Six teams leave regional sports network Main Street to join MLB

Six teams officially left their regional sports network, Main Street Sports, and joined Major League Baseball on Monday, essentially abandoning their local media contracts.

The Milwaukee Brewers, Miami Marlins, Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Tampa Bay Rays have decided to partner with MLB, which will produce their games for the 2026 season and beyond, as first reported by Puck’s John Ourand.

The Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Angels and Detroit Tigers, the other baseball teams in Main Street Sports’ portfolio, have yet to announce their plans, although a Sports Business Journal report indicates the Angels and Tigers will also join MLB. In a statement, the Braves said they are “on track to launch a new era in Braves broadcasting,” adding that they will “share our path forward in the coming weeks.”

On Jan. 8, Main Street Sports’ nine baseball teams terminated their contracts as the company scrambled to find a buyer while in the midst of another financial crisis – just a year after emerging from lengthy bankruptcy proceedings. Those teams promised to continue negotiations with the company but, with spring training approaching, gave it until the end of the month to resolve its situation. These departures appear to indicate that the RSN provider could be headed for liquidation, although previous reports indicated that it would continue to broadcast NBA and NHL games until the end of those leagues’ seasons.

Main Street, which broadcasts its games under the name FanDuel Sports, began the year with 29 NBA, NHL and MLB teams in its portfolio.

“FanDuel Sports Network continues to broadcast NBA and NHL games, and we appreciate the leagues’ engagement in ongoing discussions about our future plans,” a Main Street Sports spokesperson wrote in a statement. “We value the relationships we have had with these MLB partners and their fans for many years, and we wish them the best.”

MLB — which hopes to own the local rights to its 30 teams by the end of 2028 and sell them as a national package, a process that would help eliminate blackouts — also owns the rights to the Arizona Diamondbacks, San Diego Padres, Cleveland Guardians, Colorado Rockies, Minnesota Twins, Seattle Mariners and Washington Nationals.

Two years ago, MLB installed a local media department to handle RSN turmoil in the wake of massive cord cuttings across the country. In this scenario, MLB broadcasts games, negotiates cable and satellite distribution deals, generates advertising revenue and makes local streaming available through MLB.tv — owned by ESPN under a new media rights deal — to teams that fail to honor their local media contracts.

This arrangement, however, doesn’t come close to matching the value generated by traditional cable deals, which account for 20 to 30 percent of the team’s revenue and are a fixed, reliable revenue stream. The potential loss of this revenue for nine additional teams could have a major impact on spending in the near future, further exacerbating pay disparity issues as the linear cable model continues to collapse.

In 2024, MLB and the MLB Players Association agreed to use some of the money generated from luxury tax overruns to help fund teams that suffered local media losses of up to $15 million. But it was just a one-off event. This is just a one-time event, although seven of the nine teams that could lose their contracts with Main Street Sports — all but the Angels and Braves — receive revenue sharing and could be eligible for a portion of the luxury tax payments, which totaled about $400 million for the 2025 season.

Main Street was formerly Diamond Sports Group, a Sinclair subsidiary that took on nearly $9 billion in debt to buy 21 regional channels from Fox, pushing it into bankruptcy in March 2023. Twenty-two months later — after several missed payments, continued angst, bitter court battles and a three-month period in which Comcast pulled its broadcast channels — the company emerged from bankruptcy.

By January 2, 2025, the company had entered into a new naming rights deal, maintained a strong portfolio across three leagues, and signed a commercial deal with Amazon. There was hope for sustained operations, but these did not even last a full year. The Sports Business Journal reported in late December that Main Street Sports had missed a payment to the Cardinals and was offering a last-minute sale to streaming and entertainment platform DAZN to save its business.

That deal with DAZN eventually fell apart. More missed payments followed, prompting all MLB teams to abandon their previous deals. It appears that no other investors have emerged.

Main Street Sports currently owns local rights to the Atlanta Hawks, Charlotte Hornets, Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, Cleveland Cavaliers, Indiana Pacers, Detroit Pistons, Minnesota Timberwolves, Orlando Magic, Milwaukee Bucks, San Antonio Spurs, LA Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies. In the NHL, the Minnesota Wild, Nashville Predators, Detroit Red Wings, Los Angeles Kings, Carolina Hurricanes, Columbus Blue Jackets and St. Louis Blues.