magic MAGIC , Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs. With Bally Sports declaring bankruptcy last March, the RSN has had some difficulty in making some scheduled payments to teams.

In July, the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, which had been on Bally Sports Arizona, announced starting next season their games will be broadcast on local TV stations from Grey Television and streamed on Kiswe. After filing a legal challenge, Diamond Sports had failed to make a counter offer. The new Phoenix Suns/Mercury owner, Mat Ishiba noted, the games will air for free and available to 2.8 million households across the state, a threefold increase from the distribution of Bally Sports Arizona.

Earlier in the 2023 MLB season, Bally Sports defaulted on rights payments to the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks, resulting in MLB taking over the distribution for both teams. When Bally Sports failed to make scheduled payments in full, a U.S. bankruptcy judge in June had ordered the RSN to pay, in full, its financial obligations to four MLB teams (including Arizona).

The NBA, of course, wants stability with the coverage of local games in 2023-24. Diamond Sports, hampered by financial uncertainties, is in the middle of negotiating new contract agreements with Comcast CMCSA and DirecTV, two of largest MVPD’s. The contracts will expire in a few months. In a statement, a spokesperson from Diamond Sports said, “Our goal is to continue producing and broadcasting games for all NBA teams in our portfolio.”

Also, AT&T SportsNet, a smaller RSN, now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, has informed teams they plan to shut down their service, perhaps as soon as this October. SportsNet has televised local NBA games of the Houston Rockets and Utah Jazz. Cord Cutter News reports AT&T SportsNet Houston could be taken over by the NBA’s Houston Rockets and MLB’s Houston Astros. In June, the Utah Jazz announced that with the 2023-24 season, all non-national games will be broadcast over-the-air on the Sinclair owned station, KJZZ-TV, the parent company of Bally Sports.

With the 2023-24 season starting on October 10, the NHL is monitoring the status of RSN’s. In a statement to Bloomberg, an NHL spokesperson said “We will be prepared to address whatever circumstances dictate to provide our fans with access to our games.” In 2022-23 Bally Sports televised local games for 12 NHL teams. The Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights, whose games were on AT&T SportsNet, announced in May, that beginning in 2023-24 all non-national games will air for free on the Scripps owned broadcast station KMCC-TV. The changeover will also widen the distribution of Vegas Golden Knights games.

Although Amazon, Apple, YouTube and Disney all have deeper pockets than the Diamond Sports Group’s RSN’s, they lack the widespread distribution of broadcast television. There are numerous premium sports such as the Olympics and Super Bowl that are now live streamed, but are also available on linear TV. The same is true with the RSN’s that have launched a local streaming service in the past year. The five Pac-12 schools left the conference last week after hearing Apple would be the lead provider of live games instead of a television network, is an indication exclusive streaming live sporting events still has some ground to cover.