FanDuel Sports Network collapse reshapes US local sports broadcasting

Main Street Sports Group is preparing to wind down, and it is taking a revenue model with it.

Main Street operates the FanDuel Sports Network, the local broadcaster for – these days – 13 NBA and seven NHL teams, and has failed to pay rights fees to any for the current seasons. The NBA teams are owed a collective $180 million, and each can expect to recover about 60 percent of its share from creditors once the dissolution agreements are signed, the rest being written off. Equivalent figures for the NHL teams are undisclosed.

America’s regional sports networks (RSNs) are petering out, and their loss does entail delinquencies, but delinquencies are one-time events. The bigger problem is what comes next and how it will affect revenues.

Blurry future

The RSN model was built on carriage fees – cable and satellite operators paying per subscriber, regardless of viewership. That floor underwrote rights fees. Teams that renegotiated with FanDuel after the former Diamond Sports Group’s bankruptcy, in 2023, were already receiving $7 to $14 million less per year than their pre-bankruptcy rates. Teams that have since abandoned the RSN model for over-the-air alternatives have fared worse: the Utah Jazz went from $34 to $16 million annually, the Phoenix Suns from $37 to $15 million. The teams now seeking new arrangements for 2026/27 have little clarity on future local broadcast income.

The two leagues are responding differently. The NHL is leaving its teams to negotiate their own local deals. The NBA, meanwhile, is urging its teams to sign one-year deals or deals with exit clauses, because it is hoping to introduce a centralized national streaming platform for the 2027/28 season. This would bundle local rights for as many as 22 teams and sell them to a single distributor.

That platform has been in the works since before Main Street’s collapse. Sports Business Journal reported three things about it last July: that it would likely make its debut in 2027/28, that Commissioner Adam Silver considered it a prerequisite for league expansion, and that aesthetically it could “look like NBA League Pass on steroids,” with “ways to buy merch or make bets or watch alt broadcasts.” It remains to be seen whether it can restore RSN-era revenue.

Main Street’s demise

In February, as we then reported, the Atlanta Braves set up a broadcast entity of their own, in part to deal with this very situation. Nine MLB clubs had terminated their deals with Main Street in January, shrinking its portfolio to the aforementioned 13 NBA and seven NHL deals. Now those too are all but gone.

“FanDuel Sports Network has reached agreements with the NBA and NHL to broadcast games and other programming through the end of the 2026 NBA regular season and the end of the first round of the NHL playoffs,” a Main Street spokesman has told both Sports Business Journal and ESPN. “We are preparing to wind down our operations upon seasons’ end unless we reach a strategic transaction. We’re pleased to finish out the NBA and NHL seasons […].”

No “strategic transaction” has yet occurred. DAZN had shown interest in acquiring the group, but Main Street’s internal deadline came and went before any deal was reached. Main Street Sports Group arose in January 2025 from the bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group.

Cross-league action in the NHL

Two of the seven affected NHL teams have found unusual, baseball-related solutions to the problem of Main Street’s demise.

The Los Angeles Kings will be continuing with FanDuel. How? With Main Street’s demise, MLB’s Los Angeles Angels have acquired the 50 percent stake in FanDuel Sports Network West that it didn’t already own. This western portion was from the start a collaboration between the Angels and Main Street, and most of its broadcasts covered the Angels and the Kings.

The Angels have now integrated the western FanDuel staff, committed to existing broadcast programs and begun to shore up streaming. The Kings, then, will be shifting to the Angels’ new network from 2026/27, for an undisclosed annual rights fee.

Back east, meanwhile, the Detroit Red Wings have a cross-league deal of their own. As it happens, the Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers are both owned by Ilitch Holdings (the same company behind Little Caesars Pizza) and operated by Ilitch Sports + Entertainment. Ilitch, like the owners of several other MLB clubs, have recently put the Tigers under MLB Media, but Ilitch has gone on to negotiate an extension of MLB Media’s coverage to the Red Wings, and thus into a different Big Four league. It has also named this dual coverage Detroit SportsNet and sold single, year-round subscriptions to it. It will be announcing the details of the NHL side sometime later, presumably before the new NHL season starts.

The Nashville Predators have announced a multi-year deal, taking effect for the 2026/27 season, with Scripps Sports. No news yet for the other NHL teams.