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Amazon will partner with Diamond Sports as part of a restructuring agreement as the largest owner of regional sports networks looks to emerge from bankruptcy.

Diamond owns 18 networks under the Bally Sports banner, including Bally Sports Florida and Bally Sports Sun. Those channels have broadcast rights to the Orlando Magic and Miami Heat of the NBA, the Tampa Bay Rays and Miami Marlins and Major League Baseball, and the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers of the NHL.

Nationwide, Bally’s networks have the rights to 37 professional teams — 11 baseball, 15 NBA and 11 NHL.

Under the terms of the restructuring agreement, Amazon will make a minority investment in Diamond — expected to be initially $115 million — and enter into a commercial arrangement to provide access to Diamond’s content via Prime Video.

Customers will be able to access their local team’s content on Prime Video channels where Diamond has rights. Pricing and availability will be announced at a later date, but it is unlikely that this content would be available as a benefit included for current Prime subscribers. Regional sports content will also remain available on cable and satellite providers. read more

By Elizabeth Renter | NerdWallet

American family finances have weathered the fallout of the dot-com bubble, the Great Recession and a pandemic over the last 30 years. Despite these challenges and more, single-parent households as a whole have actually seen broad financial improvements during this time.

Some households are better insulated to emerge unscathed (and even improved) from economic turmoil. On the other hand, families with one earner and multiple mouths to feed are at a disadvantage compared with those with multiple incomes when there is a job loss, high inflation, unexpected medical expenses or trouble in financial markets, for example. Measuring the financial health of a single-income household against one with two incomes would uncover few surprises. However, examining how the financial well-being of single-parent households has changed, and how it’s changed relative to others over time, tells a story of certain improvements and remaining opportunities for growth.

I am the product of a single-parent household. From the time I was 3 years old in the early 1980s, my mom raised my older brothers and me solo. Later, as an adult, I was the head of a single-parent household, raising my daughter who was born in 2000. Much has changed during that time, both in how I experienced the world through finances personally and within the broader economy. Charting the household finances of single-parent households across decades underscores these changes. Income, net worth and homeownership rates among single-parent households have improved dramatically, but these households still lack insulation from financial shocks, according to data from the Federal Reserve. read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — A SpaceX rocket carved its way through cloudy skies Thursday on the Space Coast, sending up a four-man crew on a private mission to the International Space Station.

The quartet rode on the Crew Dragon Freedom making its third trip to orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket that blasted off from Launch Pad 39-A at 4:49 p.m. on the Ax-3 mission for Houston-based Axiom Space.

The first-stage booster made its fifth flight coming back for a landing at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Landing Zone 1 sending a sonic boom across parts of Central Florida.

“The four of us that are lucky enough to man the good ship Freedom at this point are humbled to be on the team. We are grateful to our teammates, and we are go for launch,” said mission commander Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut and Axiom chief astronaut,  ahead of liftoff.

Liftoff of Ax-3! pic.twitter.com/PRy1LJmf3o

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 18, 2024

López-Alegría, who has both U.S. and Spanish citizenship, leads the all-European crew of Italian Air Force Col. Walter Villadei acting as pilot and mission specialists Alper Gezeravcı of Turkey and ESA project astronaut Marcus Wandt of Sweden. read more